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Ingo Hilgefort

BusinessObjects Integration with SAP NetWeaver BI - Technical Material
Ingo Hilgefort SAP Employee Active Contributor Platinum: 2,500+ points SAP Mentor
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Company: SAP BusinessObjects
Posted on Nov. 19, 2008 11:27 AM in Analytics, Enterprise Data Warehousing/Business Warehouse, Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects), Community Day, SAP NetWeaver Platform, SAP TechEd, Webinars
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After 4 weeks of abstinence it feels good to be back on the blogging train and the first I would like to do here (as promised a long time ago), is to share all the material that I have used at the SDN Community Day in Las Vegas and Berlin.

I want to say THANK YOU to all the people helping to make it a great success and I hope that the sessions have been valuable for all attendees.

 

Here the material from SDN Community Day Las Vegas:

End-to-End Sceanrios with Xcelsius

Best Practices for Web Intelligence on top of SAP NetWeaver BI

 

Here the material from SDN Community Day Berlin:

 

BusinessObjects Enterprise & SAP - Installation and configuration

Crystal Reports and SAP BI

Web Intelligence and SAP BI

Xcelsius and SAP BI

 

I hope the material is useful to other customers as well and I am looking forward to your feedback

 

 

Ingo Hilgefort  Active Contributor Platinum: 2,500+ points SAP Mentor

is a Solution Manager with SAP BusinessObjects focusing on the topic of BI Solution Architecture. He also is the author of the SAP Press books He also is the author of the SAP Press books Integrating BusinessObjects XI 3.0 BI Tools with SAP NetWeaver , Reporting and Analytics with SAP BusinessObjects , Inside SAP BusinessObjects Explorer , and Inside SAP BusinessObjects Advanced Analysis and is also reachable on his blog Mastering SAP and BusinessObjects and on iTunes

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Showing messages 1 through 31 of 31.
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  • Conditions in BEX query & Xcelsius
    2009-05-28 00:49:52 Andrey Uryukin Business Card [Reply]

    Hello.
    I biuld BEX query with condition inside (lets say my condition is "number of positions greater than 10").
    When I run the query via Bex or Analyser the condition takes an action and indeed there is records only with number of positions greater than 10.
    BUT if I connect the query to Xcelsius (via universe and QaaWS) I get ALL records - the condition does not takes action !!!
    Is it bug or I did something wrong ?
    Thanks.
    Regards.
  • Error #2048
    2009-05-24 08:42:18 Andrey Uryukin Business Card [Reply]

    Hello Ingo.
    When I integrated SWF file generated by Xcelsius I get Error #2048 during initialization.
    I'll try to represent the process:
    1. I created Bex query
    2. Over the query there is universe (with username & pass are constant)
    3. Over the universe I created QAAWS
    4. I cerated Xcelsius presentation with Data Connection that created early (via QAAWS) and params username & pass than token from Xcelsius sheet (that means constant).
    5. This Xcelsius presentation was exported to SWF file and integrated in portal.
    6. When the presentation loading from portal I get error # 2048.
    When I run the presentation from Xcelsius (via Preview) there is no problem and the presentation connects to Bex query via QAAS & universe.
    What can be a problem ?
    Thank you.
    Regards.
  • XCelsius and SAP BI
    2009-05-04 19:07:36 Ade Tsalasi Business Card [Reply]

    Hi Ingo,


    Your blog always the best resource for someone like me who just start doing BO and BI.


    I try the scenario for BI Cube --> Universe --> QaWS --> Xcelius. Since the amount of that is very high, so I put 2 filters in QaWS filter objects (Page 19); eg. Creation date and Sales group.


    When I try to connect QaWS with Xcelsius (page 22), in input value, apart of Login and Password, I only able to see Creation Date, not sales group.


    Is there something that I need to do in universe or QaWS to make the object become available as input fields?


    thanks,


    Tsalasi

    • XCelsius and SAP BI
      2009-05-05 11:11:05 Ingo Hilgefort SAP Employee Business Card [Reply]

      Hi Tsalasi,


      could you open en entry in the SAP Integration Kit forum ? It is easier to follow there.


