About Me

Anjum Ara I am a technology enthusiast, an ardent reader. My latest interest is virtualization. In my free time, I love understanding child nutrition, child holistic development. I bake, read, paint, and do whatever it takes to improve myself every day.

Friday, May 13, 2016

New Knowledge Article: Troubleshooting Hyperion Financial Management Crash and Hang Issues

Oracle recently launched this new article for most of the HFM issues. It is handy and easy to use.
Helps during troubleshooting.

It provides detail step through process of each issue.

Here's one snippet of it. 


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Tuesday, April 19, 2016

A connection to the server has failed (Status=503)

We got this error when one of the long running rules was timing out. I knew I could fix this in a jiffy since we faced this issue multiple times but to my surprise that was not the case. I logged into the environment and found that there was no Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) , client had used IIS as the Web Server. I had to read quite a few documents related to Weblogic and IIS.

Here is first a little from what I understood about the two,
Weblogic uses IIS plugin. This plugin allows requests to be proxied from IIS server to the Weblogic Server. The static pages of the Hyperion website are rendered by the IIS server and all the dynamic pages like the JSPs, HTTP Servlets are rendered by the Weblogic (hfm.war) .


The directory structure of the epm instance will have a folder D:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\httpconfig\virtualdirectories
This contains folder for every location like Planning , HFM , Reporting etc.
Each folder contains a file IISPROXY.INI.

 Issue Screenshot


Cause:
 Timeout is set too low for current task to complete.


Solution for IIS Web Server
1.Go to the location of iisproxy.ini and add these values to the file

HungServerRecoverSecs=1800
WLIOTimeoutSecs=1800


Do not miss the '=' sign.
HungServerRecoverSecs is replaced by WLIOTimeoutSecs and





Solution for OHS Web Server

1. Go to the mod_wl_ohs.conf file and add WLIOTimeoutSecs to the respective location where issue exists.

<LocationMatch ^/aif>
    SetHandler weblogic-handler
    WeblogicCluster SERVERNAME:6550
    WLIOTimeoutSecs 1800
</LocationMatch> .



These settings can be done at the time of setting up the environment as a preventive measure. Saves a downtime and loads of frustrated users. 
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Sunday, April 17, 2016

Improve Performance of slow running Business Rules - Hyperion Planning

Improve Performance of slow running Business Rule - Hyperion Planning


We had this client who complained that their rules take more than 8 minutes to run where it should have taken hardly 3 seconds. This was a vast difference. We were able to resolve this hurdle by doing the things below

1. Fine tune your rules. This is really important, make sure the rules are efficient. Since I am not from the Planning development side so I would know only little on this. An expert in writing rules will always craft efficient rules. 

2. Fine tune your environment: This makes a significant difference in the performance of the system.
Tune the Essbase Server , Hyperion Services - Planning, Shared Services, OHS, Windows System, Weblogic . Follow this guide -  Tuning Guide 11.1.2.X

3. Run Time Prompts (RTP) are a great help for more focused calculations. Planning validates the values entered. By default, the values for processed runtime prompts in the application are stored in the database and available for viewing from the Job Console (select Tools, then Job Console). If many users are running business rules with runtime prompts, tracking these values consumes significant system resources. To improve performance, you can turn off this function so Planning does not capture runtime prompt values. To do so, add the CAPTURE_RTP_ON_JOB_CONSOLE property to the properties table, with the property value of FALSE (to turn it back on again, change its value to TRUE). See more details here



Disabling this made the performance of the system super-fast. We were able to run the Business rules in less than 3 seconds. 

4. Use sample application: Using Sample Planning application will really be helpful in troubleshooting performance issue. I usually load the planning sample app and then test its performance against the system. If it works fine, I  know that the environment is not the one that needs further tuning but it is the application design , business rules that need a little makeup. 

5. It also depends on the network configuration of the environment. If the Essbase is in different Network zone from Planning, of course there would be lag. 
IPSec tables have caused slowness when applied between the server in the environment. 
QoS also caused slowness. Get the Network team to play around and tune down the network security to minimal limits between the server in a secure environment. 

Hope this helpful.
.


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Sunday, March 20, 2016

Deleting Hyperion Planning User security from the Database

We migrated the Hyperion Planning application from the Production to the Development environment and when we tried to "Refresh Security", it threw error that 4 users were not found.
Since 1 of the user was a native user, we tried creating it but this did not help.

This usually happens if the users are deleted from the MSAD when the user leaves the organization but it still exists in Planning tables. 

Since the Shared Service Security and the Essbase/Planning security were out of sync. We ran the available utilities to fix the issue. 
1360954.1 Where you run the UpdateUsers and ProvisionUsers utilites
This did not help , it threw error that
Unable to delete the users A,B,C,D.
We tried a couple of things like manually copying the SID from CSS_USERS to HSP_USERS but that did not fix it either.This is an interesting article - Failed to Sync User Provisioning

Finally, we restored to deleting the users from the Planning Application Tables.
Mind you, please do not attempt this unless you have expertise in messing with the Database.

