Out of the Past

Introduction

You’re all Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas fans, right? And all film noir fans, too? No? You really should give this film a try. To say that they don’t make ‘em like they used to is putting it mildly. I will spare you my rant on the vast empty wasteland that is modern entertainment and instead take you on a different journey into the past. One that, if you have knocked around the Essbase world long enough, may cause pangs of longing. What oh what could this be?

Remember me?

 

Sob, yes, it is Essbase Application Manager. Oh, AppMan, how I miss your consistent keyboard driven functionality, your easy copy and paste into Excel for hierarchy, your easy to read outlines with nice clean and easy to read text, and your simple and easy installation. And in your place, we have…EAS Console. Sigh.

I know that I am not the only one that misses AppMan. What Cameron, more of your delusional thinking? Nope, I took that screen shot from the desktop of one of my current clients. Yep, Essbase 11.1.2.2 and a rather smart Hyperion admin realizes that she can better understand Essbase when viewing BSO databases through AppMan than when using EAS. Oracle, are you listening? AppMan = 1992 technology, and yet your customers prefer it. This isn’t the first one that I’ve bumped up against that has kept a copy of Application Manager around to make Essbase easier to understand.

I wish I had an old copy of AppMan.exe kicking around. Like a fool, I dumped Essbase 6.5.x’s binaries as fast as I could. Maybe I shouldn’t have been quite so impatient to embrace the future.

Parting shot

Here’s another picture to make you go all weak in the knees.

AppMan makes even Sample.Basic look good. Or in old Essbase-speak, Sample:Basic. Remember the colons instead of the periods as delimiters?

That does it, I’m doing my next automation project in Esscmd instead of MaxL, just because I still can. Okay, maybe I won’t do that, but I am going to look at old CDs and see if maybe I really did keep a copy of My Very Favorite Essbase Editor In The Whole Wide World.

Be seeing you, maybe in the past.

Catalyuna wrap

My week of racing in the beautiful sunshine of catalunya spain came to and end yesterday with a great inner city circuit right in the heart of barcellona. After 70km dordle along the Mediterranean coast to the city centre we hit the final circuits for one last 50km of what turned into torture! 8 x 6km laps which was made up of 2.5km in climbing, the same in descending! And a little bit of flat thrown in although I can't quite visualise where the flat bits were! The pace ramped up as soon as the laps began with the top 5 GC spots all separated by no more than 40 seconds there was sure to be fire works!

I settled in closer to the front than the back and awaited the fireworks to begin in ernest. As I predicted with 3 laps to go the wick was lit up by home town here purrito rodrigues and as I would turn out for a few min later I was in the right spot at exactly the wrong time! Having paid dearly for following his accellerations in the pyranees 2 days earlier I should have learnt my lesson! Alas I had not and set of in pursuit of him with my vand den brook and gesink. Alas after 1kn or so full block chasing the little spainaid I had to retreet to the protection of the main field and lick my wounds at another failed attempt to match it with the big guns!

The group was still large and of course rodrigues came back, I should have realized this before I went after him but I didn't! The couple of laps I was able to recover in a heavily garmin controlled peleton and by the final climb I was ready to launch again for the line. I moved up as we crested the climb for the final time and all of a sudden there was a wall of riders ahead of me and the rd totally blocked. So back into the bunch I went for the final plunge down to the line and that was the 2013 volta catalunya done and dusted. 18th overall would be my final GC position at the conclusion of the 1000+km covered so I was content with that.

For the team our rock spider christiano salerno finished safely in the field to wrap up his kom jersey and along with ratto's 2nd and two 4th's our group of cannondale men could hold our heads high considering the quality of field that assembled in catalunya this past week.

