Hyperion Financial Management- Unable to create application due to “TNS: could not resolve the connect identifier specified”

Author: - Sanjay Purohit

Audience:  Hyperion Solution Architects and Hyperion Database Administrator.

I installed Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) on my server and was very excited to have my own dedicated HFM server. I really did not find any difficulty during installation and configuration.  The entire process went smooth and I was wondering why I did not encounter an error!! I should have got at least one. My installation was single server windows 2008(R2) installation. All the components were in same box. I also installed Oracle Database 11g on the same windows machine and did not realize the possible implication/setting with HFM. The HFM needs Oracle Database client to be installed on same server to connect to relation repositories but I had database on same server so thought not to install clients. I am not relation database person therefore It took me long time to figure out the exact relationship between Hyperion installed client and oracle home.  I did not realize that if I don’t install clients I have to use existing clients. After finishing up configuration I tried to create a new application using sample application and finally got an error!!!

Error

During the application creation you might encountered an error “TNS: could not resolve the connect identifier specified“. 

I goggled but could not find any specific to HFM since it’s an Oracle Database related error; most of the searches were database related. Then I finally decided to dig into Oracle installation and configuration guide to get the solution.  

REASON

Hyperion Financial Management requires database client to be installed on same server. EPM installation also installs Oracle client by default if you install HFM. However it‘s optional.  The existing installed client can be used.  Oracle HFM supports both the methods. The Oracle Database clients establish connection between HFM and Oracle Database. Please refer below URl for more details:-

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E40248_01/epm.1112/epm_install/frameset.htm?ch03s04s01s07.html

 I will demonstrate the process of using existing client to create HFM application.

solution

HFM configuration process populates tnsnames.ora files file under the EPM_ORACLE_INSTANCE/user_projects/config/dbclient/tnsnames location. This file contains the HFM configuration TNS entries

The goal is to move the above TNS entries to existing database client so it can leverage both. We will copy above TNS entries to existing tnsname.ora files and the files should look like below.  The location of tnsname.ora can be different depending on version of make or version of database

After making the changes you will need to restart HFM services.  You should be able to create application with no error

Note:- The Location is

C:\Hyperiondb\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1\NETWORK\ADMIN

C:\OracleHyp\Middleware\user_projects\config\dbclient