I have been working with Oracle Essbase since 1993.

Prior to that, I spent three years working for EDS.

Yeah, COBOL and JCL.

J&J, LANs, and PC’s

In 1988, I accepted an offer from Johnson & Johnson. While there, I was introduced to Comshare and System W. Then, LANs and PC’s began to take over the corporate IT world. My skillset gradually evolved in that direction.

I learned to program in Visual Basic, and loved it.

In 1993, the J&J company I was working for merged with another J&J company, and for various reasons, I “took the package,” and became self-employed. I haven’t had a paycheck since.

Enter Essbase

My first client was SmithKline Beecham, in Philadelphia, where I worked for two years. That’s where I was introduced to Essbase.

At the time, it was Arbor Software’s Essbase. It could easily be installed on a server by feeding a dozen or so 5-1/4″ floppy disks into the disk drive.

The primary front end, then as now, was Microsoft Excel. Most of my clients over the years have had at least one custom VBA application on the front end of their Essbase infrastructure.

Eventually, Arbor’s Essbase became Hyperion Essbase, and later, Oracle Essbase.

I weathered those transitional storms, and never left the Essbase world behind.

It really is a great product.

If you have read this far, I presume you know about esscmd scripts, MaxL, reports, calc scripts, rules files, batch files and shell scripts, Perl, and even Rexx. I have done quite a bit of all of that.

My clients have included companies such as Johnson & Johnson, SmithKline Beecham, and the New York Times, as well as the US Navy.