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DPRO-90854Alan H. Tiedrich

Product Report21 July 2003

Hyperion Solutions Essbase XTD Business Intelligence

Summary

Based on Essbase XTD Analytic Services, XTD is a more complete business intelligence platform thanoffered previously, with hybrid analysis, query and reporting, and application development options.

Table of Contents

Overview

Analysis

Pricing

Competitors

Strengths

Limitations

Recommended Gartner Research

Insight

List Of Tables

Table 1: Overview: Hyperion Essbase XTD

Table 2: Features and Functions: Hyperion Essbase XTD Architecture and Analytic Services

Table 3: Features and Functions: Hyperion Essbase XTD Administration and Deployment Services

Table 4: Features and Functions: Hyperion Essbase XTD Client Reporting Tools

Table 5: Features and Functions: Hyperion Essbase XTD Application Development Tools

Table 6: Features and Functions: Hyperion Essbase XTD Integration Services

Table 7: Features and Functions: Hyperion Essbase XTD—Third-Party Support

Table 8: Price List: Hyperion Essbase XTD


© 2003 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.DPRO-9085421 July 2003 2

Corporate Headquarters

Hyperion Solutions Corporation

1344 Crossman Avenue

Sunnyvale, CA 94089, U.S.A.

Tel: +1 408 744 9500; +1 800 858 1666

Fax: +1 408 744 0400

Internet: www.hyperion.com

Overview

Table 1: Overview: Hyperion Essbase XTD

Version 6.5.3

Product Type Online analytical processing (OLAP) server-based business intelligence (BI)

platform, including query, reporting and OLAP front-end tools and application

development tools.

Platforms • Essbase XTD Analytic Services—Windows 95/98, Windows NT (Intel), Solaris,

HP-UX, AIX, AS/400, OS/390 and Linux servers across all major networks:

—The AS/400 Essbase technology, including source code (Showcase), was

acquired by SPSS, which now offers it.

• Hyperion Essbase Spreadsheet Add-In supports Microsoft Excel 2000 and Lotus

1-2-3 Millennium Release 9.5.

Relational Database

Support

Oracle, IBM DB2, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and Teradata.

Base Price (US$) • Essbase XTD Classic Edition—10,000 per server plus 1,500 per end user.

• Essbase XTD Standard Edition—40,000 per server plus 1,800 per end user.

• See Pricing table for detailed pricing.

User Interface • Windows for administration.

• Windows and all supported Unix and mainframe platforms for development in C,

C++.

• HTML and Java development for Web delivery.

• Windows, Unix, Web for end users.

Date Delivered • Release 6.5—March 2002.

• Release 6.5.3—March 2003.

Customer Base • Over 6,000 active Hyperion Essbase customers worldwide:

—4,000+ Essbase XTD Analytic Services customers.

—2,000+ Hyperion Analyzer customers.

• Over 1,000,000 seats worldwide.



Table 2: Features and Functions: Hyperion Essbase XTD Architecture and AnalyticServices

Architecture

Multitier • Server acts as a shared resource, handling data storage, calculations and data

security.

• Supports higher concurrency through clustering.

• Client is used to retrieve, manipulate and view server-resident data.

• This architecture minimizes local-area network traffic and supports installed PC

resources and thin clients without upgrades.

Multithreaded • Multithreaded creates a thread (processing stream) for each programmed activity

(data load, query, specified calculation and so on) and takes advantage of

symmetric multiprocessing hardware platforms.

• By supporting SMP hardware, Hyperion Essbase applications can be scaled to

support very large communities of users or very large databases or both.

Business Intelligence

Services

Hyperion divides its technologies and products into two categories:

• Application Framework

• Platform Services

Platform Services

Components

• Essbase XTD Analytic Services

• Essbase XTD Administration Services

• Essbase XTD Deployment Services

• Hyperion Integration Services:

—Essbase XTD Integration Services

—Hyperion Application Link

• Query & Reporting (Hyperion Essbase XTD Q&R)

Application

Framework

Components

• Hyperion Analysis Studio:

—Hyperion Central

—Hyperion Analyzer

—Essbase XTD Spreadsheet Services

—Hyperion Reports

—Hyperion Essbase XTD Q&R

• Hyperion Developer Workbench:

—Hyperion Application Builder

—Hyperion Essbase Objects

—Hyperion Analyzer Application Programming Interface (API) Toolkit

• Performance Management Accelerators

Essbase XTD Analytic Services (OLAP Server)

• A hybrid OLAP server that supports both multidimensional and relational data

stores, operates on systems ranging from Microsoft Windows 98 to enterprise-class

Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) computers:

—Previously, this product was known as Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server.

—Will be referred to throughout this document as Hyperion Essbase XTD Analytic

Services.

• With Hyperion Essbase supporting Windows 98 (personal version of Hyperion

Essbase Analytic Services), enterprises can deploy OLAP applications that scale

from desktops and laptops to large multiuser systems supporting the enterprise.

• Multithreaded/parallel engine:

—Login, load, calculate, query, writeback, export.




Architecture

Multidimensional

Database (MDDB)

Stores and supports analysis of an unlimited number of data dimensions (for

example, product, market, channel, time period) and data elements within a

dimension.

Database Outline The application programmer’s determination of database structure, members and

business rules (or formulas):

—The structure—or consolidation relationships—influence the drill-down capability.

Data Blocks • The internal storage structure of the MDDB, related to the dense/sparse attributes

defined for each data dimension.

• Essbase does not create data blocks until data exists for a cell in that block.

• Further optimizes storage required and data access speed by compressing data

within an allocated block.

Block Mapped Index • Reference scheme to the various data blocks.

• Essbase often can build an index that resides completely in memory.




Architecture

Calculation Engine • Provides over 200 analytical functions; for example, Financial, Mathematical,

Boolean and Relationship.

• Dynamic cross-tab analysis, forecasting and trending, advanced profitability

modeling and statistical capabilities.

• OLAP calculation options include precalculate, calculate-on-the-fly and calculate-

on-the-fly and store, which can be combined.

• All calculations—rollups, allocations, percentages, variances, time-series analysis

and so on—can be performed in “batch mode” as part of the load cycle,

precalculating given intersections of data.

• Essbase can also dynamically calculate derived values and rollups at query time if

the application designer chooses that.

• Support of both incremental data loads and interactive data input is supported

because of the speed and flexibility required for analysis and planning applications.

• The Calculation Engine only recalculates derived data elements that are altered by

data changes or additions.

• Calculation capabilities include counts, ranks, medians, modes, moving averages,

moving maximums and minimums, variances, correlations and standard deviations

and other statistical functions:

—Standard metrics (count, sum, average, min., max.) can be calculated

dynamically on specific dimension intersections, enabling users to ask questions

within a cross-tab report.

—Correlation calculations can look at large sets of numbers and give a numeric

score to indicate how directly they vary with each other.

• Functions include linear regression and exponential smoothing for forward-looking

forecasting and trending.

• Allocation functions for delivery of sophisticated profitability models include linear

and dimensional allocations, using a variety of methods, for example, share, spread,

percent, divide and so on:

—Include linear and dimensional allocations using a variety of methods; for

example, share, spread, percent, divide and so on.

• Users can choose whether Hyperion Essbase validates formulas on the client or

on the server.

• Currency conversion—translates monetary values according to any exchange rate:

—Allows registering of external Java functions with Essbase XTD Analytic Services

calculator, which enables addressing calculation functions and referencing external

data sources during the calculation or query process.

