Oracle DRM Blog

Downloaded the latest version of Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management 9.3.2 (upgrading from the last 9.3.1), the latest version was interesting because of a few welcomed surprise additions then the usual bug fixes. Here’s what I found…

The Metadata Migration Utility is a stand-alone Web application that can be used to support the movement of developed components across Data Relationship Management environments in a controlled and validated manner. The Migration Utility enables administrators to easily and
confidently synchronize the configuration of their Data Relationship Management environments. This is what Oracle termed “LifeCycle Management”. Previously, seemless migration from development to production environment isn’t an easy task at all. In some cases, you will have to redo the work in production, as oppose to a true migration. Well now you can export all the properties, system preferences and objects out and import it directly into another environment. This cuts down many hours of work no doubt, and it enables environment management because you can now have a real development environment to work with, and you can give the migration objects to a DBA and get him/her to move to production with ease. This change is obviously a very welcome change.

A new public API is available that will greatly improve BPM tool interaction with Data Relationship Management for handling request/approval workflow associated with master data changes. Updates to version data can now be submitted and managed as requests. Although workflow is still not fully complete, I see this another step moving to the eventual v9.5 that Oracle is planning. In Oracle Hyperion DRM 9.5, I’d expect full integration with at least the Oracle Workflow BPEL Manager.

A new export type is available to provide increased support for processes that leverage XML documents for data storage and transfer. Users have the ability to export hierarchies, nodes, and property values for a given version to a file in an XML format. Many of the same options
provided in the regular Hierarchy Export for selecting and filtering data are also available in the XML Hierarchy Export. XML export is a long overdue feature in my mind as a way to be able to integrate data with other systems without resorting to writing alot of code using the API.

The Data Relationship Management Batch Client provides a command-line utility (mdm_connect_credentials.exe) for encrypting default user credentials to more securely store authentication information required for running batch processes. This utility eliminates the need
for the information to be stored in clear text format on the file system or be managed and passed to Data Relationship Management by a third-party mechanism. Another welcome change because it’s been a custom in the Hyperion world that most of the batch tools requires login/password to be hardcoded in clear text. This obviously is pretty scary as exposing the administrator password can be dangerous.

Overall I am very pleased with what I saw. Instead of waiting for the DRM 9.5 major release, the developers can still benefit from this upgrade release.