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Essbase is a multidimensional
database management system In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases ...
(MDBMS) that provides a platform upon which to build analytic applications. Essbase began as a product from Arbor Software, which merged with Hyperion Software in 1998.
Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...
acquired Hyperion Solutions Corporation in 2007, Oracle markets Essbase as
Oracle Essbase
, both on-premises and i
Oracle's Cloud Infrastructure
(OCI). Until late 2005 IBM also marketed an OEM version of Essbase as DB2 OLAP Server. The database researcher E. F. Codd coined the term "on-line analytical processing" (
OLAP Online analytical processing, or OLAP (), is an approach to answer multi-dimensional analytical (MDA) queries swiftly in computing. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational databases, repor ...
) in a whitepaper that set out twelve rules for analytic systems (an allusion to his earlier famous set of twelve rules defining the
relational model The relational model (RM) is an approach to managing data using a structure and language consistent with first-order predicate logic, first described in 1969 by English computer scientist Edgar F. Codd, where all data is represented in terms of t ...
). This whitepaper, published by
Computerworld ''Computerworld'' (abbreviated as CW) is an ongoing decades old professional publication which in 2014 "went digital." Its audience is information technology (IT) and business technology professionals, and is available via a publication website ...
, was somewhat explicit in its reference to Essbase features, and when it was later discovered that Codd had been sponsored by Arbor Software, Computerworld withdrew the paper. In contrast to "on-line transaction processing" (
OLTP In online transaction processing (OLTP), information systems typically facilitate and manage transaction-oriented applications. This is contrasted with online analytical processing. The term "transaction" can have two different meanings, both of w ...
), OLAP defines a database technology optimized for processing human queries rather than transactions. The results of this orientation were that multidimensional databases oriented their performance requirements around a different set of benchmarks (
Analytic Performance Benchmark Generally speaking, analytic (from el, ἀναλυτικός, ''analytikos'') refers to the "having the ability to analyze" or "division into elements or principles". Analytic or analytical can also have the following meanings: Chemistry * ...
, APB-1) than that of
RDBMS A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...
(
Transaction Processing Performance Council In online transaction processing (OLTP), information systems typically facilitate and manage transaction-oriented applications. This is contrasted with online analytical processing. The term "transaction" can have two different meanings, both of w ...
(TPC)). Hyperion renamed many of its products in 2005, giving Essbase an official name of Hyperion System 9 BI+ Analytic Services, but the new name was largely ignored by practitioners. The Essbase brand was later returned to the official product name for marketing purposes, but the server software still carried the "Analytic Services" title until it was incorporated into Oracle's
Business Intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical ...
Foundation Suite (BIFS) product. In August 2005, ''
Information Age The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, Silicon Age, or New Media Age) is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during ...
'' magazine named Essbase as one of the 10 most influential technology innovations of the previous 10 years, along with
Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was on ...
, the
BlackBerry The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy ...
,
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
,
virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...
, Voice Over IP (
VOIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...
),
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
,
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
, the
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processor, and
ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...
. Editor Kenny MacIver said: "Hyperion Essbase was the multi-dimensional database technology that put online analytical processing on the business intelligence map. It has spurred the creation of scores of rival OLAP products – and billions of OLAP cubes".


History and motivation

Essbase was originally developed to address the
scalability Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources. For example, a ...
issues associated with spreadsheets such as
Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles i ...
and
Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro (comp ...
. Indeed, the patent covering (now expired) Essbase uses spreadsheets as a motivating example to illustrate the need for such a system.Earle, Robert J. (1992
"Method and apparatus for storing and retrieving multi-dimensional data in computer memory"
United States Patent 5,359,724 assigned to
Arbor Software Corporation Hyperion Solutions Corporation was a software company located in Santa Clara, California, which was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2007. Many of its products were targeted at the business intelligence (BI) and business performance management ...
.
In this context, "multi-dimensional" refers to the representation of financial data in spreadsheet format. A typical spreadsheet may display time intervals along column headings, and account names on row headings. For example: If a user wants to break down these values by region, for example, this typically involves the duplication of this table on multiple spreadsheets: An alternative representation of this structure would require a three-dimensional spreadsheet grid, giving rise to the idea that "Time", "Account", and "Region" are
dimensions In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coordin ...
. As further dimensions are added to the system, it becomes very difficult to maintain spreadsheets that correctly represent the multi-dimensional values. Multidimensional databases such as Essbase provide a data store for values that exist, at least conceptually, in a multi-dimensional "
hypercube In geometry, a hypercube is an ''n''-dimensional analogue of a square () and a cube (). It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1-skeleton consists of groups of opposite parallel line segments aligned in each of the space's dimensions, p ...
".


