Scheduled XML creation can significantly enhance the performance of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
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Marketing (Un)Intelligence
I had a great first job out of college. I was introduced to Business Objects, Teradata, and using them as technologies against what was at the time, the world’s largest non-government data warehouse. I stayed in the same group for my seven year run with that company working in the Strategic Marketing organization. Our goal was to design reporting systems and associated applications which made our marketing strategy more effective. From a high level, while it was a beast (mainly because of the huge base of data and customers we were dealing with) it was an established revenue generator with lots of smart things built into it. As I flip through a day’s worth of mail and see countless direct mail pieces, I’m left wondering, who came up with this marketing (un)intelligence?
Use Multiple Connections in a Single Universe
I’m not sure why, but this is an old trick that I’ve used that has come up twice in recent weeks for different deployments I work on. Everybody should know by now that a universe can only point to a single connection for any single query without federation in place. However, a fairly simple override can allow differing users to utilize a different connection each when they run a query.
Let’s take a scenario where you are using one SAP BusinessObjects instance. Within that reporting architecture, you have a base of users that have data on regional databases dbnorth, dbsouth, dbeast, and dbwest. When a user logs in and runs a report against the universe, they have to run against their assign database connection. You wouldn’t clone the universe four times….would you? (The answer is no)
Xcelsius Hide and Show Chart Series
Interactively hiding and showing series on a chart is something that end users have been asking for as long as I have been working with Xcelsius. In the past, to accomplish this relatively simple task, it required a great deal of acrobatics utilizing dynamic visibility. Now with Xcelsius 5.3.0.0 (SP3) we have a quick and simple way to set this up with built in functionality.
Why We Need SDKs
I saw a retweet go by yesterday from @MicoYuk, originally tweeted by @deeceedas, that struck me:
@XcelsiusGurus i want a software so easy to use that no one should need SDK
I suspect this came from the question that was dropped on whether we need an Xcelsius SDK. If you don’t know me by now, I’m definitely an SAP Business Objects enthusiast. On top of that I always seem to have teams that co-mingled in application development, both on the Java and .NET fronts. So while you think my knee-jerk reaction would be “heck yeah”, I’d like to answer more carefully than that.
SAP Explorer on the iPad with Self-signed Certs
I’m preping for this year’s SBOUC and discovered something interesting with SAP Explorer on my iPad. First off I’m a fan of using SSL encryption on SAP BusinessObjects deployments for security’s sake. However, the cost of managing dozens of certificates can be tidious and prohibitive. That said, self-signed certs are a great alternative for keeping it simple in lower environments. One thing discovered here, however, is that SAP Explorer for the iPad and iPhone will reject that self-signed cert and not allow you to log on. Interesting challenge. Guess it is time to consider ClickSSL certs for every environement now…
Crystal Reports to XML
2010-08-08 Corrected Formulas below
This will be the first part of a series of blogs that illistrates how to flow data from Excel to Xcelsius using Crystal Reports and XML.
XML (Extensible Markup Language) has had export support from Crystal Reports for quite a while. While the Export to XML option allows for specification of a transform file (XSL/XSLT), another handy export option I value is Export to Text. I’ll get back to that in a second.
Scheduling Data Integrator Jobs in Business Objects
In my last post I took a gander at the coolness that is the Program Job Server (PGS). I also hinted at the fact that you could leverage this server to improve your scheduling of Data Integator (DI) jobs. I really didn’t want to leave you hanging on that thread. Let’s take a look at how you can leverage the SAP Business Objects PGS to incorporate your DI jobs into your job flows.
The Program Job Server – Unappreciated at Best
Eric really loves the Program Job Server.
First Rumblings of BI4
A little birdy told me that XI 4 is only being released on 64 bit. Can anybody back that up? If you have your hands on the beta now and it didn’t occur to you, VMware Fusion on a “recent” Mac can create 64 bit VMs. All you need then is the 64 bit edition of Windows or a flavor of Linux. I think I’d like to try both. I’m just sayin… yay for Mac.
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