Dynamic Calculator

Cache

• Helps manage memory usage for calculations involving Dynamic Calc members.

• Managing data blocks in the dynamic calculator cache reduces the overall memory

space requirement and can improve performance by reducing the number of calls to

the operating system to do memory allocations.

• Users can establish the size of the cache.




Architecture

Pre-Calculation

Prediction

• A simulated calculation estimates the amount of time needed to perform a default

calculation:

—The simulated calculation can also help select dense and sparse settings for the

dimensions in your outline.

• Essbase can estimate the number of actual blocks that will be created from a full

data load or from randomly loaded data samples, which helps to estimate the size of

the database.

Parallel Calculation In addition to the standard means of performing a calculation, where each task is

performed in sequence or serially, Essbase supports parallel calculation:

—If parallel calculation is enabled, Essbase analyzes all the tasks in a calculation

pass and breaks them down into subtasks.

—The subtasks that can run independently of each other are scheduled to run

simultaneously on up to four threads, each on a separate CPU.

Custom-Defined

Macros and

Functions

The Essbase calculator language can be extended through the creation of custom-

defined macros and functions:

• Custom-defined macros enable users to combine established calculator functions

into a single, new function, that is, macro.

• Custom-defined functions enable users to use their own customized calculator

functions (programmed in Java) within the Essbase calculator framework:

—Are called by the Essbase calculator framework as external functions.

Dynamic

Dimensionality

• Uses a technique—developed and patented by Hyperion—that lets the database

administrator achieve optimal server performance for any given application and any

given dataset by changing the basic unit of storage used within the server, which

minimizes index and storage requirements.

• Complex many-to-many multidimensional hierarchies can be automatically created

directly from relational databases or other data sources.

Cross-Application

Common Data

Sharing

Enables calculations to reference data in other applications:

—Improves sparsity management, decreases data redundancy and reduces

application size.

Simultaneous

Multiuser Read and

Write Access

Supports simultaneous access and update of the multidimensional data store by

multiple users without impacting server performance.

Data Locking Provided at the data block level during query and calculation at two levels:

• Protection against simultaneous write.

• Protection against change during view.

Query Processor • Supports multidimensional data filtering, ranking and sorting.

• Processing is done on the server.

• Supports parallel query processing—simultaneous processing on multiple cubes.




Architecture

Scalability and

Performance

• With capacity to over 1 trillion data blocks, Hyperion Essbase can manipulate

multihundred-gigabyte databases (vendor-provided data).

• Maximum database size: 132 terabytes (vendor-provided data).

• Members per dimension: 1 million (vendor-provided data).

• Essbase is multithreaded, enabling Essbase to manage multiple simultaneous

user logins (Hyperion claims hundreds) and multiple applications running on a

single server.

• Parallel Export—enables administrators to export Hyperion Essbase databases

natively using multiple threads.

• RAM Cache—server-based caching option allows the storing of Hyperion

Essbase’s data in physical RAM in compressed blocks.

• RAM-Resident Applications—applications can be run entirely in memory,

eliminating disk input/output (I/O):

—Users have control over application memory usage, with the option to lock any or

all of Essbase’s data and index caches in physical RAM.

—Updates are handled as discrete transactions in this environment, ensuring

synchronization and data integrity between RAM and disk images of the application.

Data Marts Automatic support for structural changes, incremental loads and interactive user

updates to OLAP data marts:

• Intelligent Restructuring is a data-driven feature which adapts the structure of

OLAP data marts to reflect activities such as launching or discontinuing products,

adding new customers or changing organizational structures that result from shifting

business conditions.

• Intelligent Recalculation, which works with Intelligent Restructuring, eliminates the

need to recalculate the entire OLAP data mart when only a subset of the data in the

mart changes.




Architecture

Attribute Dimensions • Enable the addition of descriptive properties (for example, demographics, product

details, promotion profiles and so on) to dimension members (products, customers,

stores, promotions and so on).

• Data types include text, date, numeric and Boolean:

—Essbase can perform layered filtering on numeric and date attributes, like “sizes

greater than six but smaller than 12 for products that were first introduced between

January and June of last year.”

• Attribute dimensions are real OLAP dimensions, hierarchical and navigable,

including drill-down, pivot and cross-tab:

—Users can drill in, drill out and pivot on these just like regular stored Essbase

dimensions.

• Essbase’s attribute dimensions are dynamically calculated:

—Dimensions can be added for analysis with no additional storage required.

—There is no practical limit on the number of attribute dimensions.

• Essbase maintains pointers in the index relative to what products are Red, for

example:

—When you look at “Red products,” it knows which stored blocks to aggregate to

get that number across a given intersection (“1Q in the West region”) rather than

actually storing a lot of those intersections and summaries in the cube itself.

• Users can specify at dimension-build time whether they want to load a discrete

value for an attribute or to put the values into ranges:

—In either case, number-based filtering at query time can be done.

—If you zoom in on a level-0 attribute, Essbase will automatically expand the

customer dimension to the customers who match that attribute.

• Attributes can be associated with any sparse dimension (for example, products,

customers, employees, outlets and geographies, which are usually sparse in

Essbase models).

Multidimensional and

Relational Data

Storage

• Hyperion Essbase can utilize data in an optimized multidimensional data store or

in a relational database (normalized or star schema) with most of the

multidimensional functionality (for example, writeback is not available in relational).

• Applications can combine data from both stores transparently and can replicate

data between stores.

• Users can explicitly drill down to lower levels in both multidimensional and

relational data stores:

—For relational, drill paths must be identified at design time and specific drill-down

reports must be created.

• Hybrid Analysis—Essbase transparently uses pre-defined metadata to access

relationally stored data so users are not aware of where the data is that is being

reported.

Partitioning Transparent partitions and linked partitions allow OLAP models to be divided into

separate logical and physical partitions.

Distributed OLAP • Distributed OLAP allows transparent and linked partitions to be distributed across

networks.

• Queries, loads, updates and calculations can span distributed partitions.




Architecture

Parallel Multicube

Processing

Partitions can be loaded, calculated and queried in parallel, taking advantage of

multiprocessing hardware.

Parallel Data

Loading

Essbase supports parallel data loading:

—The number of processing threads to be used in parallel at different stages in data

load processing can be specified.

—Processing threads can be allocated across processors on multiple CPUs.

Cross-Application

Data Sharing

Cross-application sharing of common data, that is, multicube capabilities, enables

calculations to reference data in other applications’ cubes.

Linked Reporting

Objects

Linked reporting objects in Hyperion Essbase allow users to link descriptive

information, such as text, video and audio, to any data cell.

Multidimensional

Access Language

(MaxL)

MaxL, the multidimensional access language for Hyperion Essbase XTD Analytic

Services, is the interface for administering the Hyperion Essbase system in the

following ways:

• Enables programmatic management of Essbase applications without knowledge of

C, Visual Basic or the Essbase API.

• Includes the MaxL Command Shell, which can be used interactively or for running

scripts, which provides an automated Essbase production environment:

—The MaxL Command Shell includes command-line argument processing,

environment variable processing, nesting of MaxL scripts and shell escapes.

Hyperion Essbase

Currency Conversion

• Server software that allows users to model and analyze the impact of different

currency exchange rates within their planning and analysis applications.

