Technology Blueprints & Strategy with Gary Crisci

Do you get tired of recreating the same PowerPoint decks each month when your numbers change?  Wouldn't it be great if you could just push a button and have the numbers in your ppt slide update to what is in the database?  Wouldn't it be even better if the data was used in visually rich MS Office objects such as tables and charts?  And, wouldn't it be awesome if you could interact with the data in real time during your presentation? Well, did you know Smart View for Power Point does all of that?  That's right I said Smart View for PowerPoint; Smart View is not just for Excel. Smart View has had the functionality to work with the MS Office suite for some time, but frankly the functionality outside of Excel has been limited and challenging to work with at times.  While the Power Point and Word functionality are not 100%, they have come a long way and with some patience you can make some really nice PowerPoint slides that are interactive with your underlying EP...

Recently I answered a post on the user forum regarding a way to test if a member is a Descendent of another member using MDX member formula's in an ASO database. It took me a little while to figure it out. I think it's a little hard for Essbase people to understand because of the way we used to do it in BSO using the function @ISDESC. Below was my response and I thought it was worth posting on the blog. --In calc script language you are saying @ISDESC("C009") meaning you want hierarchical members below "C2009". Now in Calc script we also have @ISANCEST and if we said @ISANCEST("C009") we would be looking for all members that are hierarchically above "C2009". MDX does not have ISDESC, MDX only has IsAncestor. The parameters are member1 and member2. Now depending on which way you ask the question, you get a different answer. IsAncestor([C009], [Dimension].CurrentMember) is really saying "Is "C009" an ancestor of the cu...

A while back, I was asked to do a book review for Oracle Essbase 9 Implementation Guide by Sarma Anantapantula and Joseph Gomez by the publisher, Packt Publishing. Despite terrible flashbacks of grade school book reports, I agreed and was shipped a copy of the book. When I first heard this book existed, I rolled my eyes and thought, “this probably won’t be very good”. Then I thought about it a bit, gave some thought to what goes into writing a book, and realized I was being unfair to prejudge. Despite the fact there has historically been very little published content on Essbase, maybe these people got it right and as an active member of the Essbase community, I should embrace the idea of our little world getting more notoriety. It was with this open mind that I began reading the book and hoped to write a positive review. As I began reading the book, I was encouraged by what I saw. Aside from some minor misstatements in the preface (things like products called ‘Essbase Planning’ a...