Sparsity

As the number and size of dimensions increases, developers of multidimensional databases increasingly face technical problems in the physical representation of data. Say the above example was extended to add a "Customer" and "Product" dimension: If the multidimensional database reserved storage space for every possible value, it would need to store 2,400,000,000 (4 × 4 × 3 × 10,000 × 5,000) cells. If the software maps each cell as a 64-bit floating point value, this equates to a memory requirement of at least 17
gigabytes The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix '' giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB. This definit ...
(exactly 19.2 GB). In practice, of course, the number of combinations of "Customer" and "Product" that contain meaningful values will be a tiny subset of the total space. This property of multi-dimensional spaces is referred to as sparsity.


Aggregation

OLAP Online analytical processing, or OLAP (), is an approach to answer multi-dimensional analytical (MDA) queries swiftly in computing. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational databases, repor ...
systems generally provide for multiple levels of detail within each dimension by arranging the members of each dimension into one or more
hierarchies A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...
. A time dimension, for example, may be represented as a hierarchy starting with "Total Time", and breaking down into multiple years, then quarters, then months. An Accounts dimension may start with "Profit", which breaks down into "Revenue" and "Expenses", and so on. In the example above, if "Product" represents individual product SKUs, analysts may also want to report using aggregations such as "Product Group", "Product Family", "Product Line", etc. Similarly, for "Customer", natural aggregations may arrange customers according to geographic location or industry. The number of aggregate values implied by a set of input data can become surprisingly large. If the Customer and Product dimensions are each in fact six "generations" deep, then 36 (6 × 6) aggregate values are affected by a single data point. It follows that if all these aggregate values are to be stored, the amount of space required is proportional to the
product Product may refer to: Business * Product (business), an item that serves as a solution to a specific consumer problem. * Product (project management), a deliverable or set of deliverables that contribute to a business solution Mathematics * Produ ...
of the depth of all aggregating dimensions. For large databases, this can cause the effective storage requirements to be many hundred times the size of the data being aggregated.


Block storage (Essbase Analytics)

Since version 7, Essbase has supported two "storage options" which take advantage of sparsity to minimize the amount of physical memory and disk space required to represent large multidimensional spaces. The Essbase patent describes the original method, which aimed to reduce the amount of physical memory required without increasing the time required to look up closely related values. With the introduction of alternative storage options, marketing materials called this the Block Storage Option (Essbase BSO), later referred to as Essbase Analytics. Put briefly, Essbase requires the developer to tag dimensions as "dense" or "sparse". The system then arranges data to represent the hypercube into "blocks", where each block comprises a multi-dimensional array made up of "dense" dimensions, and space is allocated for every potential cell in that block. Sparsity is exploited because the system only creates blocks when required. In the example above, say the developer has tagged "Accounts" and "Time" as "dense", and "Region", "Customer", and "Product" as "sparse". If there are, say, 12,000 combinations of Region, Customer and Product that contain data, then only 12,000 blocks will be created, each block large enough to store every possible combination of Accounts and Time. The number of cells stored is therefore 192000 (4 × 4 × 12000), requiring under 2
gigabytes The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix '' giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB. This definit ...
of memory (exact 1,536MB), plus the size of the index used to look up the appropriate blocks. Because the database hides this implementation from front-end tools (i.e., a report that attempts to retrieve data from non-existent cells merely sees "null" values), the full hypercube can be navigated naturally, and it is possible to load values into any cell interactively.


Calculation engine

Users can specify calculations in Essbase BSO as: * the aggregation of values through dimensional hierarchies; * stored calculations on dimension members; * "dynamically calculated" dimension members; or * procedural "calculation scripts" that act on values stored in the database. The first method (dimension aggregation) takes place implicitly through addition, or by selectively tagging branches of the hierarchy to be subtracted, multiplied, divided or ignored. Also, the result of this aggregation can be stored in the database, or calculated dynamically on demand—members must be tagged as "Stored" or "Dynamic Calc." to specify which method is to be used. The second method (stored calculations) uses a
formula In science, a formula is a concise way of expressing information symbolically, as in a mathematical formula or a ''chemical formula''. The informal use of the term ''formula'' in science refers to the general construct of a relationship betwe ...
against each calculated dimension member when Essbase calculates that member, the result is stored against that member just like a data value. The third method (dynamic calculation) is specified in exactly the same format as stored calculations, but calculates a result when a user accesses a value addressed by that member; the system does not store such calculated values. The fourth method (calculation scripts) uses a procedural
programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...
specific to the Essbase calculation engine. This type of calculation may act upon any data value in the hypercube, and can therefore perform calculations that cannot be expressed as a simple formula. A calculation script must also be executed to trigger the calculation of aggregated values or stored calculations as described above—a built-in calculation script (called the "default calculation") can be used to execute this type of calculation.