      Is the characteristic for the Sales Group and Creation date part of the QaaWS ?


      thanks
      Ingo

  • Crystal on SAP BI
    2009-03-28 16:19:52 Ingo Hilgefort SAP Employee Business Card [Reply]

    hi,


    in the menu File / Options you can find a tab called reporting where you can switch on the fields and descriptions. Also make sure you are using the BW MDX Driver and not the old BW Query Driver.


    see here:
    https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/8686



    Ingo

  • Direct Access from Xcelsius to BI
    2009-03-02 00:53:22 Martin Stamm Business Card [Reply]

    Dear Ingo


    thank you for all your blog entries, to get an overview of the whole topic this is a very good starting point!


    I got a question about something mentioned at TechEd '08 in Session IM210:
    Direct Access on BEx Queries/Query Views planned for 2009
    We think that we only have a real advantage of using Xcelsius when the integration to BI is direct, so i wanted to ask you, if you have any news about the status of that "announcement"?


    Thanks and best regards
    Martin

    • Direct Access from Xcelsius to BI
      2009-04-14 02:19:28 Karl Marx Business Card [Reply]

      Hello Ingo,


      I understood from your presentations that there are two ways how Xcelsius could be connected to SAP BI
      1. SAP BI query - Crystal Reports - Live Office - XCelsius


      2. SAP BI query - Universe - QaWS - XCelsius


      Am I right?
      Which approach do you reccomend to use? I tried the second one but it doesnt work.

  • SAP BI Query / Business Objects Universe Design Question
    2009-01-22 08:02:36 Wayne Helbling Business Card [Reply]

    We currently are in the process of replacing our Customer Support system with SAP CRM. Our reporting user base uses WebI for all reporting today and would like to continue to use WebI in the future. Because of this we have been tasked with using SAP BI as our data source and Business Objects 3.1 as our report delivery platform. My background is building Business Objects solutions against relational and STAR structures. While we do have in house SAP BI expertise I have no personal experience with SAP BI and the SAP BI resources have no experience with Business Objects which leaves us struggling on how to architect the final solution. What makes this more cumbersome, at least to me, is the reporting is required at the transactional level.


    Our reporting Areas are very basic:
    Master Data (Customer, Product, Contacts, Employees, Org Groups, etc…)
    Service Orders
    Service Order Line Items (This is a many to one relationship to service order)
    Service Order Follow-Ups (This is a many to one relationship to service order)
    Service Order Backlog (This is an aggregated monthly snapshot of open services orders. This is a standalone entity)
    Employee Time (This is an aggregate of service order and non service order time for each employee. This is a standalone entity)


    If I were to model this relationally it would be very simple and I could have one universe that would encompass all areas. With the limitation that an OLAP universe is based off of one MultiProvider, InfoCube or Query I see no way to get this to less than four universes with the way the data is related. Is there something I am missing that I am making this more complicated than it needs to be?


    Thanks for any advice.

    • SAP BI Query / Business Objects Universe Design Question
      2009-01-22 08:44:51 Ingo Hilgefort SAP Employee Business Card [Reply]

      Hi Wayne,


      I am including some links on material that you might want to look at:


      https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/9052


      https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/10794



      https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/008d15dc-f76c-2b10-968a-fafe5a121129



      the number of BI queries really depends on the reports and data modell. there is no a simple rule.


      Feel free to contact me for further steps


      Ingo

  • Decision Tree Guidelines for SAP and BOBJ
    2009-01-06 04:26:19 David Dixon Business Card [Reply]

    Based on the posts, I thought some would find the following link useful:
    http://www.inforte.com/ideas/publications/


    I put together suggestive guidelines on which front-end tools to use from the combined SAP and Business Objects portfolio in the form of a decision tree. The decision tree is more focused on the "here and now" functionality (i.e. no mention of Pioneer) versus a roadmap perspective where SAP is the ultimate authority.

  • Which is the best approach
    2008-12-18 06:14:01 Jagadeesh Ambati Business Card [Reply]

    HI Ingo and all SAP BI Gurus,
    We are going to start the SAP BI Implementation project for one of our clients.They are already using Crystal reports and Webi. Now they want to go for BO on SAP BI. Here my question is
    1.What would be the best approach for this scenario?(use BO tools or BEx tools).


    Please suggest.


    Thanks and Regards
    Jagadeesh Ambati

    • Which is the best approach
      2008-12-18 10:53:42 Ingo Hilgefort SAP Employee Business Card [Reply]

      Hello Jagadesh,


      that really depends on what type of reporting you are looking for.
      Crystal Reports is for Enterprise reporting / formatted reporting type of users.
      Web Intelligence is for adhoc reporting.
      In case you looking for more a power user / business analyst type of reporting you might want to go with BEx Web reporting today and move to the Pioneer project in 2010.