As for my assessment of my own performance?? I was about 5% off the top guys this week, around 25watts @ threshold give or take. I anticipated my level to be around 90-95% so all in all I am where I expected and I am very happy with where that has me compared to the riders I raced against this week. I knew I could grind and knew I had no more than 500 watts for 5' in me at the crucial moments in the race. As expected this was the point the brought me undone in the pyranees when I had to push beyond that initial effort. I have done no motor pace this year so expected to suffer a lot from the race rythm of world tour. As expected I did suffer! For the first 2 days it was everything I had simply to stay in the peleton when they were going full hook. This would have had a fatigueing effect on me so motor pace and now having the rythm there will eliminate that going forward to a large extent. Fortunately when we went uphill I got to recover a lot of the time. So from here the real work begins, I know now my foundations are good and its just a matter of not over doing it, absorbing the work, and having a good look at what I can do the eke out that next 5-10% before the giro begins on may 4.

Cjw

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Catalyuna stage 6

Some days it feels like you are simply chewing on your head stem the entire day! Today was one of those! It took 90km for a breakaway to form just intime for the first climb of the day. By this point however we were only 90km from the finish so the peleton was never letting anyone get to far away. Near the top of the climb it started to hail ever so lightly resulting in a temperature drop of around 15 degrees just in time for a 20+ km gradual decent on what I would class as a glorified footpath! Brillient!

So after being single file preying for the bottom of the decent we were 30km from the finish and finally the final climb of the day was on us. The sprinters that could climb ok smelt the victory and on the 5km gradual drag the past was kept high and consistent. This provided the first opportunity for me to get some rest for the day as it was easy sitting on the wheel and following the tempo. 1km from the top the big guns got frisky and started attacking so I had to open up the jets for a couple of minutes and ensure I remained in the front selection of a 10 or so riders. We were never going anywhere and the break was now dangling 15-20seconds off the front with only a 14km plunge to line remaining. I immediately attacked on the decent, not so much to get away, I am not that nieve that I could get away on the decent! But merely to keep the pace up as I know our spinter who can climb very well daniele ratto was in the group just behind and was up for the sprint. So down we plunged with me at the helm and the radio was buzzing with ole ole ole tirra WURF which means stay on the front and drill it!

So that's what I did, got some great help from BMC and with around 4km I realed in the final escapee's and at 3km I was on the rivit and handed it over to the bmc boys to keep the pace high for the run to the line. In the end daniele ended with another fine 4th which is a great result at this level. Also some consolation for me with an aussie winning so although the work for the team may not have resulted in a cannondale victory I was pleased to see simon gerrans get up there and take a win at the end of such a hard day on the bike.

For me today marked the first time I had been at the head of the world tour peleton for some time as I tapped out a tempo between 5-3km to go and it was a great feeling. Suffered I little bit as a result, been a while since I have dialed it up to 60kmph to string out the bunch but that what I am here for this week, to see where I am at and make sure I make I step forward from here.

Tomorrow looks really nasty with a twisty hard circuit around the city streets of barcellona. After today there will be some tired pins that's for sure so will have to eat a big bowl of grinta (determination in italian) for breakfast and do my best to finish of the tour in a strong way.

Cjw   

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Catalunya stage 5

When I comes to drawing up an easy course at this level, it does not get much easier than today. The first 70km was downhill, a little climb for a few km, then another 70km of predominantly down hill to finish the 150km day off. Add to that a breakaway of only 2 riders heading up the rd meant chasing was not going to be too difficult so was a nice easy day. My team mate daniele ratto galloped to a fine 4th in the bunch sprint and chistiano consolidated his lead further in the mountains competition so was a good day for the cannondale green jersey. It was Crazy easy in contrast to yesterday where we did 5000m of climbing elevation in the pyrenees!

Anyways while it is great for the group to have a bit of recovery after a day like yesterday it also brings with it a renewed freshness in the peleton and the crazy dog fight for front positioning that transpires as a result. Yesterday although hard was easy to stay at the front, you don't get too many who will want to waste energy fighting for the front for too long so for me the hard days are far more enjoyable. Anyways today went straight forward and the break was gently reeled in with around 15km to go. The freddie fresh legs peleton then sprung to life and in the absence of any renowned sprinters it seemed all 160 riders felt they would be in for a chance in a bunch kick. Throw in a roundabout every 1km and it was a dog fight. I am useless in these situations and my politeness and lack of desire to increase the possibility of kissing the ash felt means that I am more likely to give riders space to pass than fight for the wheel. My teammates on the other hand where up the front charging on the front of the bunch relishing in the chaos and gave daniele I the best chance possible to do well in the sprint. Anyways the inevitable finish line was finally crossed and I had all my skin and had freshened up a little so looking forward to the slightly more challenging stages that remain over the weekend.

