Database Reference
In-Depth Information
9.5.8
Adding members to an outline
339
9.5.9
unlocking objects
340
9.5.10 Executing a maxL Command
341
9.5.11 using Command Line Arguments and Config File Settings
343
9.5.12 Logging
345
9.5.13 Installing groovy
346
9.5.14 Setting up and tearing Down Essbase objects
347
9.6
Wrapping It up
347
9.1 the importanCe oF Being automateD
There are many noble goals an Essbase professional aims to achieve: designing an ele-
gant set of dimensions, discovering the most efficient outline order and dense/sparse
settings, filling the cubes with flawless data. The lion's share of most project time is usu-
ally dedicated to these goals. often overlooked, however, is the essential art of system
automation.
A well-designed database that requires a high degree of manual interaction, whether
that be to update the outline, to import and export data, or to run and verify calc scripts,
is still incomplete. manual processes tend to degrade in quality over time as they become
rote, boring maintenance steps. Quality suffers and documentation is not kept up to
date. Worst of all, knowledge of those processes and how they get done (indeed of their
very existence) may live only in the head of a single person. This is why no cube is com-
plete until it is highly automated, and neither is a developer until automation techniques
are mastered.
most Essbase administrators have set up automation on their databases in one form
or another. After all, getting up at 3 a.m. to load data, update outlines, or run backups
can get old really fast. yet, these things must be done, and most of the time they need
to be done at inconvenient times, are repeated annoyingly often, and involve tedious
procedures. So, while automation is clearly an essential administrative function, this
fundamental discipline has seen very little standardization across the industry. no one
seems to do things the same as anyone else. It is a little odd that this area does not get
more attention. you might not find a single ASo cube at some companies, while others
are devoid of attribute dimensions, alternate hierarchies, or some other Essbase feature.
Automation, on the other hand, is practically, virtually, essentially everywhere. It is time
to shine the spotlight on this neglected corner of the Essbase world.
This chapter is an introduction to the best available automation methods for Essbase.
It takes us beyond the common methods found in the wild by exploring a programming
language called groovy and how it relates to Java. groovy leverages the Java API (appli-
cation programming interface) and easily performs tasks that otherwise would be quite
difficult. I will introduce new ideas that were almost inconceivable with older techniques.
In short, with groovy I will display a new state-of-the-art in Essbase automation.
9.2 the automation lanDsCape
We define our goal as being able to script maintenance-type interactions with Essbase in
the most powerful way possible, without making them too hard to develop. In a script-
ing language, free-form code is written to take step-by-step actions toward completing
a task. This is opposed to application languages, which tend to be more structured or
