I’ve been on vacation for the past 2 weeks, hence the lack of development/posts. I have had time, however, in the day since I’ve been back to add a requested feature – the ability to add attribute dimensions to an ad-hoc grid. Intuitively, only attribute dimensions that are not currently on the grid will be added.

Here you can see an ad-hoc grid that doesn’t contain attribute dimensions, along with the new “Insert Attributes” button on the toolbar:

After clicking “Insert Attributes”:

Even those of you who aren’t interested in this feature will want to download this last release, since the license file in the prior version has expired and will no longer allow you to use the program.

The production release of cubeSavvy is still on-target for August. This is primarily due to the ongoing positive feedback received from beta testers, including in-person at Kscope in Chicago a few weeks ago. I really appreciate it, so please keep your comments and suggestions coming!

version 6.0.0 BETA 9.5

Enhancements and improvements in this release and BETA 9.

• Added ability for users to create ad-hoc grids.
  • Users no longer need to wait for an admin to create an ad-hoc grid for them. They can do so directly from the Home tab, using the ‘New Adhoc grid’ option.
  • Users can also edit and delete ad-hoc grids to which they have access.
• Improvements made to Environments management when creating/editing grids.
• Now only grids to which users have access are displayed in the Grids list on the left. As a reminder, there are three ways a user can have access to a grid:
  1. Through direct access given by an admin on the Users tab
  2. Through membership in a Shared Services group that has been assigned to a grid by an admin
  3. Through creating an ad-hoc grid themselves using the new functionality above
• Added ability for users to share ad-hoc grids with other cubeSavvy users. I’m finally getting to some of the features I’ve been looking forward to creating since I started this project. Most of the features till this release have been recreating (and improving) functionality that Smart View already has. However, this ability to collaborate by sharing grids is something that you can’t easily do in Excel, and hence in Smart View.

cubeSavvy will remain in beta for a little while longer to make sure that it’s as stable and fast as possible. I’m tentatively targeting August for the 6.0.0 production release.

I’ll be at KScope in Chicago in a couple of weeks. Please find me and say hi!

Enhancements in this release:

Ability to run calc scripts on ad-hoc grids after Submit Data.

This functionality is the same as for MDX and Report Script grids: all the members for each dimension are passed to the report script, allowing for super-focused calculations/aggregations. Click on FAQ on the Home tab for more details, and an example.

I’ll walk through a simple example.

First, select a calc script:

The “subs1” calc script above:

Note the use of @IL and @L member selection commands. These take a @LIST (since there can be multiple members), which is passed in from the cubeSavvy grid on submit.

Data has been entered in an ad-hoc grid below, but has not yet been submitted (Submit Data).

After clicking Submit Data on the grid above, we can see that data has been aggregated:

The Essbase log for our application (Sample_U.Basic) gives us the full details:

And we can get detail that the Essbase log fails to provide by looking at the “Data Updates” tab on the cubeSavvy Home page. Here we can see the full Member Intersection, along with the Old Value and New Value for each data point:

Added Dataless Navigation

Improved administration of multiple Essbase environments

It’s now much easier to add/edit/delete Essbase environments, directly from the Home page. The “default_configuration” below is the one set up in the installer. You can edit or delete it as you would any other environment. However, there must always be at least one environment. If you delete them all, the “default_configuration” will be added back the next time you start (start.bat/start.sh) the application.

I’ve decided to keep cubeSavvy in beta for a little while longer to make sure that it’s as stable and fast as possible. Your feedback is still shaping the product. Please keep it coming!

There are several small bug fixes and enhancements in this release. The major enhancement is the ability to add multiple Essbase environments for ad-hoc grids. Prior releases only allowed connecting to a single Essbase server/Provider services combination. That limitation has now been lifted.

