Cloud IDE for FDMEE Scripting. Make it your friend!

It has been a hard month...too busy with customers, surgery to pull put my wisdom teeth, recovering from ultra trail marathon... at least we still enjoy summer time in Malaga!

Today I would like to introduce some tools that can be useful for you to learn the scripting languages of FDMEE:

• Jython
• SQL

We all have heard about Cloud and Cloud...did you know there are IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) in the Cloud?

What is that? I will try to make it simple. It's a web where you can partially test your FDMEE scripts.

Why I say partially? Because don't think you are going to copy&paste your script, click Run, and voilà. 

But what about situations where you need to build an import script to parse data lines to get the account, or convert string to dates, or create a #SQL mapping which strips source Entity? These tools can help you to reduce time cost of implementation. Sometimes you need to run the import step 10 times to get your import script working and that makes me crazy.

I still need to say that I prefer Notepad++ to run my unit tests but Cloud IDEs are also a good tool.

Today I will show you how you can use Python Fiddle to easily test string operations for your FDMEE scripts.

Navigate to http://pythonfiddle.com/
Navigate to the site and enjoy. See what it can offer like some code snippets that may be useful for you but what I would suggest is to initially think of this site as a learning place.

Create your login
You can use your Gmail account or social network accounts:

Your first example
So I need to parse the entity code from my source file and not sure about how to do it. You could start building your script, running the import, fixing the script, running the import, see results..
Let's use the Cloud IDE for the following case:

• My source Entity looks like XXXX-YYY-PLANTN
• I want to import into FDMEE the value XXXX_PLANTN

As you can see I have divided the script in two parts:

• The function for my import script
• Split source Field and get first and third item (indexed starts at 0)
• sField.split("-") will return a list of three elements ["XXXX","YYY","PLANTN"]
• If use [n] to get the nth element
• We use "+" operator to concatenate
• Test code for sample source Entity field and source Record. I have used print to show the result in the bottom panel.

What is the objective?

• Run the script
• Fix syntax errors
• If we have unexpected result, fix the script and try again
• Everything works? Copy & Paste the function definition into your import script and run a final test with the entire source file.

In the example below we get a syntax error when we click Run: we forgot to close the string with "

Once I have fixed my script I get what I wanted: 0000_PLANT1

You can also save your script and share with other users if you wish:

This can be useful if you want to save all your code snippets in case you need to reuse them. Once it is saved you can always access to your Dashboard and open your script:

Some additional notes
As always, don't forget FDMEE uses Jython so it may be that some functions or coding solutions may not be available for Jython and they are for Python. In theory you can use Python 2.5.1 based code in your Event and Custom Scripts. However as explained in previous posts, Import Scripts uses Jython 2.2.1.

Regarding SQL, let's say that you don't have access to any SQL tool and you cannot test the SQL query you are going to use either in your BefImport for Open Interface Adapter or in a mapping script. There are also Cloud IDEs for SQL like http://sqlfiddle.com. You can define your own database/tables online and import some sample data there.

Once you get into advance mode you may prefer to use Eclipse or Notepad++ but at least you know there are other options to speed up your learning process and implementation time.

Other Cloud IDEs? Sure. And it's now time for you to select your preferred one. In this site you have a good review of different ones.

Enjoy!

ODTUG Board Of Directors Election

Hi all,

2014 has been the year in which I finally jumped to the other size of the pond. There have been lot of people making this possible besides me :-) but I wanted to thank you ODTUG for opening their arms and make me feel as part of the family.
Now it's time to vote for the ODTUG board! 4 positions for 22 candidates. I'm sure all of them are fantastic and will put all their effort making ODTUG even better for all of us. Cameron, Tim,... and Gary who is a really strong candidate and has demonstrated his value to this group
Vote here!

Tips & Tricks: Using filter on Locations when creating HSS Groups

Accidental discoveries. That's how I would define it.

Since old times we have had amazing accidental discoveries that have made our life easier & better: penicillin, microwave, velcro, teflon, vulcanized rubber, coca-cola, viagra...

My discovery is not as important as the ones I mentioned (I wish) but it can help you to mitigate some of the drawbacks of new Location Security functionality in FDMEE. Remember that this is just something that may or not be helpful for you. the aim is just to share a funny finding.

