Essbase

Infobox Software
name = Essbase
original developer = Arbor Software Corporation
latest_release_version = 9.3
latest_release_date = 2007
operating_system = Microsoft Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris
genre = Multidimensional database
license = Proprietary
website = [http://www.oracle.com/bi www.oracle.com/bi]

Essbase is a multidimensional database management system (MDBMS) that provides a multidimensional database platform upon which to build analytic applications. Essbase, whose name derives from "Extended Spread Sheet dataBASE", was originally developed by Arbor Software, which merged with Hyperion Software in 1998. Hyperion Solutions Corporation was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2007, so Essbase is now available as Oracle Essbase. Until late 2005, it was also marketed by IBM as DB2 OLAP Server. [http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/db2olap/]

The term "on-line analytical processing" (OLAP) was coined by database researcher E. F. Codd 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. This whitepaper, published by Computerworld, 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. [http://www.regdeveloper.com/2007/01/26/olap_speed/]

By comparison with "on-line transaction processing" (OLTP), OLAP defines a database technology that is optimized for processing human queries rather than transactions. The results of this orientation was that MDBMS oriented their performance requirements around a different set of benchmarks (Analytic Performance Benchmark, APB-1) than that of RDBMS (Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC)).

Many Hyperion products were renamed 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 product suite. [http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/essbase.html]

Essbase was named [http://www.hyperion.com/company/news/news_releases/press_release_2005_000512.cfm as one of the 10 most influential technology innovations of the last 10 years] by Information Age magazine in its 10th anniversary issue, along with Netscape, Blackberry, Google, virtualization, Voice Over IP (VOIP), Linux, XML, the Pentium processor and ADSL. 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

Although Essbase has been categorised as a general-purpose multidimensional database, it was originally developed to address the scalability issues associated with spreadsheets such as Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel. Indeed, the patent covering Essbase uses spreadsheets as a motivating example to illustrate the need for such a system. Earle, Robert J. (1992) [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsrchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r=1&l=50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=5359724.PN.&OS=PN/5359724&RS=PN/5359724 "Method and apparatus for storing and retrieving multi-dimensional data in computer memory"] . United States Patent 5,359,724 assigned to Arbor Software Corporation.]

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:

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An API is available for C, Visual Basic and Java, and embedded scripting support is available for Perl. The standardised XML for Analysis protocol can be used to query Essbase data sources using the MDX language.

In 2007, Oracle began bundling Hyperion BI tools into Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus.

Administrative interface

A number of standard interfaces are provided for the administration of Essbase applications:

* "ESSCMD", the original command line interface 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 GUI administration client, compatible with versions of Essbase before 7.0; and
* "Essbase Administration Services", later renamed "Analytic Administration Services", and then back to 'Essbase Administration Services' in v. 9.3.1, the currently-supported GUI administration client.
* "Essbase Integration Server" for maintaining the structure and content of Essbase databases based on data models derived from relational or file-based data sources.

Competitors

There are several significant competitors among the OLAP, analytics products to that of Essbase (HOLAP/MOLAP) on the market, among them Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (MOLAP, HOLAP, ROLAP), IBM Cognos (ROLAP), IBM/Cognos/Applix TM1 (MOLAP), Oracle OLAP (ROLAP/MOLAP), Microstrategy (ROLAP).

Also note that of the above competitors, including Essbase, all use heterogenous relational (SQL Server, 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.

See also

* OLAP
* Business Intelligence
* Data Warehousing

References

*http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E10530_01/doc/index.htm

External links

* [http://www.oracle.com/hyperion Hyperion at Oracle]
* [http://www.oracle.com/bi Oracle EPM, BI & Data Warehousing]