Intro
FDMEE / Data Management Drill through popularity has had mixed reviews some love it and some hate it. I like to believe that the ones that love it, probably have a good solution and those that hate it probably don’t have a very good solution. Surely that’s Too simple? And what is a good solution?
A good solution is a solution that meets or exceeds the client requirements. When we talk drill through unfortunately every client will have a have a different or unique set of requirements. In this blog post I intend to break certain myths about FDMEE limitations and show that with the right knowledge, FDMEE can be flexible enough to achieve the desired requirements. Having said that, I do intend to keep it real as they say and explain where the limitations are and in what circumstances FDMEE is not the right tool to achieve drill through. It is important to note, the content / concepts in this blog is not theoretical and has been implemented and adopted with great success.
Hyperion FDMEE Drill Through Explained
I thought I would do something different and make a video where I talk through FDMEE Drill Through in a little bit more detail in a frequently asked questions (FAQ) approach.
Summary – FAQ
FDMEE Myths / Challenges?
The customers that don’t like the FDMEE usually hold the following gripes:
- Drilling only from bottom levels
- Default/out of box drill through very clunky and requires many clicks or hops to get to meaningful data. Even when a customer gets to meaningful data the ability to see different data or adjust the report requires a process that involves repeating all or part of the of the above to view a different data combination.
So where does that leave us? Well with a challenge really to prove that FDMEE will not only meet your drill through requirements but will do so in style. I come back to my main point getting the right solution, is really the key difference. Maybe I am just over simplifying things or that I am incredibly biased, but before I get labelled the biased Hyperion Jedi, let me justify my reasoning and then allow you to draw your own conclusion in the process.
Overview of FDMEE Drill Through Capability Diagram:
What Source System Can I Drill To?
Any source system can be drilled to as long as the source system accepts a drill URL from Hyperion / PBCS with parameters of the drill defined in the URL.
Where Does the Source System Need to be?
Anywhere, the source system can reside on-premise or on the cloud (on the moon if you like); as long as the user is in a location that allows access to both source and target system, the user should be able to drill to the source system. This is because the drill is simply done via a URL, therefore if you can access Hyperion and the Source system URLs you can drill.
Where Does Hyperion Need to be On Premise or Cloud?
It doesn’t matter if Hyperion is on the cloud or on Premise, you can drill to an on premise source or a cloud source from Hyperion on Cloud (PBCS) or on Premise.
What level of drilling is possible?
Both level zero and summary drilling capability is possible with FDMEE. There is a level of wizardry involved in getting Summary drilling possible, but it’s really down to understanding the mechanics of FDMEE and Essbase.
FDMEE allows you to use the cell you loaded data to (it creates a hyperspace wormhole to travel between Hyperion and Source. I kid relax…. The POV members of that data cell can all be reference as parameters to retrieve source data) as reference for drilling back to source. What this means is that if you have not loaded to particular level you can’t drill from it. You can quickly see that this will really mean that you will be selectively picking the levels you are loading to and drilling from. Otherwise you will need to load every level of the cube and will need a way in your source to translate that to source values. If it gets to a requirement like this you really need a tool like Oracle BI to deliver a full holistic solution that can also be used for other reporting and increased benefits.
Summary drilling is possible for both BSO & ASO applications (like I said its above understanding the mechanics of of Essbase and FDMEE). I know what you are thinking (or what you should be thinking!!!), you can’t store values in Essbase ASO at summary levels and you are right you can’t. However both Essbase and FDMEE will allow you to load the values, which means the value will not be stored in Essbase, but will be stored in the FDMEE tables and can be used to drill through. Next you should be asking me, but then those values will be replaced with the level zero values once calced/aggregated so whats the point? Simple really, if I load the same values to level zero and summary levels the result should be identical and I can then drill from summary levels with appropriate numbers displayed. We will touch on the mechanics on exactly how this works and how great it actually is at a later stage, but for the answer is it is possible.
Can I display the transactions inside Hyperion without drilling to source?
This is very much possible, the reality is FDMEE is a relational repository and will contain whatever it is you load to it. If your file contains transactional information and you load that file to Hyperion, then guess what? Hyperion will contain the balances and FDMEE will contain everything that made up that number prior load. This can be seen in the FDMEE workbench or in the FDMEE Drill Through Landing Page. This a perfect solution for customers where not all Hyperion users have access to the source system, but all users in Hyperion require a secure drill solution where access to source data is controlled by the dimensional security in Hyperion.
Is out of the box direct drill through available?
Sure!!! I must warn, that the default drill options are as their names suggest default as in they are standard. In some cases this is the right option to use, but in some cases you may want a more custom solution. For example, the default drill will run a default drill report and the client may want a custom drill report with more features. We have the capability in FDMEE to update/manipulate the drill URL as needed. In my experience the difference is well worth the time in getting an exact solution for the customer and therefore will result in better adoption of drill through.
PBCS Out of the Box Direct Drill is supported for: Oracle Fusion Cloud.
For On Premise Hyperion (FDMEE) Out of the Box Direct Drill refer to Oracle Documentation): https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E57185_01/AGFDE/supported_source_systems.htm#AGFDE-erpi_intro_213
Is there a need for third party tools to facilitate Drill Through?
No third party tools are required, you can drill from Hyperion to Source using FDMEE without any third-party tools. That is not to say that you can’t use third-party tools. There are many tools out there and in some cases that will be the right thing to do. As mentioned above I really believe when the requirement becomes evident for more reporting / drill capability I would recommend a true reporting tool like Oracle BI or Oracle Analytics Cloud Service that won’t just deliver the drill through capability, but will provide a wider reporting solution not just for Hyperion, but any system in the organization.
ahmedhanihafez
Oracle Hyperion - The Force Is With You 