Excel 2010 64bit Compatability, with CX 10.2.1

[winsonlee]

In reference to this post http://www.tm1forum.com/viewtopic.php?p=45284 and http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocente ... 4816214693

MS office 2010 64 bit should be supported.

When i install Xcelerator, i get the following error msg INS-ERR-0075 The following prerequisites are missing. Please cancel this installation at the first opportunity and install them. "32-bit editions of Microsoft Office Excel 2007 or above"

Did anyone manage to get Xcelerator installed with MS office 2010 64 bit installed ?

[tomok]

MS office 2010 64 bit should be supported.

Where exactly in those two links did you see it mentioned that the 64-bit version of Office works with CX?

[declanr]

Perspectives is based on some very old stuff; hence whether you are using TM1 or CX it just isn't capable of working with 64-bit excel.
Cafe works with 64-bit excel but can't remember off the top of my head whether or not that is included with CX and even if it is; you don't get half of the perspectives functionality with it.

I saw a light touch view of the TM1 roadmap from IBM on thursday (the sort that has no detail and doesn't require NDAs) - it mentioned that 64-bit excel compatability is in their long term plans. On a complete guess however I would assume that this just means they will incorporate more perspectives functionality into cafe as time goes on; or possibly stick parts of both into a tool with a different name... either way I wouldn't be holding my breath for it.

As I understand it; making perspectives compatible with 64-bit excel would essentially need a complete rebuild and with the introduction of Cafe and the fact they haven't already done it - I doubt they will ever do that. My opinion is that they will just work on improving cafe over the next few releases and phase out perspectives when/if they ever get to a point that people are happy to use cafe instead; that seems a long way off but I doubt we will see any significant alterations to perspectives in that time.

[Alan Kirk]

MS office 2010 64 bit should be supported.

Where exactly in those two links did you see it mentioned that the 64-bit version of Office works with CX?

Not openly, but in the second link there is a pop-up in the Prerequisites link that is as misleading as all getout and is recorded below for the sake of posterity in case they change it:

VersionOfOffice.jpg (130.87 KiB) Viewed 7118 times

I don't think it's too unreasonable to believe that "bit version of Office... must match the bit version of Cognos" implies that if you're running 64 bit Cognos, well then, you go right ahead and use 64 bit Office, compadre!

Except that below that we have "Supported Software" links. (Links which interestingly list only "2010" and "XP" and not that abomination 2007 or the fine but overtaken by time 2003, but I suppose that those are implied.) When you click on those pop-ups, then there you will find a note that "only the 32 bit version is supported".

I've noticed some "get with the times" criticism of IBM over this but to be honest I don't think it's justified in this case. I haven't been able to find any useful statistics on 32 bit vs 64 bit usage, though it's worth noting that Statcounter is still registering over 17% of non-mobile computers running XP, and it's for sure that very few of those are 64 bit. (And that a lot of them are in a corporate environment.) Probably most newer O/S installations are 64 bit but it's a fair bet that a chunk of the (51%) of Win 7 O/S's are still on 32 bit as well. Write your code for 64 bit and you lose all of those people as a potential market. Write your code for 32 bit and you can sell into both the 32 and 64 bit spaces.

And what's the benefit of using the 64 bit Office? Well, it can access more memory; you're no longer constrained by the 2GB limit. Which raises the question "what the h3ll are you doing in Office that requires more than 2 GB of memory?" Access? Yeah, sure... but if that's the case you kick its slow-moving butt to the kerb and go SQL Server. And you might get a little more speed depending on a whole buncha factors. With applications like Photoshop which is always pushing maths out on the bleeding edge to model light it's worth it. With the TM1 server which needs prodigious amounts of memory it's worth it. With Office, not so much on the benefits side.

On the down side?

A whole raft of useful Excel add-ins stop working when you go the 64 bit route, and not just Perspectives.

And the big one... yeah, sure, 64 bit Office will be able to access more memory but with double-the-size pointers it will consume more memory as well. A lot more memory. And while that may be less of an issue with decent hardware, in the corporate space in particular you have vendors who will cut to the bone to make their profit margins and continue to ship units, particularly notebooks, with only 4GB of RAM to keep the production cost down another 50 to 100 bucks (at most). Walk through any "box shifter" store and browse through the notebooks on offer; 4 Gig, 4 Gig, 4 Gig, Oh wow, 8 Gig... and it has a $300 price premium, that's nice. 4 Gig, 4 Gig...

All this considered I suspect that 32 bit Office will remain the dominant one for quite a while to come (as will be the case with most non-specialist applications, I think) simply because there's little up side and a fair amount of down side to migrating. Consequently I'm not blaming IBM for not putting 64 bit Office support at the forefront of their plans.

[declanr]

Agree with absolutely everything Alan has said above; except for the point that IBM are not putting 64-bit compatability at the forefront of their plans; since to some extent they have already done that with Cafe.

I don't expect many people to use Cafe for a while as yet but in the event that IBM can add some real perspectives functionality into the mix; it seems common sense that will end up being the way things go.

The roadmap I saw mentioned hopefully at some point being able to build websheets from within Cafe; run processes and bring in something similar to the perspectives TM1 formulas; if it is able to do all that while also being a bit more flexible in how you build the sheets (like perspectives is)... then I will be happy to start using it instead (when you factor in the WAN performance.)

I caveat this (since the forum seems to have a way of only taking away half the points) with the fact that I am not by any means an advocate of dropping perspectives for Cafe at this point in time. If at a future point in time I can do everything I can in perspectives whilst using Cafe; then I'd happily use that instead.

P.S. I don't expect this to happen for a few more versions as yet; and this is all just speculation at the moment - the roadmap was more a view of things that IBM may like to do with TM1 in the future as opposed to what they are actually going to do.

[Gabor]

As thoughts are able to move mountains, when I saw the roadmap, I had a new generation of the ingenious Perspectives in my mind and solving the todays WAN issue was just a byproduct of a 64-bit Perspectives reprogramming.

[winsonlee]

I have missed the info written on the"Notes" and when I saw the error msg mentioning "32-bit editions of Microsoft Office Excel 2007 or above", i I didn't realize the "Above" is referring to the office version and not the bits . After reading through the info posted by you guys, now it make more sense now. Would like to clarify on the following statement mentioning, "If you are running 32bit Microsoft Office, you must install the 32bit version of Cognos for Microsoft Office." When they mention Cognos, are they referring to Xcelerator Client ?

[David Usherwood]

TM1 10.2.2 Perspectives now supports 64-bit Excel - which surprised me quite a bit.