Friday, January 30, 2009

Hyperion Planning Certification Help

Hi Guys,
here are some planning questions which could help you get certified in Hyperion Planning Certification. I intentionally didn't post answers for most of them as you can find those answers in planning administrator manual. Hope this helps.
  1. What are the required dimensions in planning?
  2. What are the steps you need to take before creating planning application?
  3. Which process state signifies that a planning unit is being reviewed by someone in the organization.
  4. What file acts as bridge between Planning and relational data source?
  5. When you tag a currency as a reporting currency, which dimensions will it be part of.
  6. What is the maximum number of plan types you can have in planning?
  7. Where are the rejected records after loading using HAL are placed in?
  8. What are the different user roles in planning security?
  9. Planning supports fiscal year calendars. It does not support mixed use of fiscal year and calendar year (True/False)?
  10. What are the data sources supported by hyperion financial reporting?
  11. Which type of tasks can you define in a task list?
  12. What are the requirements for creating a dataform?
  13. Row and column layout, business rules, POV definition, display options etc
  14. Fiscal start of year and fiscal start month defines the starting fiscal year and start month for application. You cannot change this after you have created the application (True/False)?
  15. To which application elements can you assign rights
  16. When you enter plan data in the planning web client, planning automatically distributes values from :
    · Summary periods to base periods
  17. Do you need to refresh your database once you modify the webforms?
  18. How many relational databases are needed for an application, which has 4 plantypes
  19. List of places where you can launch business rules from
  20. What is the maximum number of dimensions that a planning application can have?
  21. Which can be runtime prompts in business rules?
    Member or members
    Dimension
    String integer, real or percent
  22. The POV is always set to _______ for each POV dimension
    Single member
    Multiple members
    none
  23. What is the reason for having sparse dimension? Data values are not smoothly and randomly distributed throughout the database Data values do not exist for the majority of member combinations in the database
  24. How many databases will be created for two plan types.
  25. By default account and period are dense dimensions in planning application.
  26. When creating planning application, what base time period allows you to select weekly distribution option? (Ans:Monthly)
  27. In which dimension your exchange rates are stored?
  28. An authentication directory is a centralized store of users and passwords, user groups etc.
  29. What authentication directories are supported by hyperion planning?
  30. Which type of tasks can you define in a task list?
    Dataform
    Descriptive
    Workflow
    URL
    Business rule
  31. Because dimension members can belong to more than one plan type you can specify different aggregation options by plan type.
  32. Where does planning store application definition?
  33. What happens when you use dynamic calc for base-level members for which users enter data?
  34. Which data form tasks can you perform in smart view?
  35. Parent members set to dynamic calc are read only in target version.
  36. How many user variables can you setup for each dimension?
  37. A parent member set to label only displays the value of its first child member.
  38. In multiple currency applications, you cannot apply the label only storage option to members of the following dimensions: Entity, Version, Currency and user defined custom dimensions. To store exchange rates, these members should remain Never Share.
  39. What is the calculation order in essbase
    Account dimension
    Time dimension
    Other dense dimensions in top down order
    Other sparse dimensions in top down order
    Members that are tagged as two pass calcs
  40. The Two pass calculation option is used primarily for members of the account dimension. For other dimension, the two pass calculation option is only valid for Dynamic calc or dynamic calc and store members.
  41. What is the maximum number of alias tables you can have for a dimension?
  42. What is a planning unit?
  43. For all Hyperion system 9 products, all user provisioning and external authentication is handled through:
  44. After entering or modifying data in a dataform, you must calculate new totals for parent members in the dataform.
  45. When loading files that contain member properties, you must :
    Load parent members before children
    Have a separate load file for each dimension.


Wednesday, January 28, 2009

How to delete members in planning using HAL

Hi
good morning.
Deleting members in planning is challenging to do manually as it consume lots of time specially if you more than 5 members to delete. we can use Hyperion Application Link (HAL) to delete precisely the members we don't need.

Here are the steps to follow on how to delete members using HAL

Step:1
prepare a text document or .CSV file of the list of members you want to delete in Parent, Child format.

Step:2
Open a new flow diagram and add flat file adapter, Planning adapter and Variable adapter as shown below. When you select a Planning adapter, the names of ports and the number of ports are determined by the dimension to which members are deleted. Most ports reflect the properties and custom attributes of the selected dimension.




Step : 3
Open a Variable adapter and type Delete in port name column and
in the Initial Value column type

Delete Level 0 .........................(If you want to delete the member if it has no children)
Delete Idescendants ............(If you want to delete the member and its descendants)
Delete Descendants ............. (If you want to delete the descendants but not the member)




Step.4:
Upload the flat file with members to delete as shown below:



After the execution of HAL, you should refresh planning application to push the changes to essbase.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Automation of DataLoad

This document is intended to explain how to automate data load.