Aggregate storage (Enterprise Analytics)

Although block storage effectively minimizes storage requirements without impacting retrieval time, it has limitations in its treatment of aggregate data in large applications, motivating the introduction of a second storage engine, named Aggregate Storage Option (Essbase ASO) or more recently, Enterprise Analytics. This storage option makes the database behave much more like an OLAP database, such as SQL Server Analysis Services. Following a data load, Essbase ASO does not store any aggregate values, but instead calculates them on demand. For large databases, where the time required to generate these values may become inconvenient, the database can materialize one or more aggregate "views", made up of one aggregate level from each dimension (for example, the database may calculate all combinations of the fifth generation of Product with the third generation of Customer), and these views are then used to generate other aggregate values where possible. This process can be partially automated, where the administrator specifies the amount of disk space that may be used, and the database generates views according to actual usage. This approach has a major drawback in that the cube cannot be treated for calculation purposes as a single large hypercube, because aggregate values cannot be directly controlled, so write-back from front-end tools is limited, and complex calculations that cannot be expressed as MDX expressions are not possible.


Calculation engine

Essbase ASO can specify calculations as: * the aggregation of values through dimensional hierarchies; or * dynamically calculated dimension members. The first method (dimension aggregation) basically duplicates the algorithm used by Essbase BSO. The second method (dynamic calculations) evaluates MDX expressions against dimension members.


User interface

The majority of Essbase users work with Essbase data via an add-in for
Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro (comp ...
(previously also
Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles i ...
) known as Smart View. The Essbase Add-In is a standard plugin to Microsoft Excel and creates an additional menu that can be used to connect to Essbase databases, retrieve or write data, and navigate the cube's dimensions ("Zoom in", "Pivot", etc.).Hyperion Solutions Corporation (2006)
Essbase Database Administrator's Guide
In 2005, Hyperion began to offer a
visualization Visualization or visualisation may refer to: * Visualization (graphics), the physical or imagining creation of images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message * Data visualization, the graphic representation of data * Information visuali ...
tool called Hyperion Visual Explorer (HVE) which was an OEM from
Tableau Software Tableau Software ( ) is an American interactive data visualization software company focused on business intelligence. It was founded in 2003 in Mountain View, California, and is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington. In 2019 the c ...
.
Tableau Software Tableau Software ( ) is an American interactive data visualization software company focused on business intelligence. It was founded in 2003 in Mountain View, California, and is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington. In 2019 the c ...
originated at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
as a government-sponsored research project to investigate new ways for users to interact with relational and
OLAP Online analytical processing, or OLAP (), is an approach to answer multi-dimensional analytical (MDA) queries swiftly in computing. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational databases, repor ...
databases. Hyperion and Tableau built together built fundamentally the first versions of
Tableau Software Tableau Software ( ) is an American interactive data visualization software company focused on business intelligence. It was founded in 2003 in Mountain View, California, and is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington. In 2019 the c ...
which was designed specifically for multidimensional (OLAP) databases. Oracle quickly terminated the OEM arrangement with
Tableau Software Tableau Software ( ) is an American interactive data visualization software company focused on business intelligence. It was founded in 2003 in Mountain View, California, and is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington. In 2019 the c ...
soon after the acquisition of Hyperion in 2007. Most other well known analytics vendors provide user-facing applications with support for Essbase and include; * Hyperion Analyzer (aka Hyperion System 9 BI+ Web Analysis) * Hyperion Reports (aka Hyperion System 9 BI+ Financial Reporting) * Hyperion Enterprise Reporting * Hyperion Business Intelligence (aka Hyperion System 9 BI+ Interactive Reporting, and Brio Interactive Reporting) * Hyperion SQR (aka Hyperion System 9 BI+ Production Reporting) * Alphablox * Arcplan dynaSight (aka Arcplan Enterprise) * Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (aka OBIEE, Siebel Analytics) * Dodeca Spreadsheet Management System * Dodeca Excel Add-In for Essbase * Reporting Suite * EV Analytics The previous offerings from Hyperion acquired new names as given below: APIs are available for C,
Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: * Visual Basic .NET (now simply referred to as "Visual Basic"), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic ( ...
and
Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...
, and embedded scripting support is available for
Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...
. The standardised
XML for Analysis XML for Analysis (XMLA) is an industry standard for data access in analytical systems, such as online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining. XMLA is based on other industry standards such as XML, SOAP and HTTP. XMLA is maintained by XMLA Cou ...
protocol can query Essbase data sources using the MDX language. In 2007, Oracle Corporation began bundling Hyperion BI tools into Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus.


