Guest Blogger: Tim Tow, ODTUG Board
Australia, Here I Come!
Like many, if not most, Americans, I have always wanted to visit Australia but have never had the opportunity. Well, that all changed last month when I was asked to speak at the NZOUG Conference in Auckland, New Zealand and the ODTUG SP Conference in Sydney, Australia. For those of you familiar with my blog, you may have read that I often work 12-hour days. This is only possible with the support of my wife, and I am happy that she also shares in the rewards gained from my hard work. One week from today, my wife and I will be on our way to Oz!
We are flying directly to Auckland and will have a little over 3 days to explore the area and to recover from jet lag before the conference starts on Monday, October 31. We plan to visit the camp where, during WWII, my wife’s grandfather was stationed immediately after two of the worst battles in the Pacific, Tarawa and Saipan. Other than that, we are still undecided about our weekend agenda.
My presentations in Auckland are comprised of completely new content that I have written and will be presenting for the first time at this conference. In Auckland, the first presentation is entitled “Find Meaning in Your General Ledger Using Oracle Essbase”. This session will discuss some of the use cases for Essbase when used to explore and analyze data in the General Ledger. I will show at least 3 different ways that customers can use Essbase as a starting point for understanding what is in the GL and am working with the Oracle Fusion Financials team on how Essbase is leveraged within Fusion Financials.
My second Auckland session is entitled “What is Oracle Essbase and How Is It Different From the Oracle Database?” This session, which parallels an article I wrote for the current issue of ODTUG Journal, is targeted toward traditional Oracle developers who may have heard of Essbase but really don’t know what it is. My presentation uses a relational database design concept commonly used to support analysis, the star schema, and proceeds to translate it into similar constructs in Essbase. The presentation also discusses the key differences, both architecturally and from the user’s perspective, between Essbase and the Oracle database.
If you happen to be in New Zealand, don’t miss this conference. You can get more information athttp://nzoug.org/events/nzoug-conference-2011.
On Wednesday, November 2, we travel to Sydney for the ODTUG EPM and BI SP (“Seriously Practical”) Conference. Like in Auckland, my presentations at the SP Conference on November 3 and 4 are comprised of completely new content. The first session, entitled “Unleashing the Power of Essbase in Excel”, will cover the two Excel add-ins for Essbase, the classic Excel add-in and Smart View. I will spend a good bit of time in this session discussing and demonstrating some of the new capabilities added to Smart View 11.1.2.1.102. This new Smart View version features near parity with the functionality of the classic add-in and, finally, will meet the demands of most classic add-in lovers. The new functionality also makes many of the time-tested techniques used with the classic add-in possible again, so I will review some of my favorite spreadsheet design tips.
The second presentation in Sydney returns to my core (and geeky) competency with a discussion of best practices using the different Essbase APIs. In this session, “Best Practices for Expanding Essbase with the APIs”, I will talk about lessons learned from the past 17 years of my experienced with both the VB and the Java APIs. I am still working on this presentation, but I plan on covering more than just the coding aspects and will talk a little about how to build dependable software with the Essbase APIs.
If you are in or near Australia, make plans to attend the SP Conference now. This conference covers not only EPM, but also BI as well. Fellow Oracle ACE Directors Edward Roske and Mark Rittman, along with newly minted Oracle ACE Stuart Bryson, from Rittman Mead, have teamed with local speakers from Accenture and James and Monroe to bring you a content-packed agenda that can help your company get a higher return on its investment in the Oracle EPM and BI platforms. You can get more information about the ODTUG SP Conference and register athttp://odtugspconference.com/.
I look forward to seeing you there!