• Applications built with the Hyperion Essbase Currency Conversion module

automatically convert data from local currencies to a common currency for

budgeting, consolidation and analysis.

• Enables the application of Hyperion Essbase multidimensional analysis

capabilities to the consolidation, analysis and reporting of foreign and local values:

—Data using varying currency rate assumptions or comparing multiple currencies at

the same time can be viewed.

• Supports the addition of currency conversion to any Hyperion Essbase application

containing at least three dimensions—Time, Accounts and Country:

—The currency database structure includes all relevant currencies based on the

Hyperion Essbase application.



Table 3: Features and Functions: Hyperion Essbase XTD Administration andDeployment Services

Essbase XTD Administration Services

Administration

Services Console

• Essbase Administration Services consists of a client console and a middle tier

server that communicate directly with Hyperion OLAP Servers.

• The console simplifies Essbase administration tasks by providing a graphical

representation of the Essbase environment, based on access rights:

—A single point of access for viewing, managing and maintaining multiple OLAP

Servers and the Administration Server.

—Administrators can perform multiple tasks simultaneously, run processes in the

background, perform cross-server operations, analyze Essbase logs and manage

user sessions and locks.

• Java-based to support Unix-based (in addition to Windows-based) customers who

need to administer from an X-Windows client.

• Allows creating customized views that contain particular OLAP Servers,

applications and databases.

• The Migration Wizard enables migrating applications and databases across

multiple iterations of Hyperion Essbase XTD Analytic Services, to and from any

platform supported by Essbase:

—For example, a developer can develop and test an application on a Windows

server and then migrate it to a production server running Unix.

• When logging in to Essbase Administration Services, connections to individual

OLAP Servers, applications and databases are handled by the middle tier

Administration Server.

• Calculations, reports, data loads and dimension builds can be executed in the

background:

—Can then perform other tasks or exit the Essbase Administration Services

Console while the process continues to run.

—Can check the status of background processes using the Background Process

Status window.

• Build calculations, administration scripts.

• Monitor performance and activities.

• Manage users and roles.

• Using Log Analyzer, the administrator can filter, search and analyze OLAP Server

logs and application logs—XML-based logs, as well as view a set of pre-defined

graphical charts for each log:

—Usage-based analysis—logs areas of cube accessed (dimensions or specific

members) and filters on dimensions to focus on end-user requests to learn where

users are spending time in order to optimize cube.

• Integrates with enterprise security schemes.

Limits on Query

Duration and Time

• Administrators can limit the amount of time a query can run before completion.

• Administrators can limit the number of blocks that a query may access.

• Administrators can set the new limits at the server, application or database level.



Table 3: Features and Functions: Hyperion Essbase XTD Administration andDeployment Services

Essbase XTD Administration Services

External

Authentication of

Users

Essbase supports external authentication of users against a non-Essbase server,

including:

• Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

• Windows NT LAN Manager (NTLM)

• Microsoft Active Directory

System

Management,

Diagnostics and

Recovery

Provides system management and performance-tuning functions, including:

• Server configuration

• Server activity

• System diagnostics

• Database recovery

Essbase XTD Deployment Services

Overview • A set of middle-tier services that enable broad deployment of applications in

multitier architectures of Web-based solutions.

• Supports deploying applications written as Java servlets, Java applets, Enterprise

Java Beans (EJB) or stand-alone Java applications.

• Supports connection pooling, database clustering, load balancing and failover.

• Users have a choice of TCP/IP, HTTP, EJB and Common Object Request Broker

Architecture (CORBA) communications protocols.

Services Provided • Connection Pooling—enables client requests to share connections to Essbase

XTD Analytic Services.

• Database Clustering—enables the creation of groups of databases that serve as a

single data source for applications, which increases availability because the

applications can continue to service requests while one or more databases within

the cluster is taken off-line for update.

• Load Balancing—enables request to be distributed across multiple physical

machines and operating systems.

• Fail Over—enables request to be automatically rerouted to available servers in the

event of a system failure.

• Event Notification—enables administrators to be notified via e-mail of system

events, such as server failures, illegal logins, low memory or disk space, or any

other event that may affect the availability of an application.


Hyperion Analysis Studio

Overview • Part of the Essbase XTD Application Framework (a toolset for creating and

deploying analytic and reporting applications) and a key component of the Hyperion

Essbase XTD BI Platform.

• Components within Analysis Studio can be used individually to create tailored

applications or, in conjunction with Hyperion’s Business Performance Management

solutions, to provide support for the entire Business Performance Management

process.





Components • Hyperion Analyzer

• Hyperion Reports

• Essbase XTD Spreadsheet Services

• Hyperion Essbase XTD Q&R

• Hyperion Central

Hyperion Analyzer

Overview • Provides Web-based, interactive analysis against Essbase XTD Analytic Services

while also providing drill-through to relational data:

—Analyzer views are linked dynamically to data generated by Essbase.

• A midtier application server and repository enable analyses, which is centrally

shared and managed:

—Completely Java-based, with J2EE support.

—Client can be Java- or HTML-based.

• Through Java (can run on Windows computer without being connected to

application server—connects to local repository) and HTML clients, Analyzer

delivers a range of display types that include:

—Multidimensional spreadsheet

—19 OLAP-aware chart types

—Custom graphical displays

• Hyperion Analyzer has mouse-enabled analytic features:

—Enable users to spot exceptions and trends and perform comparative analysis.

—Color-coded exceptions.

—20 pre-defined calculated metrics, such as percent total, percent difference, rank

and trend—enable creating views for online analysis.

Hyperion Analyzer

API Toolkit

• Offers developers the ability to extend Hyperion Analyzer with custom Web-based

analytical applications.

• Enables rapid assembly of custom Web-based business analysis applications

using open, mainstream development tools.

Hyperion Reports

Overview • Provides query and reporting capabilities that allow users to create reports that

combine data from multiple data sources.

• Tightly integrated with Hyperion Essbase XTD Analytic Services.

• Includes a cross-platform Report Server, which facilitates deployment to large user

communities.

• Offers graphical, object-based interface enabling the rapid creation of highly

formatted reports that combine grids of data and text, charts, graphs and images.

• Includes a library of reusable report components, which simplifies the process of

building and maintaining complex reports.

• Provides complete control over layouts, formatting, fonts and colors.

• Provides a range of output options that enable distribution via print, HTML Web

pages, XML, PDF and online viewing.





Financial Reporting • Financial reporting functionality.

• High-quality management and financial reporting.

• Provides business analytics, such as conditional suppression and automatic

calculations, which can be used to focus and filter reports.

• Financial reporting for Hyperion Financial Management, Hyperion Planning,

Essbase XTD.

Essbase XTD Spreadsheet Services

Overview • Supports popular spreadsheets—Microsoft Excel (both Windows versions) and

Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows.

• Creates a menu add-in to the spreadsheet providing server commands, such as

“connect,” “pivot,” “zoom-in” and “calculate.”

• Also, users can access and analyze data in Essbase using mouse navigation and

drag-and-drop operations.

• Customizable through Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications and Excel functions.

• Thin client, uses Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and HTTPS to run

securely through firewalls.

• Uses Essbase XTD Deployment Services—load-balancing and failover.

• Supports high concurrency through clustering.

• Provides Web-based communications between Web user and middle tier.

Platforms Microsoft Windows platforms.

Query Designer • Supports developing and executing OLAP queries.

