3/29/2014

More Next Blog

Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers: Fixing Planning's Filters

Create Blog Sign In

Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers

I will be available on 15 April, 2014. Essbase forever! Or something like that. Contact me on LinkedIn if you're interested.
21 JULY 2009 DEVELOPING ESSBASE BOOK

Fixing Planning's Filters

Full disclosure and source code and of course a disclaimer

Much of the content of this post comes from a ODTUG Kaleidoscope presentation I gave in June of this year. The presentation (280 Master Essbase with MaxL automation) should be available 90 days after the conference, so I am guessing some time in September. I will update this post when it is available for those who want to see more. This code was sort of the capstone of the presentation and used a variety of MaxL techniques. If you look at the source code youre probably going to wonder why I used so many different approaches to, oh say, error checking, for example you will intuit that I was trying to illustrate the different ways it can be handled. For your sanity I suggest you pick one (like %ERRORLEVEL%) and stick with it. The source code is available here. Take a look at the code, laugh at it, admire its genius, use it in anger whatever. If it causes the end of the world (your Hyperion world, at least), gets you fired because it didnt work, or any other less than optimal outcome, well, I make no guarantee, warranty, or anything else. Use it at your own risk. It is worth every penny you spent, which would be exactly zero.

Developing Essbase Applications Cameron Lackpour Best Price $58.96 or Buy New $62.96

Privacy Information

TWEET

Tweets
Osama Mustafa @OsamaOracle

Follow 27 Mar

Learn Basic Linux Command with Cheat Sheet pic.twitter.com/vmGtS38RNK Retweeted by Cameron Lackpour

Plannings Filter Oddity

I seem to be going on and on about Planning, not Essbase, and of course the name of this blog isnt Camerons Blog For Planning Hackers, so its fair to ask whats going on. Well, Planning is a wrapper application around Essbase at the end of the day, whether its dimensions, data, or Business Rules (aka calc scripts on steroids) Essbase is the foundation that Planning rests on. And Planning drives Essbase, but oddly. Within Hyperion Planning, metadata is filtered. That is, if you're a Planning user, and security is applied to a dimension, you can only see the bits of the dimension that you have read or write access to. (If your read access is greater than your write access, you will see more members in, say, a dimension drop down, but you will only be able to write to the members you have write access to.) This makes sense, right? Why would you want to deal with members you can't touch?

Tweet to @CameronLackpour

SEARCH THIS BLOG Search

MY BLOG LIST

fishing with FDMEE

FDMEE PSU510 released (11.1.2.3.510)
1 day ago

Makes sense
Here's the administrator's view of the Entity dimension from the Planning reference application:

Cube Coder
Reverse-Engineering Block Density Statistics
2 days ago

DEV EPM
DEVEPM at ODTUG Expert Panel ODI
3 days ago

Glenn Schwartzberg's Essbase Blog

Another post on 11.1.2.3.500

http://camerons-blog-for-essbase-hackers.blogspot.in/2009/07/fixing-plannings-filters.html

1/9

3/29/2014

Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers: Fixing Planning's Filters

4 days ago

The Planning administrator sees all this is appropriate, as he is responsible for all data. And here is a Planner's view of the world (literally):

Tim Tow's Hyperion Blog

What's New in Dodeca 6.7.1?
4 days ago

Gurcan Orhan's Oracle Data Integrator Blog

Save the date for 29th April
1 week ago

Hyperion @ 42 Below
Playing with DOS (writing a DOS batch job to control thread management)
1 week ago

jason's hyperion blog

See the difference? For a user that can only see Latin America, all is as it should be.

