Arc & Slice Comparison table (on-premise vs IBM Cloud)
Arc and Slice can connect to IBM Planning Analytics (TM1) instances regardless of where they are hosted: self-hosted (on-premise or on a private cloud such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud) or on IBM Cloud (PA Cloud and PAaaS).
It does not matter where Arc or Slice is installed. What matters is where TM1 is hosted and how users authenticate against it.
Nearly every Arc and Slice feature is available in every environment. Only a handful depend on the authentication method used by the TM1 instance, or on direct access to the TM1 server.
Feature availability by environment
Environment | Authentication | Impersonation | Process / server logs | ODBC & text file preview | TI debugging | All other Arc & Slice features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
PA self-hosted (v11) | Native (mode 1), LDAP / Kerberos (mode 2/3), CAM (mode 4/5) | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ *Only if Arc is installed on the TM1 server | ✔️ | ✔️ |
PA self-hosted (v12) | OIDC (Keycloak or your own identity provider) | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ *Only if Arc is installed on the TM1 server | ✔️ | ✔️ |
IBM PA Cloud v11 (CAM security) | CAM / SSO | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | ⚠️ Limited | ✔️ |
IBM PA Cloud v11 (IBM ID) | IBM ID | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ⚠️ Limited | ✔️ |
IBM PAaaS (v12) | IBM ID / API key | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ⚠️ Limited | ✔️ |
Why these features differ
Impersonation lets an administrator run Arc or Slice as another user, to reproduce a security or access issue. It relies on the native TM1 impersonation mechanism, which is not available when users authenticate with an IBM ID, or on TM1 v12.
Process and server logs are read directly from the TM1 server. That access is not available when users authenticate with an IBM ID, or on TM1 v12.
ODBC data source preview and text file preview require Arc to be installed on the same server as TM1, because they read the TM1 file system. They are therefore never available when TM1 runs on the IBM PA Cloud.
TI debugging is fully supported when TM1 is self-hosted, and limited when TM1 runs on the IBM PA Cloud.