Copy Application Utility For HFM 11.1.2.4 - Well, sort of...
Oracle has just released a new patch for Financial Management 11.1.2.3. The patch delivers what many (if not all) customers who have adopted the latest HFM release have been asking for: a version of the Copy Application utility that works with HFM 11.1.2.4. The following actions are possible using the updated utility:
Copy HFM applications from older release (11.1.2.x) to 11.1.2.4. The Upgrade Applications taks must be performed in EPM System Configurator afterwards.
The utility included in the PSE is the same old Windows program that has been bundled with HFM for ages. The only real change is that is has been fixed to correctly handle the APPNAME_CC_LOCKtables used by latest HFM versions. Oracle must have been in a hurry to re-release the tool though because copying HFM 11.1.2.4 applications has not been made very convenient:
"After successfully copying the application to the source DB, the source HSX_DATASOURCES table needs to be manually updated in order to add the application in Consolidation Administration."The reason why this manual database tweak is required is that there is a new column added to the HSX_DATASOURCES table in HFM 11.1.2.4. I can't imagine that detecting the HFM version and using the correct INSERT statement would have been that hard a task to accomplish... But this is what we have to work with right now. You can use the following SQL statement to add your newly copied application so HFM will detect it (in case an application didn't already exist by the same name):
INSERT INTO HSX_DATASOURCES(product,appname,description,dsn,adminmode) VALUES ('Financial Management','APPNAME','Application description here','',0);
As pointed out by Marc Reuter, another option is to create an empty application in the destination environment and use this application as the target. This way you can skip the manual step of running the SQL statement.
Please also note that this version of CopyApp requires HFM patch level 11.1.2.4.100 or higher. I tested the utility by copying an application between two environments running HFM 11.1.2.4.101 and it did the job without any apparent hitches. The need to manually tinker with the database is annoying but compared to the Application Snapshot feature the old utility is still a lot faster and more reliable.
Note: When using this CopyApp version to copy HFM applications from an older release you still need to run EPM System Configurator to upgrade the application tables to the latest version!