Step.1:
Create a data load rule in Essbase

Step.2 :

Create a Maxl file to execute the load rule

Step .3 :

Create a batch file to execute the MaxL file. We can schedule the Batch file using windows scheduler.


Example of MaxL code.
1.This MaxL code clears the existing data
2.Loads data
3.Aggregates the data.


Remember : You need clear the data before you load. We clear the data because of our requirements. You can just use step 2 and 3 load data and aggregate data.




/*Script Start */
/*Login */
LOGIN 'UserName' 'Password' ON 'Server Name';

/*Clears data */
execute calculation '
Fix (@idescendants("Account"),@idescendants(Entity),&Current Year,Version)
CLEARDATA Scenario;
Endfix;'
on ApplicationName.Database Name;

/* Imports Data */

import database 'ApplicationName'.'DatabaseName' data connect as 'UserName' identified by 'Password' using server rules_file 'LoadRuleName' on error
write to 'e:\\Logs\Errorfilename.err';

/*Aggregates Data*/
execute calculation'
SET AGGMISSG ON;
SET UPDATECALC OFF;
Fix (Scenario,Year,Version)
CALC DIM(Product,Entity);
Endfix;'
on ApplicationName.DatabaseName;

LOGOUT;
EXIT;
/*End MaxL Script*/


Batch File to call the MaxL Script and send email about status of the

Rem ******************************************************************************
Rem Object Type: Batch File
Rem Object Name: BatchFileName.bat
Rem Script Date: 01-27-2009
Rem Created by: Dornakal
Rem Purpose: This script loads the following data into Cube
Rem Changed By:
Rem Change Date:
Rem Description:
Rem ******************************************************************************
Rem This starts the log file
echo "Start of log" > E:\Logs\Dataload.log

Rem This calls MaxL script to load data


essmsh E:\Scripts\MaxL \DataLoad.mxl >> E:\Logs\Dataload.log

Rem Send mail about the status of the job


sendmail -b E:\Logs\Dataload.log -s "Subject of the mail (data load status)." -f Sendersemail -r Recievers email -r Receiver’s email -X HQSMTP.yourcompany.net




Thursday, January 22, 2009

Certification Questions

Hi All,
please find some sample questions, which can help you to get certified in Essbase.
  1. Development tool used to build application which can add or delete dimensions.
  2. essbase quick start when is it used
  3. multiple fix – dense or sparse
  4. multiple if – dense or sparse
  5. Member selection wizard in excel. Placement
  6. When are hash tables used
  7. Number of passes through database (two pass calc) – 2questions
  8. Query designer – what cannot be assigned to filter access
  9. Sequence of cache files to be optimized based on their priority
  10. What causes fragmentation?
  11. Which compression type to use based on the statistics information of the database
    is incremental restructuring deferred when u add, move or delete a member of a sparse dimension
  12. What command do you use to optimize data export
  13. Max .pag file size
  14. Given a load file identify what field or load method should be used.
  15. Attribute dimensions
  16. What cannot be linked to a cell with an LRO
  17. When would you select Shared Member functionality, as opposed to Attribute dimension functionality?
  18. Proper use of substitution variables in the cal scripts
  19. Variance calculation – when is it used. Result
  20. Given an exhibit identify the improper use of label only tag
  21. What are the minimum security settings for LRO’s
  22. Accept and reject records based on rules
  23. Data source 3 partitions, data target updated. How many .CHG files are updated
  24. Given settings, what is the optimal outline
  25. Which partition uses less synchronization
  26. Given 2 exhibits from excel, which exhibit will be retrieved
  27. hashtbl theory
  28. Set commands – 3 questions
  29. Dynamic calc and dynamic cal and store properties interchanged what kind of restructuring happens
  30. Attribute calc dimensions
  31. Use of attribute dimensions in partitions
  32. Identify how many blocks are created given database statistics
  33. How many index files will be restructures
  34. Validate command
  35. Which access a filter can have
  36. Fix command and number of passes
  37. Fix with datacopy
  38. Fix with cross-dimensional operator
  39. frmbottom up command
  40. Given an outline which dimension is tagged as label only
  41. Can u load data into attribute dimension
  42. Datacopy syntax
  43. beginarchive and endarchive commands
  44. net delay command
  45. query designer filter access issues
  46. Which file holds uncompressed data blocks
  47. Fragmentation, causes prevention and resolution
  48. Essbase member selection placement in query designer of spread sheet