Cjw  

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Where in the world is Cameron, day 5, Australasian edition

Not the beginning of the end, but perhaps the end of the beginning

I’m not one to quibble with WSRC, but the ODTUG SP Australia conference is at day two of two and that means that I am finally coming to the end of Cameron’s Most Excellent Australasian Conference Adventure. It figures that my body is finally sort of, kind of, used to the time zone difference because I will be jetting away tomorrow. It took me a week to get used to the time here and I expect another week of sleepiness when I get home to the States. OTOH, I have lots of real Cadbury chocolate (see yesterday’s rant on the stupidity of US chocolate manufacturing practices – Something Must Be Done), I have really had a great time here, and learnt quite a bit about BI and EPM.

But none of the above really matters – what does matter is: did the conference attendees get value for money? Given the depth and breadth of the sessions, the passion that the presenters brought to their sessions, and the high technical level of the presentations (despite protestations to the contrary re “being technical”), I’d argue that yes, the attendees got their money’s worth, and more.

I was a little apprehensive about helping select sessions (read: beg Oracle Australia, James & Monroe, M-Power, Bambi Price, and just about anyone I knew in Australia to help put together the speaker list – oh dear, I am now on the hook for repaying favors but it is all worthwhile) as the Australian market differs somewhat from the US of A’s. Yes, the market details are different, but at the end of the day we are all trying to solve the same problems with Oracle’s BI and EPM tools. The attendee survey will tell the tale (how could a BI/EPM conference not try to wrap metrics around an event?), but based on conversations I’ve had, I think it will be a solid win.

Taking OBIEE to the Next Level, Maneesh Disawal, 9:00 am to 10 am, ACDT

Maneesh is taking us through a definitely-not-standard approach to making OBIEE more useful. It’s nice to know that hacks aren’t just an EPM-only approach. And besides, a good hack isn’t a hack at all, but instead is Just Really Cool.

It’s interesting to see how much OBIEE overlaps with EPM – yes, yes, I get it, Oracle are bringing the two together, but still, it’s interesting to actually observe it. Most ODTUG conferences have me running round like a chicken with its head cut off. I am really enjoying actually being able to sit back and listen.

Another thing I am noticing about OBIEE is how IT-oriented it is. This isn’t a bad thing but it is evidence (if it were needed) that there is still quite the gap between the BI and EPM worlds. Their eventual merger will be interesting to watch.

Essbase ASO – A Brave New World in Australia but not for the Rest of the World, Steve Hitchman, 10:15 am to 11:15 am, ACDT

This session hasn’t occurred yet, but it’s up next. m-power worked with my buddy Dan Pressman and utilized his Rules of ASO Essbase. I’m very excited to see what they have on offer. Update – The session is in progress right now.

Oh, this is embarrassing, but kind of awesome at the same time. Dan Pressman, ASO wizard extraordinaire, just had a slide devoted to him and His Really Big Brain. What else was part of the slide? Why an advertisement for Developing Essbase Applications. Yes, it is a good book, and internationally loved.

Steve is going through the ASO design principles Dan has tried to hammer into my head:

• No formulas, unless you must
• Stored instead of dynamic hierarchies, or at least Multiple hierarchies enabled
• No more + and - operators, instead just + and flip the data signs to get round the dynamic hierarchy
• Gary Crisci’s MDX chapter in Developing Essbase Applications just got mentioned as well as a resource (Are Gary and Dan soon to become Australian citizens? Could be.)
• Do the simple stuff in MDX, do the complex logic in BSO and import results into ASO
• Alternate YTD hierarchies to come up with YTD values through ASO’s aggregation capabilities
• Solve order to handle variances

Oracle BI and Oracle Essbase: Today and Tomorrow, Stephane Roman, 11:30 am to 12:30 pm, ACDT

Stephane is taking us all on a journey through Essbase and OBIEE integration in the next release of the OBIEE stack. They are To Become One.

Stephane is reviewing Sample.Basic aka My Very Favorite Essbase Database In The Whole Wide World (MVFEDITWWW). It’s nice to know that The Beverage Company’s business continues forward. Who wants to bet that when Sample.Basic was created that a bunch of Arbor Software developers sat round and said, “Eh, a good first effort, but we have to replace that with something better, but soon.” Soon never came.

Watching Stephane’s presentation, I realize that I have a career decision to make – am I going to jump on the OBIEE bandwagon to get a leg up on the tool or just passively wait for the Bus Named OBIEE to run me over. Maybe getting flattened will be pleasurable? Probably not. So much to do, so little time.

One thing that is funny about OBIEE (and why I personally think things aren’t quite there yet wrt product convergence) – it takes an Essbase database in all of its Essbase awesomeness and turns it into a logical star schema. That is…odd looking. I realize this is how OBIEE federates data but it is still a little jarring for an Essbase developer to see.

Slay the Evil of Bad Data in Essbase with ODI, Cameron Lackpour, 1:30 pm to 2:30 ACDT

This is the same presentation I gave at NZOUG 2013 and I always enjoy a chance to spread the ODI gospel. My solution doesn’t exactly use standard ODI functionality but one of the great things about ODI is that, to quote one of the attendees at ODTUG SP Australia likes to say, “There’s always a way round a problem”. ODI is great at enabling those ways around issues. I am a super fan of the tool.

Growing with Business Analytics - Keeping Updated and Informed, Paul Anderson, 2:45 pm to 3:45 pm ACDT

I finally get to meet Paul – I’ve seen his posts on the Business Analytics – Proactive Support web site.

Oracle Support are doing great things with making the support of the not-exactly-simple EPM tools. They are trying to preempt problems before they occur. One might argue that they are trying to put themselves out of business. I think that isn’t likely to happen any time soon but it is beyond great to know that Oracle understands the importance of fixing problems asap and maybe even preventing the issues before they even occur.

Master Notes, feedback, Advisor Webcasts, patches, product certification, social media/My Oracle Support Communities (hint, use this in lieu of Service Requests when your problem doesn’t involve fully-engulfed-in-flames Essbase servers), product version certifications, patch communities, product specific communities (HFCM and Endeca), Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA), whew, you get the idea. Oracle Support are doing a lot of interesting things.

Closing Panel, Richard Philipson and Cameron Lackpour, 3:45 pm to 4:30 pm

This is an anything-goes, hit us with your best shot session. They are a lot of fun at Kscope and I am hoping that this will be more of the same. However some topics like do you like wheat or white toast are beyond the pale. Okay, I kid, I kid, wheat every time. Rye vs. wheat will have to remain a secret. Everything else is fair game. :)

Keep tuned

Almost done – I will put in my final thoughts when the party’s over.

Be seeing you.

Catalunya stage 4

The hats off award for today goes to out climbing pain craving specialist christiano salerno. He made one of those breakaways that includes only superstars today and in the process charged up all the climbs and all but secured the king of the mountain jersey! So an awesome performance by him.

For me it was an improved day. After my cocky attitude yesterday decided to play my cards a bit smarter and retreated to the protection of the peleton for the final climb. I sat patient why sky used there men and waited for the inevitable fierce tempo setting of rigoberto uran which duly happened between 8-5km to go. I survived this just and made the final major selection. This was as good as it got for me however as when katusha took up the pace setting inside the final few km I was the first one to be unhitched from the group of superstars (that being all the other guys and not including me) just inside 2km to go. Today I held my nerve better and kept the group and my pace in check. At the line I was 15th, and losing 40seconds to the likes of wiggins, gesink and van den brook. After 6hrs of racing and 2 20+km climbs in the final 60km of the race I see this as a real test of my endurance level at the moment and I am content with where I am at. Specially being my first race of the season basically. The most important thing is not where I arrived today but how I go away from here and use this weeks experience to continue to progress throughout the rest of the season.