      I would suggest you take a look a the integrated roadmap (in the BI area here at SDN) and take a look at the focused user types per tool


      regards
      Ingo

  • use of Voyager to connect to SAP BI
    2008-12-15 15:25:03 Tarun Chhichhia Business Card [Reply]

    HI Ingo,


    Very usefull set of info, I can not figure where we need the Business Objects Voyager product here ? Can we create Universe on SAP BI Queries / Cubes without having the Voyager product installed ? Only with the Integratin Kit ?


    thanks,


    Tarun

    • use of Voyager to connect to SAP BI
      2008-12-22 19:26:59 Ingo Hilgefort SAP Employee Business Card [Reply]

      Hi Tarun,


      the Universe is being used for Web INtelligence and you can create a Universe on top of a BI query or BI cubes.


      Voyager is a different BI client tool which is made more for the power analysts.


      Both client tools require the SAP integrtion Kit being installed.


      ingo

  • Webi best practices clarification
    2008-11-27 04:13:09 Andrea Demarchi SAP Employee Business Card [Reply]

    Hello Ingo,


    Thanks for making all these inforamtion available.
    Could I plase ask one clarification from the "Webi Best practice" presentation. AT slide 13 you mention:
    "DO NOT build one query per InfoProvider because elements can add processing time even though you not using them into the Web Intelligence report".


    In what circumstance would the above be true, so affecting performance?


    Thanks
    Andrea

    • Webi best practices clarification
      2008-11-27 13:46:26 Ingo Hilgefort SAP Employee Business Card [Reply]

      Hello Andrea,


      we have seen situation where a BI Query containing a large amount of elements (characteristics, Keyfigures, Restricted Keyfigures) with a Web Intelligence report using only a small amount from this BI Query (lets say Web Intelligence is using 5 elements but the BI query contains 25) performs worst then a query with less unused elements.


      Ingo

  • Optimum approach to architect Bi solution in Business Object and SAP BI
    2008-11-19 20:14:52 Ashutosh Dhotkar Business Card [Reply]

    Hi Expects ,
    I as long as my experience going in delivering BI solution in Business Object and SAP BI
    We have option to connect to SAP BI via Building BO Universe on SAP BI cube or BEX Query .
    Now take a example we have 1000s of BEX queries in production. So Should I architect the solution recommending creation of 1000s of BO Universe.
    Which I don’t feel fusible option.


    You may reply me back saying create BO Universe on SAP BI Cube/Multiprovider, which will reduce no of universe to be created . But at the same time couple of questions comes in my mind –1. Will I be able to leverage SAP BIA (SAP Business Intelligence Accelerator) to get best performance . 2. As of now BIA dose not accelerate queries build on Multiprovider ???


    I believe When I Build Universe on BEX Query It will leverage BIA , But Not sure what will happen if I build BO Universe on Cube.


    Can we collectedly arrive at Optimum approach to architect Bi solution in Business Object and SAP BI ??


    Comments are welcome


    Regards
    Ashutosh D


    • Optimum approach to architect Bi solution in Business Object and SAP BI
      2008-11-24 01:58:26 Dirk Herzog SAP Employee Business Card [Reply]

      First of all thank you Ingo for doing a great job in Berlin.
      Now to Ashutoshs question: I would create one to a few new queries per Info-/MultiProvider and create Universes based on these new queries. This gives you a lot of advantages, among them:
      "Technical IOs" that you don't want to expose to the user can be kept out of the Universe.
      You can already use/define calculated and restricted key figures which makes the data model more useful to the "casual" user.
      You can set filters, e.g. one query per division. This is something you can NOT do with MultiProviders.
    • Optimum approach to architect Bi solution in Business Object and SAP BI
      2008-11-19 20:27:47 Ingo Hilgefort SAP Employee Business Card [Reply]

      Hi,


      the reason for using the BI query should become clear after looking at the best practices for WebI paper mentioned in the blog.


      Going against the cube means you will not be able to leverage restricted keyfigures, calculated keyfigures, navigational attributes and you have to take care of security because you can not use authorization variables.


      You will leverage BIA when connecting to the query or the cube.


      As mentioned before the clearly recommended approach is to leverage the BI query and the reasons are explained in the Best Practices for Web Intelligence


      Ingo

Showing messages 1 through 31 of 31.