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:
The Essbase product family includes the following feature sets:
Essbase Administration Services is the new framework for managing and maintaining Essbase. Essbase Administration Services consists of a client console and a middle tier server that communicate directly with Essbase OLAP Servers. Both of these components can run on any platform supported by Essbase. For more information, see the Essbase Administration Services Online Help.
The Application Manager is a graphical environment for developing and maintaining Essbase applications on a single OLAP Server. Tasks include building outlines and dimensions, performing data loads and calculations, and defining security access.
A multidimensional database for storing data with an unlimited number of dimensions such as time, accounts, region, channel, or product. The Essbase server manages analytical data models, data storage, calculations, and data security.
The Spreadsheet Add-in desktop software enables analysis of the data stored in the Essbase server. Essbase Spreadsheet Add-in is seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets.
This suite of tools is used for extending Essbase applications. These tools include Essbase currency conversion, Essbase SQL Interface, Essbase Spreadsheet Toolkit, and Essbase Application Programming Interface.
This suite of features makes it easy to design and administer databases that span Essbase applications or servers. You can copy a slice of a large database to work with locally, or you can link from your database directly to other databases.
Hybrid Analysis integrates relational databases with Essbase databases to combine the size and scalability of the relational database with the conceptual power and analytic capabilities of the multidimensional database. Hybrid Analysis eliminates the need to store lower-level members and data within Essbase, virtually eliminating size restrictions on outlines and giving you rapid analysis of large amounts of data.
Essbase offers many key advantages to help you develop effective multidimensional applications:
Essbase incorporates the following powerful architectural features to handle a wide range of analytic applications across large multi-user environments.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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