Slipstream is a research prototype by SAP Research in Brisbane, Australia that enables dashboards with live information from SAP NetWeaver BPM ("Galaxy"). A slipstream (dt. Windschatten) is a region behind a moving object in which a wake moves at velocities comparable to the moving object. Similarly, process information resides in the wake of the current process state. We make it available in real-time for visualization and further analytics and alerting.

When analyzing the possibilities of getting data out of NetWeaver BPM 7.20, we identified the business log as the appropriate data source as it contains all time relevant process data and can be enriched with data from reporting activities. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to push the data out just yet, so we had to modify the business logger to add a listener that is capable of pushing the events to our Slipstream Core where they are transformed into events that are consumable in real-time by SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius.

In the demo, we see how Slipstream can be used to facilitate the development of live dashboards for Centre Calls, a fictional service support call centre. Centre Calls came under cost pressure and needed current process data visualized on the spot and not the next day. Also, they needed to be consumable for end users and not for administrators. We explain the steps to extract data from the business log and set up a live dashboard. Slipstream dashboards can be used in a browser, as a widget, in presentation slides, and even in Web apps such as Google Wave.

In addition, Slipstream can also be used with Live Enterprise, SAP's vision for collecting, filtering, managing, aggregating, propagating, and publishing business events in a consistent, contextual way in an open and comprehensive framework, across multiple servers, locations, and companies. We demonstrate how SAP NetWeaver BPM events, as generated by Slipstream, can also be used to populate dashboards with Live Enterprise and also highlight Live Enterprise’s additional capabilities in this context. We will explore this connection in greater detail in future posts.

If you have questions or application scenarios you would like to discuss, don’t hesitate to contact me. We are looking for that kind of feedback all the time.