Groovy is groovy
Wednesday, 11 October 2023
Groovy is a general-purpose scripting language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and can essentially be viewed as a superset of Java. This doesn't sound particularly groovy in itself, but over the past year or so, we found many experience-enhancing applications for our clients running Oracle's Enterprise EPM platform.
- Advanced form formatting is the feature we like the most when wanting certain line items to become read-only without having to separate those lines in the form definition. For example, the form definition could have all descendants of operating expenses in the row and by running a groovy script on form load, we can make certain line items of the data entry form read-only, e.g. those populated by more detailed business models, e.g. workforce, revenue or capex models.
- Performance improvement is achieved by groovy-driven focused aggregations that only aggregate data changed in a data entry form. A standard calculation script could not identify changed data on a form.
- Triggering different kinds of artefacts in a single groovy rule that would otherwise require multiple steps or not be accessible for a basic user type. An example would be a groovy rule that executes a calc script and triggers a data push in a single step or enables a data integration job that otherwise could only be triggered by an administrator or power user.
There are other use cases for Groovy, such as advanced validations before data is saved on a form (and committed to a cube) or the update of metadata by non-admin users, e.g. changing the attribute of a cost centre from active to inactive or creating a new product for planning purposes that does not yet exist in the general ledger.
Subscribing to the enterprise edition (as opposed to the standard edition) of Oracle's Enterprise Performance Management platform has many other benefits than access to Groovy. You can watch Oracle's tutorial explaining these or contact us to determine what is right for your organisation.
