Running Essbase on an Alternate Port

There have been some questions posted on the forums recently about running Essbase on alternate ports. You can run the Essbase agent on a port other than it's default port 1423 by changing the AGENTPORT configuration file setting. Frankly, I have never seen a good reason to run Essbase on an alternate port with the exception of when customers were running multiple instances of Essbase on the same machine. Further, nothing should interfere with port 1423 as it is registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority at http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers:

essbase 1423/tcp Essbase Arbor Software
essbase 1423/udp Essbase Arbor Software

The AGENTPORT setting is documented at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12825_01/epm.111/esb_techref/frameset.htm?agentport.htm. You can change the port in the essbase.cfg file by simply specifying the new port:

AGENTPORT 2600

That is the easy part; the harder part is on the client side. You basically have a couple of choices to let Essbase know to connect to an alternate port. Unfortunately, the easiest method for users is the hardest to deploy. That method is to add an AGENTPORT entry to a client side essbase.cfg file in the %ARBORPATH%\bin directory. This method allows users to login without entering a port number for Essbase but you have to get that file deployed first. That can be challenging if you have a hundred or a thousand users. Otherwise, the user must enter a port number after the server name. In the classic Excel add-in, it looks like this:



That format is consistent through the Java API as well. Here is a screenshot of the login dialog from our OpenOffice add-in, which is written in Java, showing the port. Note that this screenshot was done on a Windows 7 machine:



Finally, our Dodeca product hides that complexity from end users as the port is configured in our Essbase Connections metadata editor and stored in our server:



When a user logs into Dodeca, they simply enter their username and password as every other parameter is already mapped for them on our server:



Alternatively, Dodeca can be configured to hide the Essbase server, application and database:




I think Dodeca makes it easier.