Oracle Hyperion Planning VS IBM Cognos TM1 Series - Part 2 (aka applications)

In this post, I'll be showing how applications are created in both Hyperion Planning as well as Cognos TM1, by doing this I will also highlight the key differences.

An application is a collection of dimensions, data forms (views or input sheets in TM1) , reports, task lists (applications in TM1) that are built to serve a specific purpose (Budgeting and Planning, Human Capital Planning, Revenue Planning etc..). here I will show how to create a basic skeleton application, in the subsequent posts, I will go into more details like the design of outline, dimensions, sparsity./density settings and so on.

Product versions used:
Oracle Hyperion Planning 11.1.2.4
IBM Cognos TM1 10.2.2

Hyperion Planning

So to get your application up and running you first need to have a relational database/schema for your application to store your application metadata and system information, like Oracle or SQL Server...) and the reason I made that statement in bold is because in TM1 you don't need one (surprised?)

I have Microsoft SQL Server 2008 so I'll just create a new database called Demo.

Now let us create a data source in Hyperion Planning and define our relational database and Essbase.

Navigate to Planning Administration

Create new data source called Demo as shown below

Now let us create the application, I'm going to create a classic Planning application (sadly with DRM EPMA applications are no longer fun to hang out with).

In the second tab of the wizard, choose whether how do you want your Period and Year dimension setup. Your first fiscal year setting cannot be changed after creating the application (another key difference in TM1 you don't have this restriction, or at least there are some workarounds to overcome this unlike Hyperion Planning)

In the third tab of the application creation wizard, select whether you want your application to support multiple currencies or not (never seen this used in real life) if this option is selected then Planning will add two more dimensions (Currency and HSP_Rates) I'm not selecting the multi-currency feature for my Demo application.

Now the interesting fourth tab, select how many plan types (aka cubes) you want in your application, whether you want your ASO planning cube, and  pre-built Workforce  and Capital Planning modules.

A classic Hyperion Planning application can have up to three standard plan types/cubes (BSO cubes), one reporting ASO cube and two pre-built modules. the latter can also be added after creating the application. Here is a key difference in Cognos TM1 there are no restrictions when creating your application server, in fact when you create your application you don't have any dimensions.

For TM1 folks reading this, the Workforce Planning and Capital Planning modules are pre-built applications with dimensions, data forms, business rules, task lists, smart lists.... ready to use with some slight modifications. this is also a key difference in TM1 this is nothing equivalent (cannot say I miss having them around, I prefer a clean application and build the whole thing from the scratch old school style).

Now create your application, go to the last tab and review your settings and create button. after successfully creating your application you can go to the back end database and see your system tables  as shown here.

Another difference here is in handling system objects, in Hyperion Planning you need a relational database for storing your application metadata details, but in TM1 you don't need one,the  application server in TM1 will have control cubes instead stored in your data directory.

Now let us open the application and see our dimensions.

In Hyperion Planning, you must have six standard dimensions (Account, Entity, Period, Scenario, Version, and Years) or eight dimensions if multi-currency is enabled (Currency and HSP_Rates dimensions as well as the previous six ) and you cannot delete any of them. This is very different from TM1 for example in your application server you may or may not have a Version dimension,  and your minimum number of dimensions in any TM1 cube is two.



Cognos TM1


Let us create our Demo application in TM1 (aka application server). on your server create a folder named Demo preferably in (C:\Program Files\ibm\cognos\tm1_64) and create two sub-folders Data and Logs.

Now we need to have our Tm1s.cfg file, we can go to samples directory (C:\Program Files\ibm\cognos\tm1_64\samples) copy any Tm1s.cfg from any of the samples and paste it in the Data folder under Demo. Edit the copied Tm1s.cfg file and change the following entries:

ServerName=Demo
DataBaseDirectory=C:\Program Files\ibm\cognos\tm1_64\tm1\samples\Demo\Data
AdminHost=Your server computer name
PortNumber=6009 (pick a port number between 5000 and 49151)

Open IBM Cognos Configuration, right click on TM1 Server, and select TM1 Server instances... from New resource

Name the application server Demo, click on and specify the TM1 Server configuration path which is the where we placed the Tm1s.cfg file and slick Save, once done right click on the newly created Demo application server icon and start the application, you should get something as shown below.

Open TM1 Architect and you should see Demo application server in the list, double-click to open and keep password blank.

Congratulations you have your Cognos TM1 application up and running, as you can see there are no dimensions created at this point, unlike Hyperion Planning. Browse to your Demo\data folder and you can see the generated system files or control cubes.

That's it for now :)

Until we meet again, may the Cosmos be with you.