Just what is Hyperion? I could have called this jason’s essbase blog and for my purposes it’d be about the same thing. The definition of the Hyperion software has evolved over the years. Generally speaking, Hyperion refers to a suite of enterprise performance management software currently owned and updated by Oracle. The term Hyperion is largely synonymous with Essbase. At it’s core, the main thing that Essbase brings to the table is a powerful analytic engine that is multi-dimensional. It can store, process, and report an staggering amounts of data, usually quickly, where relational databases might choke.

For my part, I first came to use and develop Essbase in 2005. I came to know Essbase as an OLAP tool. This stands in contrast to an OLTP. The term OLAP more or less gave way to business intelligence (BI), which has seemingly given way to enterprise performance management (EPM). I still tend to think of Essbase as an OLAP tool as opposed to thinking of it as EPM, but that’s largely because I’m stubborn.