Palo Community Forum

Hello,

I am completely new to Palo and started to evaluate Palo for use in my business.
We would like to use Palo as server based database and run evaluations on our data via intranet using palo worksheets and lokal clients and just started to download and explore it two weeks ago.

I am using "Windows 7 Professional, SP1" as OS and MS Office 2007. I have downloaded the Palo Suite 3.2 and have first run Setup and installed Palo Excel and have afterwards run the PaloSuite IntegratedOs for Installing the Palo Suite.
After i worked a few days with the DEMO Database and rebuilding some of the datasheets from the MS Cockpit i started to create an database of my own and imported some data from Excel into a Palo database for evaluation.
It seemed to have worked, but i encountered some problems while creating a worksheet to evaluate the data.
I have searched the forum and looked through The Palo "Erste Schritte mit Palo for Excel" , Version 3.2 SR3 and the "Palo Handbuch, Stand 24.4.2009" for Help, but there are a list of problems i couldn´t fix:

1) At the Moment i am using two different working directories: C:\Programme\Jedox\Palo\data and C:\Programme\Jedox\Palo Suite\data, both containing their own palo.ini file and copy the database i created from the Palo Excel Working directory to the Palo Suite directory.
I do this by stopping Palo via Windows Task Manager and copying the sub directory containing my database and starting Palo again. However i would prefer to habe one working directory for both Palo Excel and Palo suite, so that i have not to copy the data. Under "Erste Schritte mit Palo for Excel", page 54 i found a description for doing so by using "Palo Web" from the Palo Menu in Excel and entering the name of the connection, ists URL, user name and password, security-token out of the file ...\Palo suite\httpd\app\etc\config.php into a mask and setting the connection as "default".
Unfortunately the Menu part "Palo Web" in Excel seems missing, so that i could not do so. While i found the CFG_SECRET entry in the config.php file and have got all the necessary data. i am not able to set this connection.
I presume that it is possible to do so by writing entries into the palo.ini file under C:\Programme\Jedox\Palo Suite\data, but i do not know for sure and i don´t know the syntax to do so.

2) I would like to use the dyna ranges from the palo web suite in a worksheet for creating evaluations, but somehow, i seem not able to create new worksheets in my working directory or import any file. I guessed this might be part of problem 1) and missing rights on the copied working directory, so i set the rights to read and write for my new working directory to everyone, but the problem continues.

3) While i can´t use the dyna range function from Palo Suite, i tried to make an array using an horizontal and an vertical subsets from my datacube to get an evaluation and used "insert function" in the array, but i only got an "Wert#" failure showing up. I included the database name, the cube name and the name of all needed dimensinions into the worksheet, but i seemed to have made an mistake or the "Splash Function" is not working properly. Is there an possibility to stop the "Splash Function" from guessing and telling it directly, in which dimension to look for the data?

4) I imported my data from an Excel-Worksheet into my database using an variation from the metadataimport.xls as described in the example on page 176 under 7.2.1.3 from the"Palo Handbuch, Stand 24.4.2009, without any consolidated elements for avoiding complications during the first tryouts. The data import seems to have worked, because the database Excel file and the database archived file have grown and i see data from my original excel file, when i try to export the data from my new database, but i am wondering, because there seems no growth or change within the other 23 datacubes in my working directory.
Is there any possibility to check, if the import really worked correct and if the data arrived where it should? Are there some of the database cubes supposed to grow, when new data is imported?

I am sorry ifi wrote a novel instead of a simple question, but i am really new to Palo and while searching the forum and reading the manual, i have not found the explanations to my problems. I am grateful for any help to any of my questions in form of an answer or an link to to the answer, for i guess that some of my questions may have been asked before, although i seemed unable to have found the answers in the forum.

It would be nice, if the forum contained a "Getting Started" or FAQ - Section, so newbies like me would not have to bother the experts with questions they probably have answered a dozen times before.

Thank you very much in advance for every answer.

Hello Kratzer,

thank you for your answers. They were very helpful.

I was able to get rid of some of my problems by now.

1) I solved the problem with the different working directories by reinstalling the Palo Suite without installing Palo Excel, so that i had
only one OLAP Server running and only on working directory.
When i later reinstalled PALO Excel, i discovered, that it is possible to instal PALO Excel without OLAP. After connecting PALO Excel with the
PALOL Suite OLAP Server running on localhost, i had only one working directory for PALO.

2) Without two OLAP Servers running and two different working directories, my second problem also vanished.

3) I think, i have misunderstood the concept of "splash function" and assumed that it was identically with the "guessing arguments" aka
"Argumente raten".
The "insert function/funktion einfügen" in combination with "Argumente raten" was very helpful. After looking again into the PALO Manual and editing the function everything worked well.

4) I have used the export data and exported my data into an excel sheet, so i could see that everything was were it belonged.


Thanks again for your help.
I have still a lot to learn about PALO, but i am getting forward now.