Stop making sense

And heres that same user looking at the same dimension in SmartView:

A quick trick to avoid hardcoding folder names in batch files

2 months ago

Look Smarter Than You Are

My Friend, Mike Riley, Has Cancer
3 months ago

Essbase Labs
Using Smart View to Combine OBIEE and Essbase Data
6 months ago

The Traveling Consultant

Other Profiles: The Contractor Part I
6 months ago

hyp3d on hyp3rion
The KScope 13 Aftermath
9 months ago

The rows highlighted in yellow are not readable/writeable, but are visible. While the planner can select these members, he cant retrieve their data values. This is inconsistent, and is colloquially known as Not Good.

Metavero
First Look 11.1.2.3
1 year ago

Why does it do what it does?

Planning performs metadata filtering within the application, but when it writes the filters to the Essbase id used to query data, it uses a READ, not a METAREAD filter. Why? This is a mystery. Okay, lots of things in life are mysteries, but the fix from the Planning side seems so simple (use METAREAD, not READ). Im a fan of Raymond Chandler, but I am not seeing the plot to The Big Sleep here. Well, maybe someone was snoozing when this was implemented.

SUBSCRIBE TO ESSBASE HACKERS

Posts Comments

POPULAR POSTS

The fix (no, not the FIX..ENDFIX, the solution)

A few years ago at Solutions in the product lab I asked a Planning product manager (I think) about using MEATREAD and he said "It can't be done." Curiouser and curiouser. Why not? Was there something in a METAREAD filter that would cause the world to stop spinning, the magnetic fields to fade, and result in a cockroach-only world? This did seem somewhat far-fetched. There had to be a reason; I suspected I wasnt hearing it. This was (and is) sort of the equivalent of waving a red cape in front of a bull and it made me curious -- why not? Essbase has had METAREAD since 6 (I think, it could be earlier). Why not write a METAREAD to Essbase when refreshing security? There was an easy way to test this roll my own refresh and force METAREAD filters as part of the Planning refresh. Dare I? Briefly, I considered Robert Oppenheimers quote of the Bhagavad-Gita at Trinity: I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds, but in the true spirit of all mad scientists, I quickly dismissed such idle
http://camerons-blog-for-essbase-hackers.blogspot.in/2009/07/fixing-plannings-filters.html

Why I hate (and love) Calculation Manager, part 1 Hate takes too much energy And besides, its difficult to hate a software product, unless its name is HAL . :) Love? When it com... The fastest way to export targeted data from BSO Essbase with NONEMPTYBLOCK NB The best way to experience this blog is with one of the following musical soundtracks open and playing in a loop on another tab or wi... Yeah, yeah 11.1.2.1 is here, so what? Introduction Given the excitement around this release (geeks get enthused by some pretty odd things), youd think an Oracle-red

2/9

3/29/2014

Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers: Fixing Planning's Filters

lightning bo... Why I hate (and love) Business Rules, part 2 The Two Minutes' Hate is over the below is a paean of love to HBR. Prequel to the cool stuff So in part 1, I reviewed how to create ... Stupid Programming Tricks #6 Introduction Number S ix in my Stupid Tricks collection. Should I be worried that so much of what I know falls into this category? Ill ... A lightweight, modular, and better Essbase backup Your nightly backup Backups come in many flavors: email, important documents, code, family pictures, SQL databases, and of course Essbase d... Fixing Planning's Filters Full disclosure and source code and of course a disclaimer Much of the content of this post comes from a ODTUG Kaleidoscope presentation I ... Why I hate (and love) Business Rules, part 1 Just a quick note -this is a two part (hence the title) post as the content was just too long. Trust me, the next post is worth waiting a... A simple 23 step guide to Books, Batches, and Bursting in Hyperion Financial Reports Introduction to the guide I was asked in in this thread over on the Network54 Essbase board to post a guide to Hyperion Financial Repor... Installing 11.1.2.3 Can an Essbase and Planning consultant possibly do it? Introduction Why, yes, he can, much to his (and maybe everyone elses) amazement. Those of you who have followed this blog (ah, Mum, yo...

thoughts. Our future as cockroaches would bring many benefits, anyway.

Diagnosing the disease

What's the problem? The filter in EAS as written by Planning:

Easy fix in EAS If only it were this easy -- just copy the READ row and make it a METAREAD. Since METAREAD is more restrictive (both data AND metadata) it takes precedence, so the READ line doesn't have to be deleted:

And it looks just right in SmartView (or the Essbase-centric reporting tool of choice).

One tiny problem

But when Planning does a security refresh, it's going to go right back to the bad old ways of yore, and will strip the METAREAD off the Planner's filter. Bummer. And if you have 200 users, manually editing their filters in EAS is going to cause your fingers to fall off, or your eyeballs pop out of your head, or something else equally horrible. I understand that cockroaches can regenerate limbs, so theres another plus towards the possible end of the world due to METAREAD.

Back to some kind of solution

By hacking (okay, I am stretching this, but hey, it's the name of the blog, so bear with me) Essbase, we can make the user experience the same between Essbase and Planning without . Never say "It can't be done" to a moderately curious geek. What would this refresh need to do? 1) Refresh Planning dimensions and security 2) Apply METAREAD access to those filters Pretty simple, right? It's always easy when the consultant writes it on the whiteboard...

BLOG ARCHIVE

2014 (9) 2013 (48)

A little more detail

We're going to combine Planning 11x's CubeRefresh.cmd, MaxL, NT Cmd scripts (I am showing my age), and VBScript (ditto) to put together a scripted approach to Planning that: 1. Refreshes Planning through CubeRefresh.cmd 2. Writes the filters to disk via MaxL 3. Reads them into memory in VBScript 4. Programmatically generates MaxL code to apply a METAREAD to each of those filters 5. Run that new MaxL script
http://camerons-blog-for-essbase-hackers.blogspot.in/2009/07/fixing-plannings-filters.html

2012 (50) 2011 (38) 2010 (22) 2009 (9) December (1) November (1)

3/9

3/29/2014

Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers: Fixing Planning's Filters

October (1)

BTW, I happen to be mildly proficient in VBScript (call me Fred) and NT Cmd scripts. You could use whatever tools you like, e.g., Powershell, or the Bourne shell, or Rexx (call yourself T. Rex), etc.

September (1) August (1) July (1) Fixing Planning's Filters June (2) May (1)

Putting it all together

This is where youre going to want to download the source code and follow along. At least thats what I would do, but I have been called odd (and a few other choice descriptions, but I digress).

Script components
Script name Refresh_Planning.cmd ModCubeRefresh.cmd Create_MetaRead_Filters.wsf Description Overall NT Cmd control script Refresh Planning utility VBScript to read output from Write_Filters_To_Disc.mshs and write METAREAD filters MaxL shell to run METAREAD filter adds Programmatically generated METAREAD filters

LABELS

11.1.2 (6) 11.1.2.1 (11) 11.1.2.2 (5) 11.1.2.3 (4) 64 bit (4) Ace (2) Ace
Director (2) Advisors (4) alphabet (1)

Amazon EC2 (10)

And now

for

something completely different (1) Arbor (1)

ASO (14) Australia (1) automation (1) awesome (32) backup (1) batches (1)
benchmark (1) BI (2) BI Apps (1) board of

call_metaread_add_filters.mshs Metaread_Add_Filters.msh

directors (4) book (3) books (1)

BSO

(15)

bug (1) bursting (1)

Business

Intelligence (5) Business Rules (2) calc scripts (7) Calculation Manager (9) campaign (1) Classic
add-in (2) CLEARDATA (1) Cloud (4) code (2) combobox (1) Community Service
Day (1) conferences (1) Consulting (3) Crystal Ball (1) Data Detective (1) Data integration (1) data quality (1)

