Merak Petroleum Financials 2007.1 About This Release: December 2007

Merak Petroleum
Financials 2007.1
About This Release
December 2007
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2007 Schlumberger. All rights reserved.
The information in this document is subject to change without notice. The software described in this document is furnished
under a license agreement. This software may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such agreement. It is
against the law to copy the software on any medium except as specifically allowed in the license agreement. No part of this
document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, for any purpose without the express written permission of Schlumberger.
Merak™ is a trademark of Schlumberger.
Merak Peep, Merak PetroDesk, Merak Portfolio, Merak Decision Tool Kit, Merak VOLTS, Merak Capital Planning,
Merak Petroleum Financials, Merak DBTools, Avocet™ Data Manager, Avocet Capture, Avocet Allocation, Avocet
Nomination, Avocet Mobile, Avocet Exchange, Avocet Import/Export, OFM, FieldBA, and FieldViz are marks of
Schlumberger.
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DOS®, Word®, Excel®, ActiveX®, ODBC®, OLE®, COM®, Terminal Server®, Microsoft Access®, Visual C++®, and
Microsoft SQL Server® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
Oracle ® is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation.
Crystal Reports™ is a trademark of Business Objects.
All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Contents
Merak Petroleum Financials 2007.1 About This Release .............................................. 1

What's New in Merak Petroleum Financials 2007.1 .......................................................................1
Windows Vista Support ..............................................................................................................................1
New Hierarchy Utilities ...............................................................................................................................1
Inserting Values for Scalar and Time Series Variables ..............................................................................1
New Ways to Use Existing Features ..............................................................................................2

What We're Still Working On ..........................................................................................................2
How to reach us ................................................................................................................ 4

Merak Petroleum Financials 2007.1

About This Release
The document consists of the following three sections:
• What's New in Merak Petroleum Financials 2007.1
• New Ways to Use Existing Features
• What We're Still Working On
What's New in Merak Petroleum Financials 2007.1

The following new features were added to this release.
Windows Vista Support

The Merak 2007.1 products are fully supported on systems running Microsoft Windows Vista
Business Edition.
New Hierarchy Utilities

Petroleum Financials now provides three new useful utilities that allow you to export a financial
hierarchy to a file, import a file into your database, and change the result request applied to a
financial hierarchy. These utilities were previously available as an external tool for Petroleum
Financials, but are now installed as a plug-in with this release.
The Hierarchy Utilities feature allows users to copy financial hierarchies between databases,
eliminating the need to reconstruct hierarchies and re-enter opening balances and other financial
data. This plug-in allows you to export one or more financial hierarchies. When importing
financial hierarchies, the utilities allow you to select the Result Request, Start Year and Price
Outcome. In addition, you can also clear the financial data and edit the target hierarchy's
evaluation names. The Hierarchy Utilities also has an option which enables you to change the
Result Request for any hierarchy.
The Hierarchy Utilities plug-in has the following three option tabs:
• Export – allows you to export one or more hierarchies to files that use a .mfh file name
extension to identify each file as an exported financial hierarchy. If exporting more than one
hierarchy, the utility places the exported files in a folder to ensure existing hierarchies are not
overwritten.
• Import – allows users to import financial hierarchies from an exported financial hierarchy
(.mfh extension). You can optionally select a Result Request, Start Year and Price Outcome to
apply to the imported target hierarchy.
• Change Result Request – allows you to change the result request for any hierarchy.
The Hierarchy Utilities feature is automatically installed as a plug-in during the Merak Petroleum
Financials installation. See Installing plug-ins in the Merak Petroleum Financials Help for more
details.
Inserting Values for Scalar and Time Series Variables

Scalar variables such as Opening Balances are inserted and displayed in the Opening Balances tab
while time series variables will continue to be inserted and displayed in the Financial Data tab.
For more information, refer to the MPF Help topic, Defining how time-based data is displayed.
www.sis.slb.com 1
New Ways to Use Existing Features