Race data:

6hrs 5min

215km

Heart rate average: 140

Power average: 290

Max power: 1110

Calories burnt 6500kcal

Best 5min power: 490watts

What makes me really happy is that some of the data from todays race is up there with my best previous efforts so to be finally able to deliver this in a race is a huge step forward for me. For to long I have had no dramas training hard but not matched that level of effort in the race. Today the tables finally have started to turn and to do it also on the longest hardest stage of the race gives me great confidence going forward.

Time to refuel the tank for another intensive day tomorrow

Cjw

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Where in the world is Cameron, days 3 and 4, Australasian edition

Wait, what happened to day three?

What happened was:

1. I woke up really early
2. I flew in a New Zealand Air plane to Melbourne
3. I saw Bambi Price’s house and cruised round Melbourne in a jeep with Bambi’s husband, Fred Price
4. I bought lots of real Cadbury’s chocolate (what we get in the States looks like Cadbury, but it is a Cruel Joke upon the tasting) to take home
5. Laid down on the hotel bed “for a minute” before I went out for a beer and woke up the next morning

Okay, so what about day four?

I helped Bambi and Fred set up the conference room at Swineburne University (exciting pictures to be inserted as soon as I can find my boat anchor of a phone), had a flat white, and then proved that Cameron and Fred Do Not Do Networking as we tried, somewhat fruitlessly, to try to connect to the wireless network. Yes, you are reading this, so we are not hopelessly bad at this.

Here we are setting the room up. Oracle Ace Directors do it all, including moving furniture as required.

 

And all of this was for…

The ODTUG Seriously Practical Australia conference, natch. Yes, that link you see (go on, click on it and be surprised, and maybe just a little sad that you aren’t here) is the agenda, and yes, this is Exciting Stuff. We are bringing the same great focus and depth to Australia as we do to Kscope in the States.

Babar Jan Haleem, What’s Coming in Oracle BI and EPM, 9:00 am, Australian Central Daylight Time (ACDT)

Babar is giving the same (well, the same if you were at NZOUG 2013) session he gave at, wait for it, NZOUG 2013, but as that universe is pretty darn small, it is a fresh presentation to most.

My take away – I can’t wait to get EPM into the cloud at a client – I do it all the time from a development/self-training/generally mucking about perspective but that’s a completely different thing than actually running an EPM implementation in the cloud. Let there be no more missed implementation schedules because of install problems!

Debra Lilley, Fusion Applications and Your BI/EPM Investment, 9:30 am to 10:30 am ACDT

Debra just said that Hyperion (aka EPM) is “exciting” and that therefore, I am exciting. She also says that she is not technical. Hmm.

And what is the calculation engine behind Fusion? Why, it’s Essbase. And it’s transactional. You know, the thing that we Essbase developers were Never To Do. Could these be “headless” ASO Essbase databases? Could be.

Debra’s getting a bunch of questions – I’m really glad to see this interaction although she might feel a bit like a trooper serving under General Custer at the moment. What am I talking about, she can more than handle herself. Not technical? Hmm.

Fusion Reporting and Analytics – Oracle Transactional BI (OBTI), Oracle BI Applications (OBIA), and Specialized Analytics. The last bit is all built on Essbase – Essbase is the aggregation engine. How cool is that?

Charles Pinda, Delivering Your Financial Results Better with Oracle EPM 11.1.2.2, 10:45 am to 11:45 am ACDT

Charles does a great job – the 11.1.2.2 functionality that I wish was in “normal” Planning was Decision Management. It’s part of PSPB (Public Sector Planning and Budgeting) and is, in a word, awesome. I can’t even find it documented although I’m sure that exists. It’s a way to collect all of the text, comments, justification, etc. around a budget. It is So Cool.

Endeca Information Discovery, Stephen Weingartner, 12:45 pm to 1:45 pm ACDT

A small world, indeed – I am working (you may or may not be surprised to note that this week is not a normal work week for me) at a client in St. Paul, MN. And Stephen is from…Minneapolis, MN. If you’ve heard of the Twin Cities, you’ll know that St. Paul and Minneapolis are practically one city. As the saying goes, what are the chances?

