If you are an administrator performing an initial installation of Dodeca at your company, you will need to prepare the relational database store used by Dodeca. The easiest way to assure Dodeca is configured properly is to create and use the sample application that is shipped with the Dodeca Framework. To create the sample application, follow these steps:
- Launch the "Application Setup Utility" from the Start Menu by double-clicking its entry under Applied OLAP\Dodeca Framework 8.0.4.37\Utilities.
- Enter your application server information into the appropriate fields. This information will match the DeploymentUrl parameter from the ClickOnce Prep Utility.
- Press 'Next' and the Application Setup Utility will examine the database to look for the required tables. If this is the first time Dodeca has been configured to run against the relational database repository, the database schema validation will fail. When this happens, press 'Update Database Schema' and Dodeca will create the necessary tables in the database.
Warning
The Schema update will drop and recreate all of the tables Dodeca requires. If the schema tables already exist and have data in them, that data will be lost. Unless this is a first-time installation of Dodeca, we recommend backing up those tables before proceeding.
- Confirm the update database schema by pressing 'OK' and then press 'Next'.
Note
If you press 'Back' and then 'Next' again after updating the database schema, the server will test your table structure again.
- Once the tables are present, the next step is to enter a unique tenant keyword. The unique tenant keyword typically used for the sample application is 'SAMPLE'. Enter this keyword into the appropriate textbox and press 'Next'.
Note
By convention, tenant keywords and application IDs are normally expressed in all capital letters with only alphanumeric characters and no spaces.
- Next, import the metadata into the database by pressing 'Import Metadata from Local Zip File'.
- Locate the sample.zip file in the \metadata subdirectory and press 'Open'.
- On the 'Import Metadata from Local Zip File' form, click the checkbox in the title row of the grid to select all of the metadata in the sample.zip file.
- Press 'Import' and the Application Setup Utility will populate the tables in the database with the appropriate metadata.
- Once the import is complete, press 'Close' to exit the 'Import Metadata from Local Zip File' form and press the 'Next' button to proceed to the next screen.
- Optionally, choose a module to update. Modules are Dodeca extensions that are stored in the metadata. Normally you will not need to do anything at this step unless directed by Applied OLAP technical support personnel, so go ahead and press 'Next'.
- Click the radio button entitled 'Select an existing application from tenant "SAMPLE"' and select the 'ADMIN' Application ID to view, then click 'Next'.
- No modifications need to be made to the 'ADMIN' application settings. Press 'Next'.
- At this point, you have completed the sample application setup. To install the application, you will use the ClickOnce URL.
- Click on the URL in the dialog to install the Dodeca client on your computer and start the ADMIN application. Initially, the 'Launching Application' dialog will display while ClickOnce deployment determines if the Dodeca application has been installed on your desktop.
Note
If you wish to launch Dodeca using a browser other than Internet Explorer, you will need to install a ClickOnce extension/plugin. For Firefox, see the Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant extension. For Chrome, see the third-party ClickOnce for Google Chrome extension.
If the Dodeca application has not yet been run on your desktop, you will see the following installation dialog.
Press the 'Run' button to install and run the Dodeca client.
Note
The 'Publisher' field will reflect the name of the organization who owns the digital signing key. If you used the temporary key provided by Applied OLAP, the 'Publisher' value will be 'Unknown Publisher' (because it is a self-signed key).
The installation will proceed and update its progress in the dialog. The amount of time required to install Dodeca on a client workstation will vary based on your network speed.
Note
This installation occurs only the first time the application is run.
Upon completion of the download/installation, the Dodeca splash screen will be displayed, indicating the startup of the Dodeca Smart Client.
Congratulations! You have successfully launched the Dodeca Smart Client.
- Once in the ADMIN application (assuming you have the Essbase Sample/Basic and Demo/Basic sample databases available), you need to configure the location of your Essbase services. To configure those services, select 'Admin' from the menu, and then select 'Essbase Connections' to open the Essbase Connections metadata editor.
- Select the 'Sample Basic' connection and modify the 'ServletPath' and (Essbase) Server properties to point to the proper location.
- Once you have modified the properties, click the 'Commit' button to store the changes in the metadata repository on the server.
- Next, test the functionality by opening the 'Adhoc Analysis' view which is configured to use the Sample Basic connection. To open the view, click on the 'Adhoc' category in the View Selector pane to expand open the 'Adhoc' category. Then click on the 'Adhoc Analysis' view to launch it.
- Enter your username and password and press 'OK'. The 'Adhoc Analysis' view will connect to Essbase and bring back the initial retrieve.
Now that you have successfully tested your client and server setup, you can start authoring your own applications. The first thing you will need to do is choose a tenant keyword for use with your application. The tenant key is used to segregate sets of applications within the metadata server. For example, if you intend to implement a forecasting application and a retail merchandise planning system for your company (ABC, Inc.), you may want to use multiple tenant keys to separate the metadata for your different applications. You could, for example, decide to use ABCForecast and ABCMerchPlan for your tenant keys. When you create your applications, the metadata for the application(s) you create will be keyed in the database by each of these values. These applications are completely isolated from each other even if you create and access them using the same Dodeca metadata server.
Once you have decided upon a tenant key, you can re-run the Application Setup Utility to create the new tenant and import seed metadata to start your application. Typically, you will import the smart client applications, a hierarchy, and the toolbar configurations from the Metadata Starter Kit, located under the \metadata subdirectory as a starting point for your next application. To start building your application for a specific tenant, use the ClickOnce URL generated by the Application Setup Utility to pass your chosen tenant key to the Dodeca metadata servlet, starting a Dodeca session. The tenant key is read from the query string arguments and passed to the metadata servlet as part of each request.