We started off firstly by BACKING up the entire schema of our application using below commands
expdp schemas=PLANAPP dumpfile=PLANAPP-18Mar2016.dmp logfile=PLANAPP-18Mar16.log 

Then we started deleting the listed user by doing this :
This query should give the OBJECT

SELECT OBJECT_ID,OBJECT_NAME FROM PLANAPP.HSP_OBJECT WHERE OBJECT_NAME LIKE 'LIST OF USERS';

Once you have the list of users you want to delete and their object ids. You will have to delete from the following tables. ( I will update this list in case I have missed something)

HSP_JOB
HSP_JOB_STATUS
HSP-HISTORICAL_JOB_STATUS
HSP_CALCULATION_MANAGER
HSP_ACCESS_CONTROL
HSP_USERSINGROUP
HSP_USER_VARIABLE
HSP_USER_VARIABLE_VALUE
HSP_MRU_MEMBERS
HSP_USER_PREFS
HSP_USERS
HSP_OBJECT
HSP_OUTOF_USRID


These are the list of tables that get impacted. The easiest way to do this is start deleting from HSP_USERS it will lead to all the entries that need to deleted before you could delete it from HSP_USERS.

Once you have deleted the users. Restart Planning and you should be good to go. 


Related Errors:
Failed to Sync with User Provisioning. Check Planning logs for details



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Thursday, March 17, 2016

Job Openings for Hyperion Planning

We have openings in HP&A practice in ADI India.

We are looking out for the following profiles –

Consultant – (1 position)
2 to 4 years of experience in Consulting and Implementation of Hyperion Planning and Essbase solutions
Multi Skill sets exposure (Preferably) – Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Essbase, ODI, FDMEE, Reports etc
Exposure to at least 2 full project implementation cycles


Senior Consultant/Lead Consultant – (1 position)
4 to 7 years of experience in Consulting and Implementation of Hyperion Planning and Essbase solutions
Multi Skill sets exposure (Preferably) – Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Essbase, ODI, FDMEE, Reports etc
Experience in Leading projects, Client Interactions and Project Team Management
Exposure to at least 4 full project implementation cycles
Experience in handling and mentoring teams

Both the above positions are offshore positions. Resource should be open to travel based on project needs.


If interested please email on [anjumara.dba][@][gmail.com]
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Wednesday, March 9, 2016

An Overview of EPM Infrastructure for All Consultants with Basic Troubleshooting

This presentation was done during one of the sessions I took for a group of Hyperion Developers with various expertise like HFM, Planning and HPCM. This presentation is a guide to basics of Hyperion and how it functions.

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Sunday, February 21, 2016

HPCM Stage Balancing does not connect with SmartView

Issue: Unable to launch Smart View from HPCM Stage Balance page.  When you click on stage balance , it should launch a excel .

Reason: After a lot of research , SR with Oracle we were not able to reach anywhere. When I started comparing my internal server with the client server , I realised my internal server works perfectly fine.  Suspecting it to be a port issue I spent hours finding it. After multiple comparison here is my observation

Solution: HPCM 11.1.2.4 Stage balance tables work fine when accessing through IE 10.
This functionality does not support IE 11 and Firefox.
 I tried the same on my internal server and came to conclusion that it works on IE 10 currently.
We have raised a bug with Oracle . I hope we get a solution quickly.


Update 10/March/2016
I forgot to add that a few days later we tried to dig in more and found out that it was working IE 11 and the issue was with the proxy and not with the browser.
I remember a Hindi saying in situations like this "Khoda pahad nikla chuha". (Dug a mountain to find a tiny rat). 
I think situations like this are also important they remind us however big the problem is , solution is always simple.






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FDMEE Data Rule Status Change

Issue: 
FDMEE Data Rule does not show Completed status . The data rule hangs in the running state forever.
Checking the ODI operator or process details reveals that the rule was successfully completed.

Tried updating many tables in the Oracle DB: AIF_PROCESSES and AIF_PROCESS_DETAILS but this does not contain data for Data Rule Summary Page.
Finally found that AIF_BALANCE_RULES table impacts the Data Rule Summary page.

To fix this:
  • Connect to the Database . 
  • Connect to the FDMEE Schema
  • Update the  particular field using below query 
SELECT PROCESS_ID FROM  AIF_BALANCE_RULES WHERE STATUS='RUNNING';
  • Note the process_id and update the status
UPDATE "HYP_FDMEE"."AIF_BALANCE_RULES" SET STATUS = 'SUCCESS' WHERE PROCESS_ID = '<PROCESS_ID>'





The link that really helped me solve this - https://community.oracle.com/thread/3891226 

This provides alternative solutions to this issue. 
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Saturday, February 20, 2016