A note about ModCubeRefresh.cmd When I ran CubeRefresh from a command line (this was within the C:\Hyperion\products\Planning\bin directory) it worked just fine. However, when I called it from another batch file it stopped all execution. I tried every trick I could think of to make it work and finally just added an EXIT to the end of it and saved it as ModCubeRefresh.cmd. Refresh_Planning.cmd To get this all to work, I used the calling script to accept parameters as shown below: Parameter Value Planning encrypted password file Planning application Planning admin username Refresh or create Filter switches Essbase server First half of private key Second half of private key c:\tempdir\odtug_2009\password.txt

Developing Esssbase Applications (11) DIM (1) dimensions (8) dir (1) documentation
DATAEXPORT (3) (3) Dodeca

(14) DOS (2) Drill through EPM (16)

EPMA (3)

(1) Early Bird (1) election (3) Endeca (1)

Ephemeral (2)
escape (1)

Essbase (66)

Essbase MaxL scripting quotes parameters variables SQL (1) Essbase Planning (3)

Essbsae (2) Exalytics (2) Excel (8)

plansamp admin

Excel add-in (2) export (1) FDM (7) filters (3) Financial Reports focused
GLOC (1)

(8)
(2)

aggregation

(3)

free

Full360 (2) funny (1) Fusion (1) futures (1)

(1) HAL (1) half price (1)

/R /FS %computername% 316108469 694177571

hack (11) hackers (2) hacks HFM (8)

hierarchy (3) Hybrid (1) Hyperion (4) Hyperion SIG (3) Infrastructure (9) inheritance (4) installation (6) Kaleidoscope (10) Kaleodoscope (1) Kindle (1) kitchen sink (1) KScope11 (9)

KScope12 (14) Kscope13 (14)

Kscope14 (3) Labs (1) LCM (1) listbox (1)
Load Rules (1) MaxUserPort n' Learn (1) macros (1)

Long Beach (6) Lunch MaxL (13) (1) MDX (5) meetup (3)
(2)
nostalgia (1)

memory (1) METAREAD (1) New Orleans

(2) New Zealand

NZOUG (3) OBIEE (4) ODI (13)

How do I run it? refresh_planning.cmd c:\tempdir\odtug_2009\password.txt plansamp admin /R /FS %computername% 316108469,694177571 ModCubeRefresh.cmd The normal CubeRefresh.cmd script has seven parameters: Parameter Value
http://camerons-blog-for-essbase-hackers.blogspot.in/2009/07/fixing-plannings-filters.html

ODTUG (44)
OpenWorld (4)

ODTUG SP

Australia (2) OLAP (1) OPatch (2)

Oracle (19) Oracle

EPM (14)
Planining (1)

Oracle Open World (4)

OTN (2) painful (1) panel (3) patch (1)

Planning (50)
queries (5) query

podcasts. Oracle (1) poll (1) programming (1) provisioning (1)

4/9

3/29/2014

Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers: Fixing Planning's Filters

-f /A

Path to encrypted password file Planning application name Username RMI port to bind to (Extra points if you tell me who said This is the sort of English up with which I will not put. And why. And if he really did. Hint -- His name isnt Gordon Broon.) Create or refresh outline Process database Filters, shared or not, or even validated Connect to the local bean (Is this like, "Splendid work, old bean."? Again, I digress.) RMI port to bind to the remote Planning bean. Use with /-L option Print debug statements

(4) quotes (1) refresh (1) Regedit (1)

regional (1) Registry (1) report scripts (2)

reporting (4) San Antonio (6) scripting

(1) Search (1) secret stuff (1)

security
Seriously

groups (7)

selectors

(1)

/U /C

Practica (1) Seriously Practical (1) service startup (1) sessions (5) Shared Services (7) Smart View (8) SQL

(23)

SQL Passthrough DataSet (1) SQL

Server 2008 (4) Stanley (1) statistics (1)

Strategic Finance (1) Studio (3) stupid (10) stupid Planning queries (17) stupid programming tricks (13) stupid trick (12) styles (1) substitution variable (2) Support (10) survey (2) symposium (5) TcpTimedWaitDelay (1) templates (1) text (1) TINCR (1) treeview (1) trick (4)