Beyond odd coincidences, Stephen is here to talk about Endeca. The more I hear about this tool, the more interested I become. Or maybe I finally understand the value of unstructured data and how it might be analyzed. It sure isn’t Essbase, although Essbase can be fodder for Endeca. It’s ability to comb through public data and make sense out of it all is intriguing.

Stephan showed a Twitter data source analysis (Dan O’Brien at NZOUG 2013 did much the same but on #NZOUG and #NZOUG2013 hastags) based on the political turmoil here (I barely understand American politics so look up Gillard and Abbott on your own, I pick no sides) – all public data, all real time, all Real Cool.
 

Richard Philipson, Exploring Oracle BI Apps: How Does it Work and What Do I Get, 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm ACDT

Richard is fielding questions about why Informatica is used instead of ODI. Always a fun moment when one has to defend Oracle’s product decisions, but of course he’s doing fine. For the record, everyone wants ODI (but of course) and expects that it will come soon.

Overall, the BI Apps are pretty cool although certainly not simple. OTOH, they hook into the Oracle applications with a moderate amount of pain and complexity. There is a lot of functionality and flexibility in-built to the tools.

And oh btw, slowly changing attributes, the semi-holy grail of Essbase that is kind of, sort of there, is easily displayed in BI Apps.

Christine Aird, Thoughts from the Frontline – Issues and Opportunities Faced When Implementing or Upgrading HFM Applications, 3:15 pm to 4:15 pm ACDT

Another presenter who claims he (or I suppose she) “isn’t the least bit technical”.  I wonder if Australian English (almost as painful a term as American English) defines technical as “more than the Septics would do”.  She’s a geekette, but just doesn’t know it.  Or maybe that is admit it.  Why do I say this?  Because what she describes as her project work is what I do, and I think I’m technical.  I could be wrong about what I do – it wouldn’t be the first time.

Christine is taking us through the various stages of project implementation, what HFM is good for versus Planning, and general good practices around HFM implementations.

Yr. Obdnt. Srvnt., The spreadsheet management system known as Dodeca, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm ACDT

I get to talk about my very favorite Essbase front end in the whole wide world.  Talking about Essbase is always a good thing.  Talking about Dodeca is always a good thing.  Talking about both is just perfect.

Would someone in Australia please buy this thing?  No, I don’t want the work, I just want Dodeca to plant its flag on yet another continent.  After all, trade follows the flag.

And after me, the bar

At Beer DeLuxe – what a nice way to end a long and useful ODTUG Seriously Practical first conference day.

Keep tuned

There’s more to come, including my Brush With Celebrity, but that is most definitely a case of “If there aren’t any pictures, it didn’t happen.” Oh yes it did happen and yeah, I have the photos as you can see below. I think we all know who this is.

Stanely looks like he’s been through a lot. He’s also a bit smelly. But then if you read his adventures and travails at his very own blog, it all makes sense. And yes, that is my brush with fame. Also, yes, that is a bullet hole, but Stanley marches on. He is made of Stern Stuff.

Goosebumps is the only way to describe how I feel. :)

Be seeing you.

Catalunya stage 3

Today has been a day I have been looking forward to for a very long time. A mountain top finish in a world tour race with many of the top riders in the world in the field. Added to that being able to race such a stage with a good condition and healthy body so today all that fell into place for me, I chance to see where I stood with the big boys! From the teams perspective I certainly failed in setting up a GC position but christiano salerno consolidated his lead in the KOM competition so tomorrow he will be going all out to consolidate that so go christiano!

It was the perfect stage for me, 3 climbs and only 1 decent! One thing was certain today, I would find my way to the front at some point on the long drag to the finish at 2200m altitude. At the of the day I would be dropped from this position with 2km to go and concede 1 minute to the winner, as for my placing I am not sure, perhaps the top 30-40 but what I took and learnt from the day is what is most important to me.