• Provides graphical screens that assist users with OLAP-aware, multidimensional

data navigation, selection, filtering, ranking and sorting.

• Users can also save, publish and share queries.

• Querying based on attribute values, ranges and so on.

• Navigation of dimensional models with 50+ dimensions is possible.

Query Processor Wizard interface in Spreadsheet Client to:

• Distribute complex query activity from client to server.

• Define analytical queries and data sorting rules.

Extended

Spreadsheet Toolkit

Includes over 20 macro and Visual Basic functions that let developers build

customized Microsoft Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 applications that incorporate Essbase

commands, such as “retrieve,” “send” or “calculate.”

Local Support • Lets users of different language versions of the Essbase client software share the

same server and receive server messages in the language of their local client.

• Hyperion offers versions of the Hyperion Essbase client software in French and

German, Italian and Japanese:

—IBM ships additional languages with their version of Essbase.





Hyperion Essbase XTD Q&R

The Essbase XTD Q&R product suite includes the following three software

components:

• Hyperion Crystal Reports—Release 8.5 enables creating reports from many data

sources.

• Hyperion Crystal Enterprise—Release 8.0 is a Web-based enterprise report

management and distribution system, used for scheduling and distributing reports.

• Hyperion Crystal Smart Reporting—Release 8.5 is a Hyperion Crystal Enterprise

add-in component that enables report developers to provide users with some report

design capability via the Web.

Hyperion Central

Overview • Provides a single integrated desktop for end users to access Essbase XTD

components and content and Hyperion’s Business Performance Management

applications.

• Enables organizing content in a folder structure.

• Provides single sign-on.

• End-user personalization.

• J2EE compliant.

Table 5: Features and Functions: Hyperion Essbase XTD Application DevelopmentTools

Developer Workbench

Overview • Combines with Analysis Studio to create, manage and deploy tailored analytic

reports and applications; enables:

—Integrating Analysis Studio components (Hyperion Analyzer, Hyperion Reports

and Hyperion Essbase XTD Q&R) into custom applications.

—Adding functionality to Hyperion Analyzer; for example, new Hyperion Analyzer

dialogs, customized menus, tool bars, formatting capabilities and so on.

—Creating highly customized dashboards.

—Deploying purpose-specific user interfaces.

—Integrating with standards, such as charting types and the look and feel of the

enterprise.

—Building custom applications that leverage data from your planning process,

consolidation system, transactional systems and Essbase XTD Analytic Services.

• A comprehensive set of application programming interfaces (APIs), drag-and-drop

components and services that accelerate the deployment of tailored analysis

applications.

Components • Hyperion Application Builder—a Java-based development tool to create custom

business analysis applications or extend out-of-the-box applications.

• Hyperion Objects—a comprehensive set of OLAP-aware ActiveX controls for

building robust analytical applications.




Developer Workbench

Application

Development

Support

• Graphical development through integration with Web-focused development

environments, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft Visual Basic.

• Automatic code generation wizards guide population of objects and properties.

• Graphical query builders to transactional systems and Business Performance

Management components, removing the need for query composition.

• Fully commented, customizable application templates to accelerate development.

• Reusable example applications for insight into Developer Workbench.

Hyperion Application Builder

Overview A Java-based development tool used by developers to create custom Web-centric,

cross-platform OLAP applications:

• Define application’s data structures, calculation scripts, data loading and structure-

building rules.

• Database security.

• Report writing.

• Diagnostic and recovery capabilities.

J2EE Support • Built using the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification, Application

Builder works with popular application servers across multiple distributed platforms

to access data from multiple sources, so developers do not need to build a

middleware infrastructure.

• The J2EE platform enables developers to use standardized components to create

multitier applications:

—By providing a complete set of services to those components, J2EE handles

many details of application behavior automatically, without requiring complex

programming.

—Business functions are implemented as Enterprise JavaBean components in a

middle tier.

• Java Server Pages (JSPs) support developers in presenting dynamically

generated pages to a browser:

—Servlets allow Java developers to implement dynamic presentations completely in

Java.

—The data tier holds the multidimensional OLAP cube and relational database

sources, such as DB2 or Structured Query Language (SQL) Server, to query data.

Templates Application Builder comes with customizable Web-deployable templates with pre-

built functionality providing a means for assembling applications.

Templates include:

• Data Source—provides access to an Essbase database or cube.

• View Builder—determines the content and format (row, column and age) for data

retrieved from Essbase.

• View Store—stores and retrieves views built using the View Builder.

• Points of view—”fixes” other dimensions to fixed values.

• Member Selection—provides a tree control that helps in the process of building

queries and points of view.

• Grid Control—displays retrieved data.

• Chart Control—provides a graphic representation of the retrieved data.




Developer Workbench

Data Services

Component

• Application Builder’s data services component—Analytic Data Model (ADM)—

provides an analytic data model and object API to create, read, update and delete

multidimensional OLAP metadata and data.

• Provides a Java programming API that enables the creation of analysis

applications.

• Can access multidimensional data sources and Java Database Connectivity

(JDBC) to access relational sources:

—Accesses multiple Hyperion data sources, such as Essbase, Hyperion Financial

Management and Hyperion Planning.

• Cross-platform (Windows NT 4.0 and 2000, Windows 95 and 98, AIX, HP-UX and

Solaris) MBCS-enabled and available in English, Japanese, French and German.

Open Application

Foundation

• The Open Application Foundation enables programmers to extend the functionality

of Hyperion Essbase XTD.

• Provides an API for Visual Basic, C and Java programmers.

• The API provides hundreds of published functions for creating dimensions and

hierarchies, loading and calculating of data, administering users and applications,

and querying information.

• A Grid API provides Hyperion Essbase’s inherent data navigation features to any

customized client-side software.

Outline Mapping

APIs

Includes 50 APIs that enable developers to build custom applications that map the

data from the relational systems directly into the Hyperion Essbase analytical data

structure.

Hyperion Essbase

Grid API

• Enables developers to include interactive OLAP capabilities in their custom

applications.

• Provides all essential OLAP features, including drill up/down/across, pivot, slice

and dice, and multiuser update in a language-free environment.

• Business Objects uses the Hyperion Essbase Grid API to develop integration

between BusinessObjects and Essbase, which provides a range of OLAP

capabilities to Business Objects customers.

Database Outliner • Allows developers to build data structures by entering data dimensions in an

outline format.

• Two-dimensional data, such as flat files or established SQL tables, can be loaded

into Hyperion Essbase without interim files or steps.

Hyperion Objects

Overview • Enables developers to quickly create OLAP applications.

• A comprehensive set of OLAP-aware, 32-bit ActiveX controls for developing robust

OLAP applications:

—ActiveX is the standard for interoperable software components based on

Microsoft’s Component Object Model (COM) architecture.

• Leverages application development environments that support ActiveX controls;

for example, Microsoft Visual Basic (VB) and Visual C++.

• Applications are compiled into native, optimized code:

—Provides better performance than tools that use an interpreted runtime

environment.




Developer Workbench

Deployment Applications can be deployed as:

• Stand-alone.

• Client/server.

• Distributed processing.

Distributed Multitier

Applications

Microsoft VB includes support for distributed applications using the DCOM

Distributed COM (DCOM) architecture:

—Allows application developers to build applications that split processing across

multiple computers in a networked environment.

Platform Support • Computers running the Microsoft Windows 98 and Windows NT operating

systems.

