Essbase Interview Questions

Blalaji.J

Hyperion FAQ’S

1. How many build methods are there? Ans. There are three build methods; Generation build method Level build method Parent – child build method (ancestors, sibling build methods Descendents build method)

2. Are you currently responsible for Production Essbase Cubes?

Ans. Yes, I did produced Essbase cubes

3. How big is the largest cube?

Ans. The largest cube that I developed till now is 13.5 gig.

4. What is a data block?

Ans. The data block is a cell which is a combination of dense dimensions and it has got some data.

5. How do you order the outline?

Ans. We order the outline by keeping the dense dimensions before the sparse dimensions and in these dense and sparse dimensions keeping the users requirements like the performance or the retrieval of the cube, we can arrange the sparse dimensions having more members before the sparse dimensions having less members or like the more queried dimension can be in the top than others. But usually we prefer hour-glass order of outline.

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Blalaji.J

Hyperion FAQ’S

6. Name 3 Esscmd commands (excluding Login)? And define their functions?

Ans. 1, BUILDDIM: This command dynamically builds one or more dimension from the data file or SQL source. 2. COPYAPP: This command copies an application. 3. COPYDB: This command copies the database.

7. How many partition types are present and what are they?

Ans. There are three types of partitions, they are replicated partition, transparent partition and linked partition.

8. Why do you use Dynamic Calc?

Ans. Dynamic calc is used so as to save the space in the data block, when member is tagged as a dynamic calc then that member is not calculated during the regular calculation like calc all but it calculates when that member is retrieved in a spreadsheet add-in or running a report script for that member.

9. What members in the outline cannot be Dynamic Calc?

Ans, level 0 members and the label only tagged members cannot be Dynamic calc. With one exception of label only member with on-member formula.

10. For a member to be Two-Pass, what must exist in the outline?

Ans. Member must to be tagged as accounts or expense and they should be dynamic calc.

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Blalaji.J

Hyperion FAQ’S

11. What functions are you familiar with (min 8): Name them?

Ans. @VAR, @VARPER, @CHILDREN, @DESCENDENTS, @IDESCENDENTS, @CURRMBR,

@ANCESTORS,

@UDA,

@VARIANCE,

@ISGEN,

@NAME………..@FIXCOLUMN

12. Using the AVG function, if you want to leave out zeros, what parameter can you use?

Ans. Skip zero.

13. Do you like optimization or design better?

Ans. I like to design the cube as much as I like to optimize it.

14. What is the difference between FIX and IF statements? In what situations they are used and what are its pros and cons?

Ans. FIX: this statement restricts the path of outline during calculation/retrieval such that it doesn’t have to go through whole of the outline. IF: this is conditional statement, when used if the given condition is true it takes the given value in the condition and it moves forward or if the given condition is false it takes another value to calculate/retrieval and it moves forward. **With FIX u cannot restrict the members to be checked with, fix u can say which one u need to check.

15. What are different types of memory caches? What are their optimal memory settings?

Ans. Data file, pagefile 8kb, (page 1024)

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Blalaji.J

Hyperion FAQ’S

16. What is the max length of filter we can write in Essbase 6.5 and lower version?

Ans. 64kb

17. Which one of the following is fixed? Data file size, Data cache size, Page files size, index file size.

Ans. Index file 8kb.

18. What is committed and Uncommitted Access?

Committed access provides a high level of data consistency because only one transaction at a time is written to data block. Under committed access, Essbase allows transactions to hold read/write locks on all data blocks involved with the transaction until the transaction completes and commits. However, you can still allow read-only access to the last committed data values. It is time consuming if the data size is too large. Uncommitted access (enabled by default), the Essbase kernel allows transactions to hold read/write locks on a block-by-block basis; Essbase releases a block after it is updated but does not commit blocks until the transaction completes or until a specified limit (a “synchronization point”) has been reached. You can set this limit, as described below. It is faster, but in case of catastrophic conditions loads data again. Concurrent users accessing the same data blocks might experience unexpected results under uncommitted access, because Essbase allows read-only access to data at its last commit point. With uncommitted access, you can control when Essbase performs an explicit commit operation by specifying synchronization point parameters:

 Commit Blocks (number of blocks modified before a synchronization point occurs). The default is 3,000.

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:9297052855

Blalaji.J

Hyperion FAQ’S

19. Give some MaxL statements and their syntax?

Ans. Create application: CREATE APPLICATION News amp as Sample; Create function: CREATE FUNCTION '@COVARIANCE' AS 'com.hyperion.essbase.calculator.Statistics.covariance' SPEC '@COVARIANCE (expList1, expList2)' COMMENT 'computes covariance of two sequences given as expression lists'; CREATE USER: CREATE OR REPLACE user bala identified by ‘password’ as Recycle Me; Display application: display application; 20. What is data block size? (How do you find the size of the block?)

Ans. Data block size is determined by the amount of data in particular combination of dense dimensions. For ex: when you change the dense or sparse configuration of one or more dimensions in the database, the data block size changes. Data block size is 8n bytes, where n is the number of cells that exist for that combination of dense dimensions.

Note: Optimal range is 8 to 100 kb

21. Explain what the Never Share property is?

Ans. Never share: this property is tagged to any of the sparse member such that it doesn’t share the data with its parent/children even though there is an explicit relationship exits but the data is just duplicated.

22. What is a PS command?

Ans. PS command can be used to find the number of processes running in UNIX environment.

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Blalaji.J

Hyperion FAQ’S

23. How do find whether Essbase server is running or not on AIX UNIX?

Ans, ps –es! Grep

24. What is the difference between grep and egrep?

Ans. Grep: this statement is used to create or replace the file, Egrep: this statement is used to append the existing file.

25. How many members can be there under a dimension?

Ans. There is no limit.

26. What is a calculator cache and why is it used?

Ans. Calculator cache is the buffer zone in the memory which is used to track the data or create the data blocks at the time of calculation; calculator cache enables the centralized control of the memory in the calculator cache and also reduces the space and improves the performance of the cube. Essbase default is 20mb.

27. What is VBA?

Ans. VBA: Visual Basic Application Programming Interface (API) used for accessing the data in the cube using the spread sheet add-in. 28. What is an ad-hoc Report? Report that is created on the fly.

29. List some report writer commands?

Ans. ANCESTORS: