BusinessObjects Board

Any Oracle (Fixed) Assets universes out there?

Hi all–

We’re adding Oracle Fixed Assets to our Financials installation and will be looking at reporting options. Even in the old 5.x/6.x days, I don’t think there were any RDTs/Rapid Marts for Assets. Has anyone warehoused this data, or does anyone have a universe that queries it from the production database? I’m looking for lessons learned, etc.

Thanks!


Amy Miller :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-07)

There is an RDT for Fixed Assets. I really didn’t like it. All I remember about it is that I moved a table and there was another table hidden underneath it. I moved that table and there was another hidden under that. I can’t remember how many tables were stacked on top of each other, but it must have been at least 5.

I am going to eventually build a universe that will include Fixed Assets based upon Oracle 12 in either 6.5 or XIR2. How quickly do you need it?


Dennis W. Disney :us: (BOB member since 2003-09-17)

Here are some basic questions to ask before deciding on your plan of action.

  1. Have you customized your Oracle Financials instance?
  2. Do you have any 3rd party tools (such as CLear Orbit) on top of Oracle to manage the data capture and transactions?
  3. Do you have compliance related reporting deliverables from the Universe?
  4. Is you use case intense in leasing/depreciation analysis

If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, you’ll probable want to invest the time to properly design your universe(s) for performing reporting.

If you could provide a general (or detailed) use case, I can respond with more info.


bi_maestro :es: (BOB member since 2005-10-24)

Responses to both Dennis and bi_maestro:

Thanks for your posts!

Hmm - I didn’t see it on the download site anywhere - what version was it for? I’m just interested to see what they picked.

We’ll likely be goimg live with 11.5.10, and I really hope we’re on R2 by then, but it’s possible that we’d still be (gulp) at 5.1.4. I’ll be working on the project (including Warehousing some of the data) through much of this year. We’re still doing fit/gap analysis on how we’ll be using OFA - I was just curious to see what other folks have done.

  1. We’ve used Financials for 10 years, and of course have customized some. But we’ve already very successfully Warehoused GL data, and had universes reporting on GL, AP and PO modules. We just never implemented FA when we started. We’re hoping not to customize FA much, but of course will probably have to do a bit.

  2. No, our ETL is pretty much PL/SQL and works well.

  3. Not specifically, as yet.

  4. I don’t think we’ll be tracking leases. And the hope is our depreciation methodolgies will be relatively straightforward.

Thanks!
Amy


Amy Miller :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-07)

Hmm - I didn’t see it on the download site anywhere - what version was it for? I’m just interested to see what they picked.
[/quote]

A couple of years ago, I downloaded all the RDT’s - 19 in all. I never unzipped the Fixed Asset one. It’s name is “Ofa11i.zip”. I tried to find it on the site, but it’s not clear where RDT’s would be.

One of my clients asked me to assess the Fixed Asset RDT to see if it was a good starting point. I don’t remember much about it other than I thought it wasn’t worth trying to build on and they were better off starting from scratch. FA isn’t very complex. The RDT is probably about 10 years old and probably based on a version of pre-10.7 version of Oracle Applications.

We’ll likely be goimg live with 11.5.10, and I really hope we’re on R2 by then, but it’s possible that we’d still be (gulp) at 5.1.4. I’ll be working on the project (including Warehousing some of the data) through much of this year. We’re still doing fit/gap analysis on how we’ll be using OFA - I was just curious to see what other folks have done.
[/quote]

Being able to create derived tables make life SO MUCH BETTER when dealing with Oracle Finanicals. Otherwise, you have to create lots of views and it is generally a real hassle getting anything like views into Production. Some companies, it seems like you have to get the CEO to approve a view in Production. In others, it has to go up to God.

All Oracle Financials installations are unique and any generic universe should be customized for how Fixed Assets (or any other module) is being used at your company. However, some installations are more unique than others. Also, you really need to look at what the accountants are doing in Excel with the data. The one client that I did build a Fixed Assets universe for, they had an accountant who once a year spent hours and hours developing a 36 month depreciation project to be used in budgeting. The biggest success of that project was enabling the client to generate that projection within minutes any time they wanted.

I prefer reporting directly against the Production database. Most people have boxes far larger than what they need to support the OLTP demands and everyone wants up-to-the-minute information.


Dennis W. Disney :us: (BOB member since 2003-09-17)

Fixed Asset Universe

Regards

Ishaq


ishaqbaig (BOB member since 2009-03-28)

Interesting universe. At first, I guessed that you had updated the RDT Fixed Assets universe, but after comparing it to the RDT, it looks like you built yours from scratch. I personally find the universe layout confusing and would recommend that you read my presentation on designing OLTP universes.

For one of my clients, I build a FA universe where you specify the period you want the data as of. That was really challenging to do as Oracle stores the data in ways that is not friendly to that at all.


Dennis W. Disney :us: (BOB member since 2003-09-17)

Hi Dennis,

please share the link for the presentation that you’re referring.

Thanks.


forum_usr (BOB member since 2012-02-15)

Link to presentation


Dennis W. Disney :us: (BOB member since 2003-09-17)

Thanks.


forum_usr (BOB member since 2012-02-15)