• Hyperion Essbase Objects connects to Personal Essbase or to the Hyperion

Essbase XTD Analytic Services on all supported Hyperion Essbase server

platforms.

Data Sources Developers using Hyperion Essbase Objects can integrate data from relational,

nonrelational and Hyperion Essbase data sources in a single application.

Properties and

Methods

• Hyperion Essbase Objects includes OLAP-aware properties and methods that

provide developers with complete control over the behavior of applications without

programming.

• The objects communicate with each other, so when a user selects a new

dimension value, dependent grids and charts will be automatically populated with

fresh data.




Developer Workbench

Hyperion Essbase

Objects Supplied by

Hyperion

• Dataserver Control—encapsulates the Hyperion Essbase API in an ActiveX

control:

—Provides direct client/server access to the Hyperion Essbase XTD Analytic

Services.

—Supports multiple connections to Hyperion Essbase from a single application.

—Delivers data to the other Hyperion Essbase Objects and to third-party and user-

created controls.

• Grid Control—Excel-compatible spreadsheet that is transparently integrated with

the dataserver control.

• Chart Control—application developers can use the chart control to deploy over 25

types of graphs and charts that automatically access and display Hyperion Essbase

information without requiring any programming.

• Navigation and Selection Controls—a library of commonly used controls for

developing OLAP applications:

—Navigation controls include OLAP-aware buttons, dimension lists and combo

boxes.

—Member Selection control includes the ability to browse, subset and select from

the members, dimensions and levels in OLAP applications by pointing and clicking.

—Retrieval Wizard is used to develop and execute sophisticated multidimensional

queries, including comprehensive data filtering, sorting, ranking and top/bottom

analysis.

• Third-Party ActiveX Controls—ActiveX components created by third-party software

developers, which can be integrated into Hyperion Essbase Objects applications:

—Controls for mapping, statistics, visualization, multimedia and advanced

navigation.

—Controls have access to the properties and contents of Hyperion Essbase Objects

and can interact with one of the high-level objects or with the dataserver control.

Performance Management Accelerators

• Enables companies to integrate, analyze and leverage established data sources

and distribute business information enterprisewide.

• A set of application components designed to jump-start the application

development process.

• The Performance Management Accelerator for Financial Analysis provides

automated, customizable integration processes, pre-built analytic templates,

business logic and data models, and interactive hybrid-analysis capabilities based

on an Oracle financial applications source:

—The accelerator hides the complexity of the source table structure by presenting

the general ledger data model in business terminology and format.

—The accelerator generates a financial template that is automatically updated to

work with the underlying custom Essbase cube.

—Drill-through functionality—while the accelerator stores account balances in the

Essbase cube, users can access and analyze multiple levels of detail stored in the

relational database.




Overview • Umbrella of tools and technologies for integrating operational data with Hyperion

Corporate Performance Management software.

• A suite of graphical tools and scalable data integration services that facilitate

creating, deploying and managing analytic applications.

• Designed to work in a multivendor environment.

• Tools use centralized, reusable metadata to automate the process of creating and

managing analytic applications from enterprise resource planning (ERP) and

customer relationship management (CRM) applications, relational databases, data

warehouses, legacy transactional systems, flat files, spreadsheets, XML documents

and Web logs:

—Can integrate data or metadata from the various data sources.

• Enables users to graphically build reusable definitions of data sources, data

mappings and OLAP structures, such as dimensions, hierarchies, calculations and

more, without the need for custom code.

• Definitions are stored in a centralized repository that facilitates drill-through to the

relational detail data, if desired, and Hybrid Analysis.

• Allows users to navigate from summarized, calculated and derived data managed

by Hyperion Essbase to detail data stored in relational sources.

• Can access relational data stored in IBM DB2, Informix, Oracle, Microsoft SQL

Server and Sybase databases.

• Also works with enterprise middleware—such as IBM DataJoiner, Oracle

Gateways, Information Builders EDA and Sybase EnterpriseConnect—to access

data stored in heterogeneous and nonrelational data sources.

• Created from shared metadata, applications built with Hyperion Integration Server

automatically adapt to changing data in relational data sources:

—Automatically synchronizes all analytic applications that contain this data with the

new definitions in the data warehouse.

• Enables the assembly of new applications instantly from the reusable structures,

business rules and calculation logic stored in the OLAP Catalog.

• Driven by the metadata in the OLAP Catalog, Hyperion Integration Server Drill-

Through automatically generates optimized SQL to select required information in

relational databases:

—Allows users to extend their OLAP analysis by drilling from the summarized,

calculated and derived data managed by Hyperion Essbase into detail data stored

in relational databases.

• Can perform both full and incremental loads of data from relational sources into

analytic applications.

Metadata Catalog • A shared enterprise OLAP metadata catalog that contains reusable data

mappings, dimensions, hierarchies, calculation logic, business rules and other

useful data management functionality.

• Can import catalog as a set of XML documents.

• Can import join definitions into Integration Services and create a cube:

—Supported through Ascential DataStage.




Relational Integration • Users can explicitly drill through to relational data, provided report developer has

provided for this.

• Hybrid analysis (mark data as stored relationally)—users can transparently drill

through to data:

—Provides metadata for hybrid analysis to drill through to detail.

Hybrid Analysis • Part of an Essbase cube can be stored relationally.

• Both metadata and data can be stored relationally.

• Level-based separation between multidimensional and relational data.

• Transparent access through spreadsheet and report writer interfaces.

• Most Essbase analytics (read-only) available on the relational portion (for example,

not writeback).

SQL Interface • Enables access to over 20 flat-file and relational databases by having the

Hyperion Essbase server operate as an ODBC client.

• Using the SQL Interface, data can be moved from these data sources into the

Hyperion Essbase Server.

SQL Override Administrators can provide their own SQL for large warehouses.

SQL Drill-Through • SQL interface and “drill through”—ODBC-based link to SQL-compliant data stores

and the ability to access the source data online.

• Lets users view summary data within Hyperion Essbase and then access the

associated detail-level data residing in the relational database:

—Hyperion Essbase automatically generates the necessary SQL statement by

mapping the dimensional attributes of a Hyperion Essbase database to the fields of

a relational table.

Third-Party Tools

Integration

• Integrates with third-party design, extraction, transformation, cleansing and loading

tools, which have integrated their metadata with Hyperion Integration Server’s

OLAP Catalog.

• With this integration, Hyperion Integration Server automatically leverages the

mappings to relational schemes, dimensions, hierarchies, metrics, business rules

and more that are created and managed by these products.

Hyperion Application Link

• A suite of graphical application integration services that integrate external source

data with Hyperion’s business analysis software.

• Lets users design, develop and debug integration projects through a graphical

interface.

• Adapters “plug into” the desired external data sources.

• Provides access to a range of source data residing in ERP, CRM or legacy

systems as well as data organized in HTML, XML, flat files, relational databases

and spreadsheets.

• Includes pre-built, vendor-certified adapters for SAP, J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft

and Oracle ERP applications.

• Includes Hyperion Translation Manager, a module that provides organizations with

a systematic process for managing the conversion of data:

—Users can define data conversion rules that govern the process of mapping from

source data elements to targeted Hyperion analytic application equivalents.




Relational Storage Interface/IBM DB2 OLAP Server

Essbase Engine • Hyperion Solutions and IBM have a strategic development and marketing

agreement under which the Hyperion Essbase OLAP engine has been integrated

directly with IBM DB2, which is labeled Relational Storage Interface (RSI):

—The RSI replaces the integrated multidimensional data store in Hyperion Essbase

with a relational data store.

• The IBM DB2 OLAP server utilizes the Hyperion Essbase OLAP engine for data

access, navigation, APIs, application design and management, and data calculation:

—The OLAP engine in the IBM DB2 OLAP server is identical to the OLAP engine in

the Hyperion Essbase XTD Analytic Services.

Data Storage Hyperion Essbase and the IBM DB2 OLAP server differ only in how data are

physically stored:

—Hyperion Essbase stores data in a specialized multidimensional data store.

—IBM DB2 OLAP server stores data in a relational database management system

(RDBMS)—IBM DB2 and other relational databases—using a star schema data

structure.

Performance and

Operational

Characteristics

Hyperion Essbase and the IBM DB2 OLAP server have different performance and

operational characteristics and thus are suited for different types of OLAP

applications:

—Hyperion Essbase is designed for applications requiring very high calculation and

query performance and minimal support infrastructure.

—IBM DB2 OLAP server is designed for applications with data sharing with other

SQL-based, decision-support applications and leveraging of the established

RDBMS skills of IT professionals.

—Essbase implementation conforms to Essbase architecture when integrated with

DB2, so that capacity is similar to Essbase rather than to the raw capacity of DB2.

Other Third-Party Products

Spreadsheets • Lotus Development Corp.’s Lotus 1-2-3

• Microsoft Excel

Enterprise BI Suites

(EBISs)/Query Tools

• Brio Technology Brio Query

• Business Objects BusinessObjects

• Crystal Decisions Reports and Enterprise (these are rebranded as Hyperion

Essbase XTD Q&R, which is covered in another table above under “Hyperion

Essbase XTD Client Reporting Tools”).

• Cognos PowerPlay

• CorVu

• Hummingbird BI/Suite

• Temtec Executive Viewer

BI Platforms • AlphaBlox AlphaBlox 3

• arcplan inSight and dynaSight

Application

Development Tools

• Inprise/Borland Delphi

• Microsoft Visual Basic

• Sybase PowerBuilder

• C, C++, Java

Internet/Web

Browsers

• Netscape Navigator

• Microsoft Explorer




Relational Storage Interface/IBM DB2 OLAP Server

Visualization Tools • Advanced Visual Systems (AVS)/Express

• Visible Decisions

• Rogue Wave

• ESRI

Statistics and Data

Mining

• SPSS

• Data Mind

• IBM Intelligent Miner

System Management

Tools

• Hewlett-Packard Intelligent Warehouse OLAP Builder

• Blue Isle InTouch

• Painted Word Clockwork and Telltale

• IBM DataGuide, DataJoiner

Hyperion Essbase-

Enabled Applications

Hyperion has more than 60 application partners that deliver applications on

Essbase that include compensation planning, Web-site analysis, budgeting, supply

chain analysis, vertical applications for energy, insurance and retail.

—A complete list is available at www.hyperion.com/alliances.cfm.

Analysis

Hyperion Essbase XTD, a BI platform, is based on Hyperion Essbase, an OLAP engine that has been oneof the most successful OLAP server products. Hyperion’s strategy for Hyperion Essbase XTD is toprovide a platform for supporting Corporate Performance Management applications. With Essbase XTD,Hyperion is offering a comprehensive BI platform (which does include Crystal Decisions’ Reports andEnterprise as key query and reporting components) rather than relying on just Essbase XTD AnalyticServices, which nevertheless remains their crown jewel.

Hyperion Essbase XTD Analytic Services provides scalability, performance, distributed architecture andOLAP application integration. Based on a multitier architecture, Hyperion Essbase supports multiuserread and write access; large-scale data capacity; robust analytical calculations; flexible data navigation;and consistent, rapid response times in network-centric environments. By multithreading HyperionEssbase “Agent,” which essentially performs traffic management in Hyperion Essbase, Hyperion hasenabled Hyperion Essbase to manage multiple, simultaneous user logins and multiple applicationsrunning on a single server. Hyperion Essbase XTD’s open architecture supports direct data access usingstandard spreadsheets; third-party query, reporting and BI tools; and Web browsers, as well as the use ofrelational databases for data access. Hyperion Essbase supports cross-platform deployment to Unix,Windows NT and AS/400 servers.

Although Essbase continues to use the operating system’s I/O, it bypasses the operating system’s filecache to optimize Essbase’s disk use. A server-based caching option allows the storing of more ofHyperion Essbase’s data (compressed blocks) in physical RAM. Dynamic calculations are much faster,because uncompressing and calculating blocks that are in RAM are much faster than having to firstretrieve them from the disk. This also eliminates swapping data to and from disk. A dynamic calculatorcache helps manage memory usage for calculations involving Dynamic Calc members. Managing datablocks in the dynamic calculator cache also reduces the overall memory space requirement and canimprove performance by reducing the number of calls to the operating system to do memory allocations.

If Essbase thinks something is or should be in its RAM cache, it can avoid the operating system’s havingto swap the cache to disk. According to Hyperion’s own testing, it has seen between 5 percent and 50



percent performance increases for loading and calculation, depending on the application. Because of theamount of data that can be stored in RAM, Hyperion claims that some Essbase applications can be runentirely in memory, eliminating disk I/O. Users have complete control over application memory usage,with the option to lock any or all of Essbase’s data and index caches in physical RAM, which also offers aperformance boost. Write-back transactions are first sent to memory and committed to disk with fulltransactional integrity.

Essbase XTD’s Analytic Services provide more than 250 calculation functions, and users can also createcustom functions and macros in Java. Robust, interactive analytic functionality includes attributes andstatistics for sales and marketing analysis; time series intelligence and forecasting functions formanufacturing and distribution analysis; and financial intelligence and multiuser writeback for profitabilityanalysis and other financial applications.

Hyperion Essbase XTD Q&R (which includes Crystal Reports and Crystal Enterprise) provides reportingfrom multiple data sources, including relational databases, operational systems and OLAP cubes.Essbase XTD Q&R delivers formatted and interactive content, which is published to the Web in a varietyof formats and can be integrated with other applications.

While Hyperion focused on creating OLAP server technology in its early years, it leveraged Excel andLotus as the client interface instead of building its own. Using the Hyperion Essbase spreadsheet client,users can access the Hyperion Essbase server and analyze data from their familiar spreadsheet. Initiallylacking a complete solution of its own, Hyperion partnered with other third-party tools vendors tosupplement the tools they were lacking. Such support included integration with third-party tools, includingmore than 50 front-end tools (such as Crystal Decisions’ Crystal Reports and desktop OLAP viewers,such as Business Objects’ BusinessObjects Explorer and Cognos PowerPlay), ETL tools, data miningand portal solutions. Essbase XTD Q&R, which includes Hyperion Crystal Enterprise and HyperionCrystal Reports, comprises a content management and delivery platform built for the Web. It providesquery and reporting from various data sources, including relational, ERP, CRM and Hyperion Essbase.Hyperion also has added its own front-end functionality, so customers can use Hyperion Analyzer for theirfront-end analysis requirements and Hyperion Reports, which provides formats for financial reporting.