Before starting, just to confirm that location security is optional. You will be asked to enable location security when you navigate to Security Settings > Tab Location Security:

A brief introduction about Location Security
I'm sure you were disappointed with the way security was working in FDM Classic. Provisioning users in HSS (Hyperion Shared Services), then going to FDM User Security, add the user, select which locations he had access, bla bla

In FDMEE, Oracle tried to get rid of this long process and re-design the location security so you just have to add users to groups in HSS and forget managing user security in FDMEE as well.
In a nutshell, you define and trigger the creation of HSS groups from FDMEE Security Settings, then provision users to these groups, and that's all. FDMEE will do the rest.

But these groups are particular...why? they have specific naming convention defined from FDMEE:
PREFIX_LOCATIONAME_SUFFIX
At run-time, FDMEE will check the groups the user accessing belongs to in order to determine which locations he has access. This is how new location security works.

I have to say that I like the way the new Location Security is managed but I don't like how the security groups are created in HSS. I don't like this functionality not being as flexible as expected. Number of groups created can explode in Shared Services as FDMEE creates groups for all locations.

How it works?

Did you get it? Let me provide some notes about the process.

1. Navigate to Setup Tab > Security Settings > Location Security Tab (only admins or roles having access to Security Settings). Then setup in the templates for the HSS Groups based on your requirements:

A template has:
- Prefix: any but don't use location names as prefix
- Suffix: any
- Roles assigned: check the roles you want to assign to the HSS group. You may need to configure Role Security as well if required.

2. When we click on Maintain User Group, FDMEE will create one group in HSS for each template|location combination. In other words, let's say that we have 3 templates and 200 locations. FDMEE will create 3*200 groups in HSS...

The information message showed to the user is clear enough:

In the example above we have 3 templates for HSS groups and many locations. What is the result? something as follows:

As you can see, you may have many groups that you don't need. Some of the names may sound senseless due to your prefix and suffix definition so you can just leave or remove them. If you remove them, they will be re-created from FDMEE when you click again...

BTW, did I say you need to be HSS admin to create groups from FDMEE?

You have to.

3. We have a user named TyrionLannister who only needs access to location SAPECC_NEWGL_HFM having Data Integration role.

I will add Tyrion to HSS group FDMEE_SAPECC_NEWGL_HFM_Data Integration:

4. Tyrion accesses FDMEE and try to select locations from the POV:

As expected, he has only access to location SAPECC_NEWGL_HFM_Data Integration.

What FDMEE does?
If you have a look to the ERPIntegrator log you will see what FDMEE does to manage location security:

What about having a user assigned to more than one group?
If user belongs to HSS group MyPrefix1_LOCATIONA_MySuffix1 and MyPrefix2_LOCATIONB_MySuffix2, he will have access to LocationA with the roles assigned to template MyPrefix1_<LOCATION>_MySuffix1 and to LocationB with the roles assigned to template MyPrefix2_<LOCATION>_MySuffix2.

Nice to have
In my opinion the approach is much better than FDM's one but, as I already said, the way groups are managed/created could be enhanced. I know Oracle is working on that but here are my recommendations.

• When the administrator click Maintain User Group, he should be able to select which locations he wants to create the groups for
• All Locations
• Filter locations like "Locations starting with", "Locations containing with"...
• Select location one by one
• These options should be available for each group template or enable administrator to maintain user groups only for templates selected in the grid.

What do you think?

Accidental discovery
And now let's go to what I wanted to tell. One day I was playing with Quick Search filters in the Location Page and I navigated to Security Settings page without removing the filters.

What happened when I created my group templates and clicked Maintain User Groups? It's better you see it. If we go to HSS and search for the groups having prefix SAPBW and suffix FILTERED:

The group template was only applied to locations filtered in the Locations page!

Unfortunately, there is still one issue: 

As you can see, all groups were created even for the filtered locations. Maybe if Oracle adds a filter to Security Settings group we are done :-)

BTW, there is a technical reason of this happening. The process of creating user groups is using an internal list for the locations and that list is the list of locations shown in the Locations page.

That's all my folks! We will discuss another day about role overlapping between users and groups, and more details about location security.

Enjoy!