Accessing EAS 7.1.3 locally

Question

Hi,<BR><BR>A colleague of mine is going abroad on business and she needs to be able to have access to EAS 7.1.3 to load and re-pull data, but our IT dept have said that this is not possible. We know we have the possibility to dial in but we need to be able to use it without being connected to the server, just running on a PC. I wondered if anyone on here knows of a way round this. It's only one database that is needed for this purpose??<BR><BR>Any help will be really appreciated<BR><BR>Many Thanks<BR>Sarah

Answer 1

I don't know whether this will help or not, but it is possible to put an EAS server on a PC as well as a console. But then that server would still have to talk to the Essbase server, but your IT department might be willing to open the ports for Essbase rather than EAS. On the other hand, the I/O traffic between EAS and Essbase might be lighter than that between the EAS console and server.<BR><BR>The question that needs to be addressed is the nature of your dialup connection. If it's a true VPN, it would not be technically difficult to allow EAS to communicate over a remote connection. With the right VPN software, worldwide travel and work are easily handled. Worldwide telephone service then becomes the difficuly, but internet access and a VPN can even avoid flaky telephones.<BR><BR>The difficulty is that what is technically possible may be politically difficult or impossible. When IT says it can't do something, the question is, "Why?" One answer is always technical, another has to do with network and system security, another breaks down to turf and politics. It may be that IT doesn't want to put in a process that it can support 24/7 for a remote user. Is your traveller using a company owned laptop with EAS console on it? If not, use of a personal system might be prohibited by IT policy. If your company does not have a secure VPN setup, that is a big issue. Likewise, some companies maintain remote access for mainfarme applications and not network applications -- so Essbase might be outside the scope of remote access. There also might be remote authentication issues.<BR><BR>One solution might be to automate the loads with MAXL and not even use EAS for loading. Data pulls can be done with Excel/VBA or MAXL and MDX or Essbase report scripts. It may be possible that someone who is staying in the office can do the database work and email the results to your traveller. If your traveller is going to be touching base at a company office overseas, possibly the access can be made available at the office.<BR><BR>This probably raises more questions than answers, but there are a lot of things to consider in remote access. While the technology can be easy to install, installing it securely is the issue that need be addressed. If your collegue is travelling regularly, a different level of effort is needed than might be for one who travels rarely. I've used Essbase and EAS remotely, so I know that it is possible. And in previous positions, I had regular users in Europe and the British Isles many of whome accessed Essbase from their offices. <BR><BR>One solution that may or may not be available now is Personal Essbase. I hade a sales force with personal essbase on their laptops and provided them with weekly data loads so that they could have access to essbase data without having to have a network connection. I also had region controllers who cut back on their use of personal essbase when the company adopted a VPN solution.<BR><BR>So it's technically possible, but there are a lot of issues to be addressed. In my experience, working through the process with the network and systems folks is more work than the actual technical part of the solution.