Administrative interface

A number of standard interfaces can administer Essbase applications: * ''ESSCMD'', the original
command line interface A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...
for administration commands; * ''MaxL'', a "multi-dimensional database access language" which provides both a superset of ESSCMD commands, but with a syntax more akin to SQL, as well as support for MDX queries; * ''Essbase Application Manager'', the original
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
administration client, compatible with versions of Essbase before 7.0; * ''Essbase Administration Services'', later renamed ''Analytic Administration Services'', and then back to 'Essbase Administration Services' in v. 9.3.1, the currently supported
GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
administration client; and * ''Essbase Integration Server'' for maintaining the structure and content of Essbase databases based on data models derived from relational or file-based data sources.


Cloud offerings

Since 2017, Essbase Cloud has been available as part of the Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC), a suite of analytics solutions that include reports and dashboards, data visualization, inline data preparation and mobile.


Competitors

There are several significant competitors among the OLAP, analytics products to that of Essbase (HOLAP/MOLAP) on the market, among them SAP BPC, Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft Analysis Services Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) is an online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining tool in Microsoft SQL Server. SSAS is used as a tool by organizations to analyze and make sense of information possibly spread out across mul ...
, (MOLAP, HOLAP, ROLAP), IBM
Cognos Cognos Incorporated was an Ottawa, Ontario-based company making business intelligence (BI) and performance management (PM) software. Founded in 1969, at its peak Cognos employed almost 3,500 people and served more than 23,000 customers in ov ...
(ROLAP), IBM/Cognos/Applix TM1 (MOLAP),
Oracle OLAP The Oracle Database OLAP Option implements On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP) within an Oracle database environment. Oracle Corporation markets the Oracle Database OLAP Option as an extra-cost option to supplement the "Enterprise Edition" of its ...
(ROLAP/MOLAP), MicroStrategy (ROLAP), and EXASolution (ROLAP). Also note that of the above competitors, including Essbase, all use heterogenous relational (
Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ...
, Oracle, IBM DB/2, TeraData, Access, etc.) or non-relational data sourcing (Excel, text Files, CSV Files, etc.) to feed the cubes (facts and dimensional data), except for Oracle OLAP which may only use Oracle relational sourcing.


Export and/or product migration of Essbase

two options can export Essbase cubes into other formats: # CubePort, a commercial conversion application, converts Essbase cubes to the Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services product. This product performs an object-to-object translation that make up an Essbase cube, including: outline, member formulas, calc scripts, data loading (load rules), report scripts to MDX queries, substitution variables, and security model. It can extract from any platform version of Essbase, including Oracle/Hyperion Essbase on Windows, Unix, AIX, HP UX, Solaris, IBM DB/2 OLAP, or AS/400 Showcase Essbase. # OlapUnderground Outline Extractor performs a pure, rudimentary, export of the outline, though it does not directly create any new objects. The output is a simple text file that can be pulled indirectly into other OLAP products, among other uses, such as synchronizing outlines. Th
Outline Extractor
is now maintained, supported and distributed free of charge by Applied OLAP, Inc.


See also

*
OLAP Online analytical processing, or OLAP (), is an approach to answer multi-dimensional analytical (MDA) queries swiftly in computing. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational databases, repor ...
*
Oracle OLAP The Oracle Database OLAP Option implements On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP) within an Oracle database environment. Oracle Corporation markets the Oracle Database OLAP Option as an extra-cost option to supplement the "Enterprise Edition" of its ...
*
Business Intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical ...
*
Data warehouse In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. DWs are central repositories of integra ...
*
Hyperion Planning Hyperion Solutions Corporation was a software company located in Santa Clara, California, which was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2007. Many of its products were targeted at the business intelligence (BI) and business performance management ...
* Comparison of OLAP servers


References


External links


Essbase

Oracle EPM, BI & Data Warehousing



Hyperion at Oracle














{{Oracle Online analytical processing Oracle software