How to encrypt Oracle Essbase MaxL Script for enhanced security? 3 Simple Steps

Oracle Essbase is a robust multidimensional database management system that is commonly used for business analysis and reporting. While it provides comprehensive security capabilities to safeguard data at rest and in transit, one component of security that is sometimes overlooked is securing MaxL scripts. MaxL (Multidimensional Analysis Scripting Language) scripts are used to automate Essbase administration duties, and they must be safeguarded against unauthorized access or modification.

In this blog post, we’ll look at how to encrypt Oracle Essbase MaxL scripts to improve the security of your system.

Being an Oracle Essbase developer isn’t an easy task. Isn’t it???

The utility that comes with the delivered Hyperion packages looks pretty straightforward at once but technically it’s not an easy walk in the park. There are multiple challenges associated with managing the Essbase applications and developing the code and the biggest nightmare is losing it inadvertently. When it comes to Filters, MaxL script, or for that matter any security aspect of Essbase, it’s a challenge for developers.

MaxL is a command line tool that Essbase developers use to perform their tasks. It’s a utility that needs to be installed in the Essbase server and set up as per the server preferences. Users develop MaxL scripts to automate their tasks in Essbase and coding is quite straightforward with the delivered set of MaxL commands that Oracle provides. MaxL scripts require a username and password to be passed as a prompt or it can be hardcoded into a script.

Fair to say that this isn’t a good idea as anybody who has access to the script could read your username and password and could pose a possible threat to security. There could be numerous debates around it as not everyone has access to servers to do it etc etc. But the risk is a risk. It may occur anytime and you could lose all your data plus what’s the problem if you already have functionality that provides you with encryption and keeps your things safe?

Why Oracle Essbase MaxL encryption is required?

Before beginning the encryption process, it is critical to understand why encrypting MaxL scripts is so important:

MaxL scripts may contain sensitive data, such as database credentials or proprietary business logic. Encrypting them protects this data from unauthorized access.

Integrity: Encryption helps ensure that malicious actors do not tamper with or alter MaxL scripts, preserving the integrity of your automated operations.

Compliance: In some businesses, regulatory regulations require sensitive data and scripts to be protected. Encryption assists you in meeting these regulatory requirements.

So here we go…!!!

Login to the Maxl first.

Open a command prompt as an Administrator and issue the command “essmsh -gk”. This will create a public and private key for your Essbase server.

C:\Users\Administrator>essmsh -gk

 Essbase MaxL Shell - Release 9.3.1 (ESB9.3.1.0.0B181)
 Copyright (c) 2000, 2007, Oracle and/or its affiliates.
 All rights reserved.
  
 Public Key for Encryption: 25159,850102129
 Private Key for Decryption: 240764119,850102129

  MaxL Shell completed

The Public key will be used for encrypting the MaxL and the Private key to decrypt it. So as an example, I’m using a MaxL which is a simple login MaxL.

spool on to 'C:\\Hyperion\\MaxL_Logs\\login.log';
login admin password on localhost;
spool off;
logout;
exit;

Issue the command essmsh -E to encrypt the MaxL script.

essmsh -E "c:\Users\Administrator\Documents\My Data\Maxl &
Shell scripts\login.txt" 25159,850102129

After the command is successfully completed, you’ll now have a file with a .txts extension (this may vary with the extension that you are using for the MaxL, if you are using .mxl then it’ll be .mxls). The content of the .txts file is,

spool on to 'C:\\Hyperion\\MaxL_Logs\\login.log';
login $key 582033048551405370673192053444359748281400644 $key 010812008451704913969265807220406317 on localhost;
spool off;
logout;
exit;

Note: You cannot encrypt anything other than usernames and passwords. Another word of caution to all those who are using Essbase Studio-generated MaxL scripts in automation, you cannot encrypt those ones.

Read another article on How to Change DRM Admin Password to avoid any compromises in the security.

Also, read the official Oracle documentation thoroughly about Encryption in Essbase.