Firstly I felt fantastic, perhaps the strongest I have ever felt going into a bike race, unfortunately I did not share my confidence with my team mates and. Free lanced my way around the bunch and as I often do when I feel good wasted a lot of energy. Into the final climb I knew the big names to follow and when robert gesink put his men on the front I was right there behind them as bradley wiggins was very generous in giving me the wheel ahead of him. This unfortunately proved to be my first mistake, I knew the wind was infront but figured sitting 3rd wheel would ensure I could ride a consistent tempo so decided taking the wind was a good option. I seemed to be as the km ticked by and was sitting pretty up front but when jurgen van den brook attacked and gesink followed I had not choice but to go aswell. This put me on the limit and then came the much feared sky train! Again I took the wheel at the front right behind sky but now it was full gas inside 3km to go and I was on the rivit. Added to this the altitude was touching 2000m and having not done any altitude training for 8 months being on the rivit at altitude aint the best position to find yourself in. Anyways on we charged and when we hit 2km to go and the steep kick to the line I put on the reverse lights and went backwards fast! Turns out the world tour pace on the climbs is a bit much for having not raced at this level for over 18months and I had to do my best to survive.

I will take a lot from the day regardless of where I finished. First up from the mistakes I made in being way to confident in my own ability considering the competition I was facing and second not have the courage to let my team mates know how good I felt and give me a little hand in taking some wind for me. But hey, its the first race of many big ones this year and returning to the team I am still re familiarising myself with that so all good. It was so nice for me to be able to simply go tow to tow with the big boys I have been watching admiring on TV for the past year and wanting so badly to be back amongst it. I saw them all attack and I heard them all breath heavy, I even saw some struggle, unfortunately today in the end I was the one who stuggled the most! If I also look at my role in this team which after catalyuna switches to support of our grand tour captain Ivan basso then I could not be happier. I was right where I need to be deep into a mountain stage and had he have been there would be been able to have him positioned perfectly to deliver for the team. That what my role is here and that's what they pay me to do so I am super excited about the upcoming races with him on my wheel. That always gives me a few more watts of motivation and exuberance!

Onto tomorrow and its another cracker, again more climbs than decents so will see what I can conger up there, just awesome to be back here racing at this level and seeing the front of the race, not just riding with these guys but being right there in the thick of it RACING them!

Cjw

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Catalunya stage 2

Good day here in catalunya for stage 2. on what was a pretty straightforward day designed for a group sprint our budding your hardman/fastman daniele ratto galloped to a fine 2nd. The boys in green swarmed to the front in the final 10km and with 3km to counted 7 guys from the team in the first 30 riders which is just how always want to be. After the initial flat and easy 120km we were faced with 4 laps of a technical 10km circuit around lake benyoles north of barcellona, the site of the 1992 olympic rowing regatta where steve hawkins took tasmanias first ever olympic gold medal. Having watched his race a thousand times I felt I had an advantage of knowledge of the area but alas this knowledge of the rowing course did not extend to knowledge of the rd the twists and turns around it!!

The first 2 laps were crazy with riders going everywhere but fortunately it was hard enough that dudes started to get tired and moving up become very easy in the final 2 laps. With lap to I was right at the front and even took my turn on the front leading the group into a technical left hander ensuring our boys got through unscathed. From there it was plane sailing as we stayed around the front protecting our sprinters and in the final kick to the line ratto did an awesome job to take second.

Salerno retained his mountains jersey so all in all the cannondale jersey is getting plenty of air time. Tomorrow arrives the first of 2 very hard mountain top finishes so I am looking forward to that. Been a long time since I have raced up a long climb at this level so will be good to see where I stand!

Time for some shuteye

Cjw

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Where in the world is Cameron, day 2, Australasian edition

Day 2, 19 March 2013, 8:55 am NZDST

It’s a good thing I am, seemingly, beyond embarrassment, as I feel asleep last night during dinner.

Actually, it’s a bit worse than that, as I actually fell asleep after the quite excellent NZOUG 2013 dinner, during the music quiz, in a room full of screaming people. With a live DJ. OTOH, I have never in my life awoken to the strains of “Wake up, Little Susie” sung just for me, so there is that. And before you go, “Ah, sloshed again. Get that geek dried out, asap,” I knew Cameron + tiredness + alcohol was a bad combination and very purposely held back from the truly excellent Mac’s Bitter. All to no effect – I might have well had more of that beer than I did for all the good it did me. I will plead the excuse that when I finally walked back to the hotel I was able to figure out that in fact, Cameron-time, it was about 4 am and I had just spent the entire night awake. My buddy Bambi Price, keeps on telling me, “Don’t think about what time it really is”, and my conscious mind doesn’t, but I fear that my body does.