/R /D /F or /FS or /FV or /FSV or /FVS /L

tricks (6)
(2) (2) (3)

undocumented (2) user conferences (1)

user groups (1) User Variables variables (1) VBA (1) virtual (1) VM Ware

(3)

VMWare

(2)

Volunteers Windows

Washington DC (1) w ebcast (1) webinar

(4) w hat a deal (1) Workspace (4) xml (2)

Windows 2008 (4) Workbook Scripts (1)

FOLLOWERS Join this site

w ith Google Friend Connect

/RMIPORT

Members (96) More

/DEBUG

The RMIPORT, Create/Refresh, Process database, Use security filters, Connect to the local bean, and Debug parameters are optional. In my world (this is my code, you can follow or get just as explicit as you like/need/want), I chose to explicitly define: the password file, application name, username, refresh or create, filter switch (what would be the point otherwise?), and I also passed along a log file I use for error checking. Write_Filters_To_Disc.mshs This is simple code that writes all Essbase filters to disc. I dont know why I did this, as the display filter command can be limited to only one database. It works in the demo world, but in a real environment its a distinctly lousy idea. Feel free to modify this with a MaxL parameter variable to pass only the Essbase database filters you want. Yes, this gets trickier with multiple Plan Types. Create_Metaread_Filters.wsf This is where the rubber meets the road it reads the output from Write_Filters_To_Disc.mshs, converts the READ filter to METAREAD, and generates the MaxL script Metaread_Add_Filters.msh. This file will be used to set the Planners filters to METAREAD. Call_metaread_add_filters.mshs Encrypted (username and password) MaxL shell to modify filters to use METAREAD. Metaread_Add_Filters.msh This is the code that adds the METAREAD. Its kind of silly to have both a READ and METAREAD in the same filter, although it works because of METAREADs more restrictive nature. I tried using MaxLs replace filter command instead of alter filter but I found that it just gave the Planner read access to the entire dimension in question. It must be (I think) something to do with Shared Services and alter filter works, so I went with that. I welcome a better approach hint Blogspot has a comment section and I read them. I will modify this post as required.
http://camerons-blog-for-essbase-hackers.blogspot.in/2009/07/fixing-plannings-filters.html

Already a member? Sign in

ABOUT ME

Cameron Lackpour View my complete profile

MY FAVORITE ESSBASE LINKS

Essbase on OTN AKA Essbase.org

5/9

3/29/2014

Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers: Fixing Planning's Filters

What does it look like? Magic Essbase filters that come from Planning are now METAREAD filters.

Conculsion
I believe that the Earth still rotates on its axis. All is well. I do not scuttle sideways across the floor, and my trusty prismatic compass still works, so apparently TEOTWAWKI did not occur. NB You will have to perform all filter refreshes through this utility. Unfortunately, for ModCubeRefresh.cmd to work, this will require Planning server access, or at least remote access. There are a number of ways to do this Google is your friend.

The future
At the conclusion of the presentation, I heard that METAREAD functionality is now in the pipeline for Planning. However, if youre on Planning 9x (the Planning refresh utility is a little different), or up to 11.1.2, you may want to use this code base to give your Planning users the same metadata filtering in Essbase as they get in Planning. Another chapter in hacking Essbase under the belt.
Posted by Cameron Lackpour at 10:05 AM Labels: automation, Essbase, filters, MaxL, Planning

15 comments:
Anonymous said... Cameron, Very nice blogs! thank you! However, I tried to dl your source code but I can't extract your zip file. 21 July, 2009 13:53

Cameron Lackpour said... Anon, You're very welcome. Thank you for your kind comment. Re the download -- I was able to go the link and download the zip file to my desktop and extract it. Could it be that your workplace blocks zip files? I am a paying FileDropper customer so that file will remain (as long as I pay my $0.99/month). Regards,

http://camerons-blog-for-essbase-hackers.blogspot.in/2009/07/fixing-plannings-filters.html

6/9

3/29/2014
Caneron Lackpour 22 July, 2009 06:58

Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers: Fixing Planning's Filters

Elevation58 said... Hi Cameron, Very interesting approach, thanks for sharing this. Is the source code still available? There's nothing on FileDropper? Thanks Mark 16 August, 2009 16:33

Cameron Lackpour said... Mark, Thanks for pointing the bad link out. Try it now -- it should be fixed. Regards, Cameron Lackpour 23 August, 2009 08:03

Elevation58 said... Hi Cameron, Thanks for the update. Mark 23 August, 2009 12:15

Anonymous said... Hi, I too am not able to unzip the file Automating_Essbase_with_MaxL_code.zip which I downloaded from FileDropper. I even tried using WinRAR to unzip it, but it did not work. My windows XP 2002 is able to see the files in your zip file, but not able to extract them. 13 January, 2010 13:19

Anonymous said... Looks like the download works. I can then look at the files inside. but when you try to unzip it. The program fails for all files. 04 March, 2010 09:26

Alp Burak Beder said... Hi Cameron, Thanks a lot for the post. Is it possible to re-upload the file? I tried many ways but I couldn't extract the zip file. I think I am not the only one facing the same issue. Cheers, Alp 12 April, 2010 22:48

http://camerons-blog-for-essbase-hackers.blogspot.in/2009/07/fixing-plannings-filters.html

7/9

3/29/2014
Cameron Lackpour said...

Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers: Fixing Planning's Filters

Sorry for the tardiness -- I have to figure out how to get emails when comments get posted. I've been monitoring my more recent posts, not these older ones. Anyway, I rezipped the files, uploaded them, changed the HTML to point to the new file name (FileDropper assigns it, not me), saved the post, opened it, downloaded the files to my hard drive, unzipped the files, and edited one or two of those files. Whew, what I do for you. :) It should be good to go. Ping me on LinkedIn in future if something I'm providing goes tits up and I'll do my best. Thanks for reading. Cameron Lackpour 15 April, 2010 08:28

Anonymous said... Cameron, I still can't extract the zip files to edit them. Any chance you can take a look at this again? 18 December, 2010 15:21

Jeff said... Wow, really well done, the scripts are well documented with comments, easy to follow, very complete. Thanks for this! 24 May, 2011 16:05

Adella said... Hi Cameron, I am not sure if you will check this comment or not as you might not be keeping a track of your older posts but still I wanted to post my comment. Very very nice post! It is really very informative. Infact, I learned as well as enjoyed reading it. Not all can write like this I guess. I hope to read more and more of such posts from you. Please do continue sharing your immense knowledge. It would really help us a lot ! Thank you so much. ~ Adella 15 September, 2011 16:37

Joachim1111 said... Great blogs Cameron. Bought your DEA book too. :) Regarding: "At the conclusion of the presentation, I heard that METAREAD functionality is now in the pipeline for Planning.", do you have an update on the timing of this? If we can hack it, it shouldn't be so difficult to add, should it? 25 September, 2012 10:01

Cameron Lackpour said... Joachim, I asked this question at Kscope12's EPM symposium -- it is STILL not fixed.

http://camerons-blog-for-essbase-hackers.blogspot.in/2009/07/fixing-plannings-filters.html

8/9

3/29/2014

Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers: Fixing Planning's Filters

Sorry,but now you have a chance to write a script. :) Regards, Cameron Lackpour 23 October, 2012 14:48

Anonymous said... Hi Cameron, Any chance of getting a link for the source files? If there's a download on here somewhere, I cannot for the life of me find it. Thanks! Bill 11 April, 2013 17:51 Post a Comment

Links to this post

Create a Link

Newer Post
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Home

Older Post

Picture Window template. Powered by Blogger.

http://camerons-blog-for-essbase-hackers.blogspot.in/2009/07/fixing-plannings-filters.html

9/9