No new processes were added to this release.
What We're Still Working On

• When calculating a batch incremental containing two or more hierarchies, an error message
may appear and the batch fails to calculate. To successfully calculate the batch incremental ,
recalculate and save each hierarchy that is included in the batch and then calculate the batch
incremental.
• When you use the Model Builder Utility to create multiple external variables with the same
name attribute in a financial model, and then try to calculate a hierarchy with that model,
Merak Petroleum Financials will shut down. To avoid this problem, do not create multiple
external variables with the same name attribute in the financial model.
• When attempting to log in to a SQL Server data source, if you do not provide any user
credentials on the Database Settings tab, you may still be able to see the names of hierarchies
and incrementals from the selected data source in the Select Window, although you will not
be able to open those documents. If using Merak Petroleum Financials in secure mode, you
should disable the BUILTIN\Administrators login for SQL Server, in order to block any users
that have been placed into the Windows Administrator group from accessing the database in
this way. See Maintaining ODBC Data Sources - Merak Value and Risk v4.3.1 for more
information.
• You can copy an entire user report by opening the report and clicking on the cell at the top
left-hand corner of the report grid to select all the cells in the report, and then clicking the
Copy toolbar button.
However, you cannot select all the cells within a system report in the same way. To copy all
the cells in a system report, manually select all the desired columns in the report (by pressing
and holding the <Ctrl> or <Shift> keys and then selecting the column headers), and then copy
the selected cells.
• When working with a secure license, if you open one or more Petroleum Financials
documents, and then open the Database Settings tab and log in using different user
credentials, you will still be able to see the documents that were opened under the previous
user credentials. This can cause unexpected behavior if you try to save the documents. To
avoid this issue, close all documents before switching users.
• If you have upgraded your Oracle client, an error will occur if you try to open a hierarchy or
calculate a batch incremental. This error generally occurs if you have upgraded your version
of Oracle Client. In this case, the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Oracle may continue to
look for the old version of the Oracle Client in the registry, based on a number of obsolete
registry keys (ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_HOME_NAME and DEFAULT_HOME).
To resolve this issue, set the values for these keys to match your current Oracle Client
installation.
• Petroleum Financials variable display names longer than 30 characters in the model will cause
problems with Oracle. You will receive an error message that will contain the offending
variable name. To avoid this problem, ensure that all variables have names less than 30
characters long.
• When exporting the contents of reports to a comma-separated value (*.csv) file, only the first
256 columns of data will be available if you open the file in Microsoft Excel.
• The periodicity conversion for series input variables defined as “first in range” is incorrect in
the Financial Data tab. For example, a time-series variable created in the Model Builder with
a “first in range” periodicity conversion appears incorrectly as average periodicity conversion
on the Financial Data tab. A value of 12 entered in Yearly mode appears as 1 in each month
when you change to monthly mode, but the correct value should be 12, appearing in the first
month only.
www.sis.slb.com 2
• When working in a secure environment, you are prompted to save a hierarchy after making
changes for which you have Read and Calculate privileges, but not Save privileges. This
behavior will be enhanced in the next commercial version to only prompt you to save
financial hierarchies if you have appropriate privileges.
www.sis.slb.com 3
How to reach us
United States
E-mail: [email protected]
Houston Tel.: +1 713-621-1165
Canada
Calgary Tel.: +1-888-986-4357 (toll-free)
Europe and Africa
London Tel.: +44 (0)207 517 2626
Russia and Caspian
Moscow Tel.: 7 495 935 8200 Ext. 1218
South America
International E-mail: [email protected]
Offices Mexico Tel.: 001 866 326 0174
Argentina Tel.: 0 800 444 0919
Brazil Tel.: 000811 005 9068
Colombia Tel.: 980912 3029
Venezuela Tel.: 0800 1 00 3588
Middle East
Asia and Australia
Malaysia Tel.: +60-3-21694266
Indonesia Tel.: +62-21-5229343
Australia Tel.: +61-1800001112
Thailand Tel.: +66-2-9371300
China Tel.: +86-10-64746699 Ext. 2816
Schlumberger supplements the standard maintenance agreement by offering extended on-site

support worldwide. This enhanced level of support includes on-site assistance, installation,
troubleshooting, and maintenance services of licensed Schlumberger software.
Merak is a product line of Schlumberger Information Solutions (SIS). For more information about
SIS, please go to our Web site at http://www.sis.slb.com.
www.sis.slb.com 4

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Merak Petroleum

Merak Petroleum Financials 2007.1 About This Release .............................................. 1

New Ways to Use Existing Features ..............................................................................................2

How to reach us ................................................................................................................ 4

Merak Petroleum Financials 2007.1

What's New in Merak Petroleum Financials 2007.1

Windows Vista Support

New Hierarchy Utilities

Inserting Values for Scalar and Time Series Variables

New Ways to Use Existing Features

What We're Still Working On

Schlumberger supplements the standard maintenance agreement by offering extended on-site

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