The following is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.
Smart View Improvements
There are a number of improvements and, in fact, architecture upgrades coming for Smart View in the near future. The major improvements Oracle is publicly talking about for 11.1.2 include:
- An improved installation experience. The installation of Smart View will continue to be a standalone installer and, starting in 11.1.2, will not be packaged with the EPM installer. Further, satellite .dlls will be available for non-English language support.
- A plug-in architecture. The plug-in architecture eliminates the need for the Smart View team to create and control all new features put into Smart View. Further, the architecture is designed to ensure that new add-ins can peacefully co-exist and access Smart View’s features. Finally, in the future, Oracle plans to open up the plug-in architecture to partners, and I am sure that a number of partners will leverage this platform to create their own tailored functionality.
- An improved Connection Manager. The connection manager will talk to Shared Services, as well as explore all registered providers.
- Deeper integration of Office 2007 Ribbon technology. Oracle is planning to architect the Ribbon UI technology such that each provider will have its own context-sensitive Ribbon.
- Better EPM Application integration. Smart View will become even better integrated with both Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management. On the Hyperion Planning side, Smart View will reach ‘Web Parity,’ where all features available in Planning web forms will also be available in Smart View, including composite form support, task lists, and data validation. On the Hyperion Financial Management side, Smart View will add support for task lists, updates to the database, and XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language).
These are all exciting improvements to Smart View that will certainly make it more popular with users.
The Future
I was surprised that Oracle actually discussed some of the things they are working on post-11.1.2 and the discussion emphasized the feature list is still to be determined, but they did talk about some directions that are very exciting. One overriding theme familiar to anyone following the Hyperion/Oracle is integration. Integration continues for both the OBIEE/Essbase integration and the integration of the Hyperion Applications and Essbase into the Fusion Middleware Stack. To accompany those integrations, Oracle expects to further evolve Essbase web services to make Essbase information more widely available as part of their SOA architecture.
One the pure Essbase side, the two most significant items include a thin client Essbase studio that is targeted to replace Essbase Administrative Services, Essbase Integration Services and the thick client version of Essbase Studio. Finally, IT departments will be happy that Oracle is targeting native failover for both the Essbase Agent and Essbase Server processes are part of their future plans.
I feel as though I have only scratched the surface when it comes to the amount of information presented at this year’s Kaleidoscope Hyperion Sunday Symposium and, as I think you can see, Essbase is not only alive at Oracle, but thriving. If you missed the Symposium this year, mark your calendars for late June next year, as we hope to make next year’s the best Symposium yet.