Yr. Obdnt. Srvnt., Slay the evil of bad data in Essbase with ODI, 9:30 am to 10:20 am, NZDST

I really enjoy doing this presentation as I am a huge fan of ODI and of good data in Essbase databases. It is a surprising and mildly shocking fact that many, many, many Essbase/Planning implementations do not handle data quality at all, or rely on 100% manual data validation to tie out numbers.

I am writing this update a half hour before the presentation, so I have no idea what turnout will be. Also, it is quite possible that after yesterday’s Dodeca presentation the word has spread and I will be facing the New Zealand equivalent of a ghost town.

Update – nope, I had a decent number of people show up a wee bit late – was everyone toasting the sleepy American or just out partying? They aren’t telling me and I’m not asking. :)

Charles Naslund, Infrastructure Preparations for Hyperion EPM 11.1.2.2, 10:40 am to 11:30 am, NZDST

Many things in life elude me: why do we vote for politicians that lie to us and they know that we know that they are lying and yet we vote for them again and again; why, really, do all the things that taste so good end up being so bad for us; why is Oracle EPM infrastructure so hard?

Well, lying politicians (as far as I can tell this is true for all parties and all countries) and fattening-yet-delicious food will be with us (and me) forever, but could there be hope when it comes to the complex concept known as EPM infrastructure? Regular readers of this blog know that EPM infrastructure is a continuing challenge for me so I have great hopes for Charles’ session. Maybe my limited knowledge can be expanded. Maybe.

Charles (yea!, fellow Septic) is going through the architecture topology in nice simple to understand terms. Keep it simple Charles, please.

Now we’re onto the topic of virtualization – yup, it’s the same story as in the States – real boxes for Essbase, virtualize everything else, and it would be a really good idea if you went with Oracle VM.

SLAs (Service Level Agreements) – ah, these tend to be somewhat more honored in the breach than in the than the observance. This one particularly frosts my cookies when the Essbase or Planning server (or servers) go KABOOM and no one but no one in IT seems to own the servers.

• Packet size – pre compression. Now I know why Smart View is faster than IE when it comes to forms. Here are the average network bandwidth requirements on a per form basis:
• HFM 64 to 128 k
• Planning 32 to 64 kb
• Smart View 28k This is pretty darn amazing – the SV team has done some magic here.

SANs – Every client I’ve had in the last five years has wanted to run Essbase (and everything else) off of a SAN. Essbase needs fast disk to perform well, memory and CPUs be damned. How to do this – sort of be virtualized, sort of not, by using dedicated LUNs, CPUs, and memory. The data (PAG/IND or tablespace) is on the dedicated LUN – everything else can be on shared SAN resources. This strategy gives you a 20 to 25 percent performance boost.

All in all, a nice session. Maybe if I attend enough of these some infrastructure wisdom will rub off on me. Maybe.

Richard Philipson, EPM Case Study: Rank Group, 2:00 pm to 2:50 pm

Richard as always does an excellent job. Quite how he does Essbase, Planning, HFM, BI, infrastructure, etc., etc., etc. is a bit beyond me. Did I mention that he’s a talented graphic artist. <insert envy> Or maybe I’m just stuck in rut.

This is an interesting app – it’s architected so that the private equity firm (Rank Group) can bring in/drop companies really quickly. Unlike most other corporate systems, and because their business is so dynamic, they have both full public internet access (definitely not the norm) and four environments: dev, qual, prod, and archive. The last environment is used to snapshot their business at a given time so they can have a baseline to compare against. Again, that is not the way HFM is typically set up, to put it mildly.

The Teaser

This blog will be updated throughout the day (although looking at my laptop clock I realize it’s 9:30 pm EDST so how much bated-breath refreshing of this blog there may be is open to question) so stay tuned.

Be seeing you.