Essbase and Multidimensional Databases

This chapter introduces Essbase and describes the Essbase environment. Essbase is a multidimensional database server that is optimized for planning, analysis, and management reporting applications. You can access Essbase from a spreadsheet or custom interface on a desktop computer or on a workstation. Managers, analysts, and executives can see useful information on demand with Essbase.

This chapter contains the following sections:

About the Essbase Product Family

The Essbase product family includes the following feature sets:

Multidimensional Development Features

Essbase offers many key advantages to help you develop effective multidimensional applications:

Architectural Features of Essbase

Essbase incorporates the following powerful architectural features to handle a wide range of analytic applications across large multi-user environments.

Dynamic Dimensionality

The Essbase server uses a method called dynamic dimensionality for storing and retrieving data and for optimizing analytical performance. This method separates data into sparse and dense dimensions. See Multidimensional Concepts and Basic Architectural Elements to learn how Essbase defines and uses sparse and dense dimensions to optimize data access and to reduce index and storage requirements within the database.

Dynamic dimensionality allows Essbase to provide sophisticated attribute reporting without impact to database storage requirements or batch calculation performance.

Multithreaded Design and SMP

The Essbase server is a 32-bit, multithreaded software application that supports symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) hardware platforms. Multithreaded design creates a separate thread for each user request. A multithreaded software architecture enables multiple users to work on an Essbase database at the same time. Essbase also uses separate threads to support data loads and calculations in the database.

Symmetric multiprocessing allows single servers to run multiple processors concurrently. Essbase automatically supports multiple threads over SMP servers. Thus performance is not significantly degraded, even with a large number of simultaneous users.

Multiple User Read and Write

The Essbase server supports simultaneous access and update by multiple users. You can implement applications that require iterative changes to data, such as budgeting, forecasting, and planning applications, and allow multiple users to access these applications simultaneously.

Understanding Client-Server Communications

The Essbase client-server architecture supports enterprise analysis applications:

Figure 1: Essbase Client-Server Communications

Note: Essbase Administration Services, MaxL, and other components do not appear in this illustration.

Notice these relationships:

Essbase uses a distributed client-server model. In a distributed model, the database engine typically resides on the server and portions of the database software reside on each client. A typical client-server configuration has one server and multiple clients: the server performs most of the database processing so that the clients can run queries with minimal memory and disk configurations.

Essbase clients often connect to multiple servers to access different databases. Within your organization, you might have multiple servers, each with its own users and databases.

Essbase Server

All Essbase application components, including database outlines and calc scripts, application control, and multidimensional database information, reside on the server. With Essbase you can configure server disk storage to span multiple disk drives, enabling you to store large databases. Essbase requires a server to run a multithreaded operating system so the server can efficiently manage multiple, simultaneous requests. The server also runs a server agent process that acts as a traffic coordinator for all user requests to Essbase applications.

The Essbase server software runs on PCs or UNIX servers. See the Essbase Installation Guide for information on the supported operating systems, and for specific information about server configuration requirements.

Essbase Client

The following Essbase clients access the server:

Essbase clients retrieve and analyze data from the server using Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft Excel, or a custom application interface.

Essbase handles client requests differently, depending on the type of the request:

Figure 2: Essbase Client Request Handling

See the Essbase Installation Guide for specific information on client configuration requirements and for information about supported platforms for Essbase products.




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