I would like to introduce a networking opportunity for all you infrastructure groupies, or those interested in the technical side of the Hyperion suite.  Follow Rob Donahue on twitter – @EPMTechTips.

From Rob:

Get useful info as it relates EPM (Hyperion) technology, particularly around infrastructure, installation & troubleshooting. Questions are welcome!

Rob Donahue is the Director of EPM Infrastructure at Rolta and specializes in infrastructure and architecture with an emphasis on Oracle EPM systems. Rob has over sixteen years of experience delivering enterprise solutions utilizing his expertise in systems architecture, performance testing, and capacity planning. He has been applying this experience to leading the successful implementation of large and complex enterprise systems including Hyperion / Oracle EPM environments. These implementations have spanned across industries and have included Fortune 250 retailers and financial services companies.

Although implied shares can improve performance by not storing the same data multiple times, it has many negative impacts. For example, implied shares cause problems in Hyperion Planning at the load level (level 0).  A parent with a storage property of Stored that has one child (or only one child that consolidates) will create an implied share.  This results in level 0 members being locked, preventing web form data entry.  In Essbase/Planning, the storage method of any parent with one child has to be changed to Never Share to allow user input.

For those of you who have been snake bitten by this, you will welcome a relatively unknown Essbase configuration setting in the Essbase configuration file (essbase.cfg). 

IMPLIED_SHARE [app_name] TRUE | FALSE

An admin can now change the default behavior of how single child parents react, regardless of whether the storage type is Never Share or Stored.  This can be done for all applications on a server, or select applications.

By passing a parameter of TRUE (the default value), the parent with one child, or has only one child that consolidates to the parent, is treated as an implied share.

By passing a parameter of FALSE, the default behavior of a parent with one child acts as if it was set to Never Share.

Take advantage of this Essbase configuration setting.  Remember, when you add it to the config file, make sure the Essbase service is restarted so it will take effect.