ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE  MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

HFM 11.1.2.4 NEW FEATURES


As many of you may already have heard, the Oracle EPM release 11.1.2.4 was made available on Oracle Technology Network earlier this week. Social media has been abuzz with activity since and many bloggers have already written posts about all the new features. Instead of making another set of installation screenshots, I wanted to take a closer look at Hyperion Financial Management as HFM is the product that has gone through most changes in this version.

As rumored a long time ago, HFM 11.1.2.4 has been ported to Java and is now "platform independent" software. At the moment this means that you can install HFM on Windows Server and on Oracle Exalytics. Currently there is no support for commodity Linux servers which is a pity... Hopefully Oracle will consider adding this possilibity in the future as it would open interesting new possibilities for on-premise installations.


Most notable new features are:
  • Reworked HFM engine:
    • HFM application server components implemented in Java. HFM no longer relies on Windows technologies like IIS and DCOM.
    • Oracle reports that HFM performance is improved for consolidations and data retrieval tasks due to optimizations in the datasource engine. The user interface has also been optimized for better responsiveness.
  • Most of the HFM utility programs are not available in this version anymore. See more details about the utilities later in this post.
  • Configuration Settings: Memory parameters and other HFM application server settings have been moved to the web interface. The settings are now stored in the HFM database.
  • New web based profile editor for creating .PER files (in case you want to use "classic" HFM administration for creating applications)
  • Reordering Tabs: Nice small tweak to the web user interface - you can move around tabs (forms, grids, system reports etc.) that are open in an HFM application in Workspace
  • Browser support: Internet Explorer 9, 10, 11 and Firefox 31 ESR (note that support for IE8 has been dropped)
  • Supported server platforms: Windows Server 2008 and 2012 (including all SP levels and R2), Oracle Exalytics
  • Database server support updated with Oracle 12.1.0.1+ and MS SQL Server 2012