Essbase XTD Platform Services are a set of BI technologies that integrate data and metadata frommultiple sources, perform advanced OLAP and deploy Corporate Performance Management applications.Comprehensive platform services run on multiple operating systems, leverage multiple relationaldatabases and access data from diverse operational systems. Integration Services provide graphicalinterfaces and services to integrate data from relational databases, flat files, spreadsheets, XMLdocuments, Web logs, metadata from data warehouses, operational applications and legacy transactionalsystems. These tools use centralized, reusable metadata to automate the process of creating andmanaging analytic applications from relational data sources, such as data warehouses, data marts,transaction processing applications and ERP systems using Hyperion Essbase XTD Analytic Services.Integration Services enable drill-through to detailed data in relational stores, as well as Hyperion’s HybridAnalysis, which enables data to be subdivided between Essbase cubes and the relational store andtransparently accessed by users.

The Essbase XTD Application Framework is a toolset that enables creation, delivery and deployment ofanalytic and reporting applications for the Web. Analysis Studio provides interactive analysis andreporting to user communities. Developer Workbench combines with Analysis Studio to rapidly create,manage and deploy custom analytic reports and applications for the enterprise. Whereas HyperionObjects is a set of OLAP-aware ActiveX components for creating applications based on Essbase,Application Builder is based on the J2EE platform and offers Web-deployable templates with pre-builtfunctionality that can be assembled into applications.



Hyperion Solutions offers a line of BI applications software too (Hyperion Performance Scorecard,Hyperion Strategic Finance, Hyperion Business Modeling, Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Pillar, HyperionFinancial Management and Hyperion Enterprise). Out-of-the-box solutions provide a quick path tointeractive analysis and reporting. Graphical development tools allow users to extend or build customanalytic applications to meet their needs. However, Hyperion’s suite of applications is not fully integrated.Hyperion Financial Management, for example, does not use Essbase as its engine, but has its owncalculation engine.

Pricing


Product Description Pricing ($)

Essbase XTD Editions

Essbase XTD Classic Edition • Per base server product

• Includes Essbase XTD

Analytic Services,

Spreadsheet Add in,

Essbase API and Hyperion

Business Rules

10,000

• Per end user 1,500

Essbase XTD Standard Edition • Per base server product

• Includes Essbase Classic

and Analysis Studio*

40,000


Essbase XTD Power Edition • Per base server product

• Includes Essbase Classic,

Analysis Studio*,

Developer Workbench**,

Essbase XTD Q&R and

Essbase Integration

Services

• Analysis Studio* includes

Hyperion Analyzer,

Hyperion Reports,

Hyperion Central and

Essbase XTD Spreadsheet

Services

• Developer Workbench**

includes Hyperion

Application Builder,

Hyperion Analyzer API and

Hyperion Objects

60,000


Essbase XTD Integration Services • Per base server product

• Unlimited users

• An option for data and

metadata integration

30,000




Product Description Pricing ($)

Essbase XTD Editions

Essbase XTD Application Framework

Hyperion Analyzer • Per base server product

• Interactive analysis,

query, dashboarding and

visualization

15,000

• Per end user 300

Hyperion Reports • Per base server product

• Financial reporting

15,000


Hyperion Application Builder • Per base server product

• Java development

components

15,000


Essbase XTD Q&R • Operational query and

reporting

Included as part of

Essbase XTD Power

Edition

*Software Maintenance—18 percent per year.

**CPU pricing is also available.

GSA Pricing

No.

Competitors

Hyperion Essbase XTD’s major competitors in the BI platforms market are Microsoft SQL Server 2000Analysis Services and Oracle 9i OLAP Services. Another BI platform competitor is The SAS Institute’sSAS/OLAP Server and SAS’s application development, integration and deployment tools. While EssbaseXTD does offer most elements of an EBIS, it—like SAS’s tools—has primarily been marketed as aplatform for developing and deploying BI applications. To provide some EBIS capabilities, Hyperion hasentered into an agreement with Crystal Decisions to package and market Crystal Reports and CrystalEnterprise as a major element of their reporting solution (some integration has been done and more is inprogress). This represents a clear change of direction for Hyperion and starts to put it into more directcompetition with some of its partners, like Cognos and Business Objects, for the front-end viewingbusiness. On another aspect of competition with Cognos, although Cognos Series 7 is an EBIS and not aBI platform, Cognos PowerPlay is an OLAP server. It is not as scalable as and does not have the robustfinancial calculation capabilities of Hyperion Essbase. However, for straightforward OLAP applications(reading and aggregating data), PowerPlay can suffice and so it does represent competition.

Whereas Hyperion Essbase XTD, Oracle 9i OLAP Services and SAS’s OLAP products support both Unixand Windows NT environments, Microsoft’s Analysis Services supports only Windows NT. AlthoughHyperion Essbase can support a variety of applications, as does its competitors, its origins were as afinancial consolidation and analysis engine, so it has extensive financial calculation functionality built inand is better able than its competitors to handle complex financial applications. Hyperion EssbaseAnalytic Services (OLAP Server) also is popular because it is not specifically tied to an RDMS vendor,



meaning that customers are dealing with a best-of-breed product rather than being a “captive” of a single-source RDBMS vendor. Microsoft’s Analysis Services requires that applications use the MultidimensionalExpression Language (MDX) to interface with it (which is quite cumbersome to use, not unlike Hyperion’sMaxL). Because Microsoft doesn’t offer a convenient graphical development tool, third-party vendors,such as ProClarity and arcplan Information Services, have appeared to fill this gap. While their OLAPproducts are not truly “closed,” Microsoft, Oracle and SAS are most popular with customers who are usingtheir other products, whereas Hyperion presents a more neutral choice for customers. With itscomprehensive set of BI applications development tools and Hyperion Essbase XTD Analytic Services,Hyperion provides a BI platform that rivals Oracle’s and SAS’s and is currently more complete thanMicrosoft’s.

Hyperion—as do Microsoft and SAS—provides proprietary languages for accessing and leveraging itsOLAP databases and functionality, whereas Oracle uses SQL to accesses analytic workspaces, not anOLAP API, which would provide more robust functionality geared to OLAP. Oracle also has an OLAP APIbased on the old Express multidimensional 4GL and still supports “JOLAP” or “Java OLAP API,” which ithad hoped would become a standard, but which has not.

Strengths

OLAP Application Functionality

While Hyperion Essbase XTD supports nonfinancial applications, Hyperion has focused on providing toolssuitable for financial applications. Hyperion Essbase XTD has extensive analytical functions—more than250—and read/write support suitable for many analytic applications, particularly financial ones. It has arobust scripting language for server-based dimensional, procedural and statistical calculations. Importantcapabilities that support complex applications include partitioning, which supports parallel processing, anddistributing OLAP application models across LANs and WANs; the models can be linked. Data inmultidimensional data stores can be linked with data in relational data stores.

Analysis

Essbase Analytic Services has analytic functions for forecasting and trending and profitability models,including linear regression and exponential smoothing. Correlation calculations can assess large sets ofnumbers and provide a numeric score to indicate how directly they vary with each other. Attributedimensions in Essbase Analytic Services support a fine-grained analysis of detailed data. Queries canfilter data based on multiple attribute dimensions, supporting comparisons without the explicit storage ofdimensions (for example, numeric values, dates).

Scalability and Performance

Scalability features include support for distributing applications across multiple servers and linking ornavigating partitions. Partitioned applications support “parallelized” models, which may be loaded, queriedand calculated in parallel on parallel processing computers.

Users can choose whether Hyperion Essbase validates formulas on the client or on the server. Server-based calculations support the thin-client model for scalable Web deployments. Dynamic calculationsenable the application designer to choose when calculations are performed to optimize performance.

By bypassing the operating system’s file cache and by a server-based caching option, Hyperion Essbasemakes use of RAM to speed up processing. Users have complete control over application memory usage,with the option to lock any or all of Essbase’s data and index caches in physical RAM (applications can berun entirely in RAM). The dynamic calculator cache helps manage memory usage for calculationsinvolving Dynamic Calc members. Managing data blocks in the dynamic calculator cache reduces the



overall memory space requirement and can improve performance by reducing the number of calls to theoperating system to do memory allocations. Calculating attribute dimensions on the fly means that thedata-loading process is faster than if the data had to be calculated and stored at data-loading time.

By multithreading the Hyperion Essbase “Agent,” Hyperion has enabled Hyperion Essbase to managemultiple simultaneous user logins and multiple applications running on a single server. Essbase also canexport databases natively using multiple threads.

Query Performance

Hyperion Essbase’s multidimensional OLAP query performance exceeds that of relational OLAP solutions(ROLAP). Rapid response times also stem from Hyperion Essbase’s pre-calculated, aggregated data andoptimized index techniques. By contrast, ROLAP solutions use SQL to access relational databases, whichis inherently slower, requiring complex joins and multiple passes through large datasets.

Open Platform

Hyperion Essbase supports cross-platform deployment to Windows 95/98, Windows NT (Intel), Solaris,HP-UX, AIX, AS/400, OS/390 and Linux servers across all major networks and supports mixedtechnology environments. Open architecture support for storing data in relational databases includesOracle, IBM DB2, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and Teradata.

Hyperion Essbase offers a published API that has been widely adopted by more than 100 industry-leadingtool vendors, application developers and consulting firms. There are more than 60 analytic applicationpackages available on the Hyperion Essbase XTD platform from Hyperion and its partners.

Hybrid Relational Database Support

While Hyperion Essbase supports drill-through to detailed data in relational databases, it also supportsHybrid Analysis. In the latter case, some of the data is stored in the Essbase multidimensional OLAP(MOLAP) store and some in a relational data source, making it possible to combine data from both storesin a single application. This supports the requirement of scaling to support very large databases,particularly those where the detail data is to be accessed for OLAP purposes. This scalability comes witha price, however, which is that performance suffers. A major reason for using the Hyperion Essbasemultidimensional store rather than a ROLAP solution is that it will exhibit much better performance as thenumber of concurrent users increases.

Reporting Tools

Hyperion offers Hyperion Reports for financial reporting and Hyperion Analyzer for Web-based interactiveanalysis against Essbase XTD Analytic Services while also providing drill-through to relational data.Hyperion Essbase also has extensive third-party support with more than 50 front-end query and reportingtools and desktop OLAP viewers. Hyperion also has entered into an agreement with Crystal Decisionsand offers Crystal Reports and Crystal Enterprise as Essbase XTD Q&R. With these complementaryproducts, Hyperion is capable of offering a complete solution for customer needs.

Application Development

Application development is supported for desktop and Web. The Developer Workbench includes HyperionApplication Builder—a Java-based development tool to create custom BI applications or extend out-of-the-box applications—and Hyperion Objects—a comprehensive set of OLAP-aware, 32-bit ActiveXcontrols for developing OLAP applications based on Microsoft’s COM architecture. It leveragesapplication development environments that support ActiveX controls; for example, VB and Visual C++.



Hyperion Analyzer API Toolkit offers developers the ability to extend Hyperion Analyzer with custom Web-based analytical applications.

Limitations

Reliance on Third-Party Tools

To complement its Essbase XTD product family, Hyperion for a long time relied on third-party tools toprovide a total BI platform while they focused on their Essbase OLAP Server (now called HyperionEssbase XTD Analytic Services). While now they do offer some of their own front-end tools, they still relyon third parties. Although Hyperion offers Hyperion Reports and Hyperion Analyzer, the great majority ofcustomers continue to use third-party front-end query and reporting tools. Hyperion most recently enteredinto a partnership with Crystal Decisions that allows Hyperion to bundle Crystal Reports as part ofEssbase XTD. When Hyperion Essbase is interfaced with these complementary products, it is not clearthat all the interfaces are truly seamless or that all of the native functionality on either side is exposed oravailable. In addition, if these partnerships don’t endure, customers may have to migrate to other tools.

Crystal Decisions Partnership

Until there is better integration and rationalization of reporting products (which Hyperion says is inprogress), Hyperion has a duality of reporting products (Crystal Reports and Hyperion Reports) and is notfully leveraging the Crystal products. It can’t yet leverage Crystal Enterprise for report distribution, otherthan for Crystal Reports. Crystal Reports is the stronger reporting product, but Hyperion Reports containsspecific financial reporting functionality. However, the absence of this functionality in Crystal Reportswon’t allow a single reporting solution based on Crystal Reports, which doesn’t have this functionality. Inessence, Hyperion Reports is competing with Crystal Reports other than for financial reporting. Inaddition, Crystal Analysis Professional, Crystal’s OLAP viewer, is not part of Crystal Decision’s deal withHyperion because it would compete against Hyperion’s own, capable Analyzer tool. This partnershiptherefore exists within a competitive framework and raises questions as to whether customers candepend on its continuation.

Integration With Crystal Reports and Enterprise

Crystal and Hyperion metadata structures are not integrated, and Crystal Reports is not integrated withHyperion Application Builder and Analyzer. Crystal Enterprise is not integrated with the Essbase platform.

ODBC Dependence

Hyperion Essbase Integration Services supports native access only to Oracle and Sybase, but otherwisedepends on ODBC—rather than native database drivers—for loading data from other RDBMSs. ODBCaccess may have performance implications, which may or may not be material, depending on thefrequency of data loading, as well as implications for SQL drill-down.

Time-Consuming Loading Process

Hyperion Essbase, like any OLAP server, requires a data-loading process that can require from minutesto many hours to accomplish, depending on the nature of the data and the number of aggregations or pre-calculations. Dynamic calculations can mitigate pre-calculation during loading, however, and parallelcalculations take advantage of SMP hardware. ROLAP solutions also have to build aggregate tables andindexes, which also takes time.

Recommended Gartner Research

• BI Magic Quadrants: Excitement in a Flat Market, M-18-9988



• Vendor Rating: Hyperion Solutions Returns to Its Roots, VDR-19-0969

Insight

The most successful OLAP server-based product has been Hyperion Essbase; however, this is beingstrongly challenged by Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services. Oracle 9i OLAP Services is anotherpotential challenger, but it has gotten off to a slow start in marketing. Although focused on financialapplications in its early years, Hyperion Essbase has been equipped to handle analytic applicationsacross all other business functions too. Currently, in a return to their roots, Hyperion’s strategy forHyperion Essbase XTD is to provide a platform for supporting Corporate Performance Managementapplications. With Essbase XTD, Hyperion offers a competitive BI platform, including querying andreporting and application development, although some of the technology comes from partners. BecauseHyperion also sells Corporate Performance Management applications, customers can acquire theirapplications and the underlying platform from the same vendor (although not all applications areintegrated with Essbase). Enterprises that wish to have a single business intelligence and CorporatePerformance Management vendor should give Hyperion serious consideration.

hyperion solutions essbase xtd business intelligence...hyperion solutions essbase xtd business...

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