Consultants Corner July '09

7th Jul 2009

In the Consultant’s Corner this month is Geoff Dillon. Geoff has been with M-Power for the last three years.  He's based in Brisbane and is working with Lihir Gold and Xstrata Copper. Over the last six months Geoff’s spent a lot of time working with Oracle Data Integrator (ODI). Free with Hyperion Planning and Financial Management, ODI is a tier one ELT (Extract, Load and Transform) tool, which means you can use it for all of your data integration and data warehousing requirements - not just in your Hyperion environment. It replaces the HAL product which Hyperion used to ship but it does so much more. Geoff has given us an insight into the value his clients are getting from using ODI.

"I've been extracting transactional data from our clients' Oracle and SQL Server transactional systems and loading into their Hyperion applications, I make good use of the Hyperion Planning and Essbase Knowledge Modules which are shipped for free with ODI. Knowledge Modules help the developer to focus on describing what to do, rather than how to do it. They are effectively the templates for generating code across the multiple systems involved in each process. If necessary, Knowledge Modules can themselves be tailored to further meet the needs of the project."

"The Knowledge Modules are the key to ODI's performance and human resource gains.  In a Hyperion implementation, for example, they provide the functionality to execute MAXL scripts, rules files, refreshes and the like. I also use ODI to co-ordinate our overnight tasks, such as backups, database restructures and calculations."

One of the features of ODI I like most is that whilst being a comprehensive ETL system in its own right, it leverages existing hardware and database infrastructure, saving money and maximizing resources.

I’ve also found lifecycle management (eg. promoting changes from the development to the Production environment) quite sophisticated in ODI through the use of ‘Versions’.  Furthermore, working between various development and production data sources is made simple via ‘Contexts’.

"ODI represents a huge leap forward in terms of integrating data from transactional systems to reporting systems and managing overnight processes."

Thanks for that Geoff. 

Find out more about ODI here or give us a ring to find out how you could start using ODI now and remember it's free!