Essbase OCI Marketplace Gets a MajorUpgrade: What's New from KSCOPE 2026

Oracle Essbase on OCI Marketplace has received a significant wave of enhancements in the 2026 release cycle, spanning performance, disaster recovery, security, and data architecture. If you're running Essbase on the Marketplace, or considering a move there, here's what's worth knowing.

Release Cadence

Oracle has maintained a consistent bi-monthly release rhythm for the OCI Marketplace image, with versions shipping in December 2025 (21.8.0.0.1), February 2026 (21.8.1.0.1), and June 2026 (21.8.2.0.1). Each image refresh tracks closely with the corresponding on-premises release, so cloud customers stay current without significant lag.

Federated Partitions: Query Data Where It Lives

The headline architectural enhancement is the continued evolution of Federated Partitions, the capability that lets Essbase query relational fact data directly in Oracle Autonomous Database (ADW) without copying it into the cube first.

This matters most for:

•       Extremely large ASO cubes with frequent updates and massive aggregations

•       BSO cubes with heavy AGG workloads, including archive applications

•       Applications where the source data is relational and shared across workloads

•       Cubes with frequent hierarchical changes, where reloading data after every structural update is costly

The 2026 enhancements include fact-managed application lifecycle management, parallelized asymmetric report processing, full calc-script support for BSO applications, database views as fact-table sources, improved data load handling, and the ability to rename applications and databases. Paired with these structural improvements, ASO query performance has seen dramatic gains, typical reports dropping from 426 seconds to 10 seconds, and large reports from over 5,000 seconds down to 48 seconds, driven by recursive formula support in dependency analysis.

Cross-Region Disaster Recovery

Backup and Recovery has been a gap for many Marketplace deployments. The new DR capabilities close it meaningfully. Volume backups are now automatically copied to a secondary OCI region as part of every scheduled backup run, with no changes required to existing backup workflows. Optional customer-managed Vault (KMS) keys can re-wrap the copied backup in the target region.

Paired with this is a new run-restore command that handles end-to-end recovery, both the Autonomous DB schema and the /u01/data block volume, whether you're restoring in the same region or executing a cross-region DR failover. It supports flexible targets (different buckets, namespaces, or schema prefixes) and includes selective restore flags like --skip-database and --skip-volume for partial recovery scenarios.

Dynamic Filter Enhancements

The @datasourceLookup function is used to drive row-level security and member filters from relational data has been significantly extended. Dynamic filters now support SQL functions including LOWER, UPPER, CAST, and VARCHAR inside lookup expressions. Multi-value filtering generates a SQL IN clause from a single expression, reducing the number of separate lookups required. Perhaps most usefully, @datasourceLookup can now be nested inside @DESCENDANTS and @CHILDREN, enabling fully dynamic, data source-driven member sets in security filters and cube selections.

Policy Manager and Database Modernization

A new Essbase Policy Manager, delivered as a Terraform module with a UI flow, automates the creation of the OCI dynamic group and required IAM policies that Essbase needs to operate on OCI. This removes a common friction point during initial provisioning.

On the database side, new Marketplace deployments now default to Oracle Database 26ai (Autonomous AI Lakehouse workload), with 19c upgrade paths removed. This positions the Marketplace image squarely on Oracle's current cloud database platform.

Built-In Reporting and Iceberg Integration

Two capabilities flagged for the 26.x Marketplace release round out the picture. Built-in reporting is now a feature, removing the need for a separate reporting layer for common use cases. Iceberg table support allows open Lakehouse tables to be used as native cube sources, extending Essbase's reach to multicloud and open data architectures without requiring data movement into proprietary formats.

Oracle's 2026 enhancements to the Essbase OCI Marketplace represent exactly the kind of sustained, thoughtful investment that long-time Essbase customers have been waiting for. Cross-region disaster recovery, dramatically faster ASO query performance, Federated Partitions that eliminate the data duplication problem at scale, and a streamlined provisioning experience through the Policy Manager. These aren't flashy announcements, they're the building blocks of a production-grade cloud platform that organizations can genuinely rely on. 

What stands out is Oracle's commitment to meeting customers where they are: whether you're managing a large ASO cube with complex aggregations, dealing with frequent hierarchical changes, or simply trying to reduce the operational burden of running Essbase infrastructure, the 2026 Marketplace release has something meaningful to offer.

If you're ready to explore what these enhancements could mean for your Essbase environment or are considering a move to OCI Marketplace, we'd love to be part of that conversation. Reach out to us  and let's find the right solution for your team.

Link to referenced article: 

Source

Content derived from the presentation "Essbase Strategy & Roadmap" delivered at the Kscope 2026 Essbase Symposium by Ekrem

Soylemez, Vice President, Product Development, Oracle and Ashish Jain, Sr. Manager, Product Management, Oracle. June 2026.

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