EPM 11.2, Visual Studio, and SSIS Packages

This is a bit of a weird one, and it isn't Oracle's fault at all.  This is actually a Microsoft issue.

Suppose you are migrating from Hyperion / Oracle EPM 11.1.2.4 to EPM 11.2.x.  Further suppose you have custom data integrations in FDMEE/ODI or MaxL that rely upon SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) automation.

Your EPM 11.2.x system would be using MS SQL Server 2016 SP2+ if you want to use SSIS.  I checked the certification matrix last week and Oracle still hasn't certified MSSQL 2019 for EPM 11.2.x.

(Disclaimer: the above paragraph may become be dated as Oracle might certified MSSQL 2019 in the future. The Internet is forever!)

Now here's the fun part.

To migrate your SSIS packages to MSSQL 2016, you will need to first import and upgrade them via MS Visual Studio.  The version available to download is Visual Studio 2019.

Once upgraded, you use MS SQL Management Console to import them into SSIS.  The version of this software as of this writing is 18.8.

This combination of software do not play well with each other, and you'll get an error message in MS SQL Console when you try to work with the upgraded packages.  This exact error and solution has been written about on many blogs.  I'll just jump straight to the solution.

You'll need to uninstall MS SQL Management Console 18.8, and then grab version 16.x from Microsoft's download page.  There's a link there that lets you download older versions, and 16.x is still available as of this writing.  Version 17.x does not solve our issue... we have to go all the way down to 16.x.

You may then complete your migration in MS SQL Console 16.x.

One final tip: if your custom integrations are using Microsoft's dtexec utility, you'll need to replace the reference in the script's path to dtexec from 110 (SQL Server 2012) to 130 (SQL Server 2016).

Latest Windows Update Removes Abobe Flash

This is a follow-up about Adobe Flash Player EOL and On-Premises EPM 11.1.2.x.

As you may have heard, Adobe ended support for Flash Player on Jan 1, 2021.  This date has been known for some time, and as a result, Oracle released patches for EPM 11.1.2.4 in Summer 2020 that removes Flash dependency from Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Calculation Manager, and the Financial Close suite.

Some Oracle EPM / Hyperion customers may have deferred patching or upgrading.  Perhaps the thinking was "we can just leave it on end-user workstations as-is even though it is out of support."

Microsoft says "Not so fast!"

If you're on EPM 11.1.2.4 and are using any of the 3 modules I mentioned above, please apply the patches right away.  They're listed in my link above, although newer ones might be available by  now.

If you're on EPM 11.1.2.3.500+, you need to upgrade.

As mentioned in my earlier post, Adobe removed the Flash Player download from their website.  They further stated that downloading it from any 3rd party site is a license violation.

The good news is EPM 11.2.x has the fix built-in.  As does the EPM Cloud.

FDMEE 11.2 - Java 6 reference can be buried within the database

Depending upon you migrate FDMEE from Hyperion / Oracle EPM 11.1.2.4 to EPM 11.2.x, you may have an issue when trying to run your load jobs.

In 11.2, Oracle included a handy migration package specifically to migrate the AIF* tables from 11.1.2.4 to 11.2.  You'll find it on your 11.2 FDMEE server in \Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1\products\FinancialDataQuality\database\migrate.  There's a package each for MSSQL and Oracle - check the subfolders for the packages and instructions.

As per Oracle's documentation, you want to run this in 11.2 after you've executed "Configure Database" for FDMEE.  This because the migration package only migrates the AIF* (FDMEE) tables, and does not migrate the ODI-specific tables (SMP* etc.).

Now let's say you're in 11.2's Data Management and you're trying to run an import job.  It fails.  You check the log and see a reference to JAVA_HOME=%EPM_ORACLE_HOME%\..\jdk160_35.

This simply won't do!  Don't be tempted to just copy jdk160_35 from your 11.1.2.4 server to your 11.2.  Java SE 6 is out of support and won't be patched anymore.

You can run a simple SQL statement to fix the problem.  Here's how it looks in MSSQL, and Oracle's version of this would be the same:

Bounce your 11.2 FDMEE service(s) just to be on the safe side, and now when you go back in to Data Management, you won't see that reference to jdk160_35 in your process log anymore.

EPM 11.2 - Your environment has been set

All releases of Hyperion / Oracle EPM 11.2.0.0 through 11.2.4.0 hosted on MS Windows Server do the following:

While this doesn't hurt anything, if you want to clean things do, do the following after you've finished deploying all of your WebLogic services.

Open regedit and export the Hyperion Solutions registry hive to your desktop.

Open this file in notepad/Notepad++ and do a Search->Replace.

Change Your environment has been set.; to nothing.  Save the modified .reg file.

Double-click the .reg file to import it back into your registry.

Do this on every server.