• Here’s an excerpt from the cubeSavvy.conf file: The ‘default’ environment below is used to test whether a user has Essbase access to even log into cubeSavvy. The user should be provisioned in its Shared Services instance. The names are important (e.g. dev, test, main) since this will be displayed on grids. You can add as many environments as needed. At least one, however, is required as the default.cubeSavvy.esbEnvironments {
default: prod,
dev {esbServer = "epmDev", esbProviderUrl = "http://192.168.56.101:9000/aps/JAPI"},
test {esbServer = "epmTest", esbProviderUrl = "http://192.168.56.102:9000/aps/JAPI"},
prod {esbServer = "epmProd", esbProviderUrl = "http://192.168.56.103:9000/aps/JAPI"}
}
• By default the installer will prompt for, and fill in, the “main” environment values, like so:
  cubeSavvy.esbEnvironments {
default: main,
main {esbServer = "epmMain", esbProviderUrl = "http://192.168.56.103:9000/aps/JAPI"}
}
To add additional environments, as above, you will need to manually edit the $INSTALL_DIR/cubeSavvy/conf/cubeSavvy.conf file.

This enhancement was requested by so many people, I decided to release one more beta to incorporate it.

Grid edit/setup:

Prompt to log into environment when clicking on grid (only displays if you’re not already logged into the particular environment):

Environment indicated on ad-hoc grid:

Several enhancements have been implemented in this release:

• Control double-clicks have been replaced by normal double-click functionality. Control double-click was deemed necessary because double-clicking on a cell was one of the few ways to edit the contents. Now that double-clicking performs a zoom, there are several ways to enter edit mode in a selected cell:
  • A formula bar, similar to the one in Excel, has been added. After clicking on a cell, its value will be displayed here for editing.
  • Just start typing.
  • Press the F2 key.
• Export to Excel. Clicking on this button will export the currently-displayed grid to a CSV file, which can be opened in Excel.
• Improvements to the Member Selection screen. Right clicking on a member in the outline on the left-hand panel now presents a menu of member selection commands (Children, Descendants, Level 0, Ancestors). Choosing one of them will apply the command to the selected member and add the resulting members to the Members Selected panel on the right. Members can be removed from the Members Selected panel on the right simply by double-clicking on them. Clicking the Save button will add these members to your grid at the selected cell.

This might well be the final beta before the production release. Testers have reported impressive stability and usability in a wide range of environments.

Please let me know your thoughts about cubeSavvy. Download at the usual spot.

The following features were implemented for Beta 4:

• Undo/Redo. In theory, the number of these operations is unlimited. In practice, browser memory is the limiting factor.
• Display both member names and aliases on retrieves. The alias displayed is determined by the selection in the dropdown next to “Name & Alias”, “Default” in this case.

• Choose #Missing text label or numeric value. The retrieve above with #NumericZero selected:

• Select indentation level: subitems, totals, or none. The retrieves above have “Indent None” applied. Previously, all retrieves used “Indent Subitems” exclusively. That remains the default, just as in the classic add-in and Smart View.

Please continue to provide your feedback. It really does let me know what I should work on next. So download Beta 4 and let me know what you think.

-Harry

version 6.0.0 BETA 3 Highlights

• Implemented mouse actions, such as control button+double-clicking to zoom in and control+right double-clicking to zoom out. You have to press the control button (Ctrl on Windows) while double-clicking. This is necessary because plain double-clicking on a cell opens it for editing.
• The first iteration of member information and member selection has also been included for testing.
• Licensing. There is now a license.sec file under the conf directory. This file must be present, and valid, for cubeSavvy to start. For the beta, it allows 30 days of use for up to 10 users.

The member information screen is pretty similar to the ones in the classic add-in and Smart View:

The member selection screen is still a work-in-progress, but is functional. For example, the Search field currently only finds matches for members that are already displayed. It doesn’t yet go back and search the database for other potential members that also match the entered criteria. That will be included in the next beta release. You might also wonder why the Alias column is showing Russian below. That is because the alias table chosen on the grid is RussianNames – you can see it in the background:

Since I’ve now implemented the licensing functionality, I’ve decided to open up the beta to everyone. Therefore, I’ve made the beta 3 version the main cubeSavvy download.

Please let me know what you think in the comments.

-Harry

Just a short post, since I’m currently spending all of my limited free time working on development.

I’m shooting for releasing the first beta version of the cubeSavvy web-based Essbase add-in to testers this weekend. As a reminder, this version will only have retrieval capability. Ability to save data will come in the next beta release. Speed has been the major focus, and compares favorably to Smart View, and in some cases exceeds that of the classic add-in.

Please send me an email if you’d like to help test.

In the meantime, here’s another brief video demonstrating basic functionality: