Where Are You Coming From?

Have you ever been confused by directions or road signs?  Sometimes information doesn’t bring clarity.  Hopefully this blog will bring some clarify to potential issues you might encounter in your upgrade to SP2.  I can’t believe this is my 4th post about the subject.

Issues When Moving From Fix Pack 1.6+ to SP2

I made the move to SP2 several weeks ago from XI 3.1 FP 1.3, but what I have since discovered is that not everyone’s journey has been so straight forward.  If a BusinessObjects system was using XI 3.1 FP 1.6 or later, then you may run into issues after you upgrade to SP2.

It seems that at the time SP2 was being built, all the fixes up to FP 1.5 were included; however there have been a number of additional FixPack releases SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 since then.  SAP has released Fix Pack 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8.  These three releases included DLLs that were newer than the DLLs in the SP2 release because they contained fixes that were not originally in SP2.  If this is the case for you will want to move to Fix Pack 2.1 immediately.

What happened?

What I’ve discovered is that due to the desire to keep the size of Service Packs as small as possible, the service pack does not overwrite all the DLLs on the system.  Instead, the service packs looks at your system and only replaces those DLLs which are older than the DLLs within your BusinessObjects XI 3.1 environment.  This means that if you upgraded to FP 1.6, 1.7 or 1.8, some DLLs will be newer than the DLLs contained within SP2.  This can introduce incompatibilities.

For example, if you use WebIntelligence, you may notice that after sometime the WebIntelligence Server stops functioning and you get the following message when opening a WebIntelligence document:

Cannot Initialize Report Engine server: (Error: RWI 00226) (Error:INF)

The Good News

The Good News is that engineering has already identified this issue and has fixed it through the release of Fix Pack 2.1.  If you read the release notes of Fix Pack 2.1, you will see the following:

BusinessObjects XI 3.1 and Crystal Reports 2008 Service Pack 2 Fixed Issues
This Service Pack can only be applied on top of BusinessObjects
Enterprise XI 3.1 / Crystal Reports 2008 SP1. This Service Pack
includes all XI 3.1 FixPacks up to 1.5. Note If you install XI 3.1
SP2 in top of FixPack 1.6 or later, reinstall the latest 2.x FixPack.
Each machine in your deployment must be updated separately with
the patches you require. A separate patch is available for each
BusinessObjects product that has a standalone installation.

There it is.  Tucked into the release notes of Fix Pack 2.1 it explains that if you are on a later fix pack, you need to install Fix Pack 2.1.  I would welcome your suggestions to pass on to the BusinessObjects engineering team of ways to avoid this in the future.

«Good BI»

2009 SAP BusinessObjects User Conference

SAP BusinessObjects Wants Your Input!

The SAP BusinessObjects Product team is looking for your input!  In less than two months, SAP BusinessObjects Users from around the world will be decending on Dallas Texas for the annual SAP BusinessObjects User Conference.  This year, the SAP BusinessObjects is introducing the concept of a product council, where you can provide feedback into the product.  You will get a chance to see how other companies are leveraging SAP BusinessObjects products.  Now is your opportunity to tell them what you love and what you hate…  knowing that feedback will make it’s way back to the product team.

This is a Start

Personally I think this is a great start, but I wish that SAP would send all the product managers and program managers to the conference so that they can speak face-to-face with customers.  Back in the 90’s when I was working with Lotus products, they had a huge annual conference in Orlando and their entire product development team was onsite and had lots of informal one-on-one time with customers.  As an end-user, I loved that.  Even if they weren’t able to address my problems at least I felt I had been heard.

Influence Sessions

SAP is taking a slightly different tact.  They are creating a “council” that will work to gather all the feedback that SAP BusinessObjects users give.  They will consolidate and prioritize the issues and work with the SAP BusinessObjects Product Development team to improve future product releases.  The Influence sessions will include:

Business Objects Enterprise Council – to discuss administration, security, platform features and versioning/change management within the Business Objects Enterprise solution.

Xcelsius Council – to discuss  issues surrounding the new integration with Excel, document areas for improvement, identify issues that are occurring with the system.

WebI Council -was formed last year and will be presenting an update of their work and where their recommendations fit into future SAP BusinessObjects product releases. A portion of the presentation will also include a discussion of migration from Deski to WebI.

Designer Council -  with no major changes in Designer since 1999 (yep, that’s 10 years!), the semanic layer is an area of upcoming innovation and redesign.  Make sure your voice is heard!

Data Management Council – will provide customers with the means for constructive dialog with SAP BusinessObjects regarding their use and implementation of the Data Services product. The Influence Council will provide SAP BusinessObjects with feedback from its users about proposed changes, integrations, or new features in future Data Services releases.

So Let Your Voice Be Heard

Plato said:  Necessity is the mother of invention.  I can tell you through my many years of experience that the best product features and innovations come from solving real-world customer problems. Therefore I strongly encourage you to attend the 2009 SAP BusinessObjects user conference and take full advantage of these Influence Council sessions.  You may be the reason behind the next major innovation at SAP BusinessObjects!

Click here for more information…

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Business Intelligence Business Requirements and the BI Portfolio

Memorial Day was a great day to reflect on the sacrifices of so many for the freedoms and liberties will all enjoy. Thank you veterans!!

After attending a local Memorial Day Rememberance and Celebration, I spent some time cleaning my office and I came across an excellent article which I wanted to pass along.  So often when I talk to organizations about Business Intelligence, I ask them about their business requirements so that I can understand their current business pain.  All to often what follows is feature function laundry list of capabilities they are sure they can’t live without.  Time after time, the BI requirements given to software vendors are not tied to a specific business problem. This is a recipe for disaster.

The following article is an article from DM Review entitled, Business Requirements for BI and the BI Portfolio: How to Get it Right:
http://www.b-eye-network.com/print/6887

This article does a great job at pointing out the weaknesses of generic BI requirements and why functional requirements are not enough.  If you have BI requirements and are evaluating BI tools, I highly recommend you take a few minutes to read this article.

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Business Intelligence – Now More Than Ever!

I was at Sapphire 2009 last week and enjoyed getting a chance to talk with customers about their priorities in the new economic climate.  Everyone is hoping that things will turn around soon but in the meantime, there was a lot of interest around Business Intelligence and the best way to get all the information necessary to make the best business decisions.  Each day organizations are being forced to make hard choices and those choices need to be based on ALL the available  information available – not just hunches and best guesses.  More organizations have the information they need but they haven’t fully plugged into the power of Business Intelligence.

Market research shows two important two facts (previous reported by BusinessWeek):
• 43% of users say they’re not sure if internal information is accurate information
• 77% said bad decisions had been made because of lack of information

Now it the wrong time to make decisions on based gut feel, with inadequate information. Companies are looking to Business Intelligence tools to not only show them how to cut costs, but also how to model data for the future.  Regardless of what Business Intelligence platform you use, now is the time to leverage it to the fullest.

Here is a great follow-up article from BusinessWeek:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc2009032_101762.htm

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BusinessObjects XI 3.1 Features

I haven’t seen a lot of information available that talks about what’s new in the release of the latest version, BusinessObjects XI 3.1, so I thought I would point out some of the highlights I’ve come across.  You may also want read the complete What’s New in BusinessObjects XI 3.1 guide from the website.

Release Highlights

BusinessObjects XI 3.1 is a release that is focused on bringing parity to our platform support for both Java and .NET.  In BusinessObjects XI 3.0 we did not provide a .NET version of our standard BI portal, InfoView.  In BusinessObjects XI 3.1 we have released a native .NET portal which has near parity with the Java version.  I say near parity, because there are a few things missing, namely:

• Encyclopedia
• Dashboard Builder
• Voyager
• BI Mobile
• Polestar

For companies who find comfort in an all Microsoft World, this release will be welcomed.  BusinessObjects XI 3.1 has added support for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Sharepoint Portal Server 2007.  (There is also Microsoft Active Directory Forest Support as well!)  If you are using the SAP Integration Kit, this is also now available on the .NET platform.

Web Application Container Service

One of the way in which BusinessObjects has been able to balance both rich feature sets and cross platform compatibility is through the introduction of a new server to the BusinessObjects Platform.  This service is called the WACS, Web Application Container Service, and is a java container.  What this allows BusinessObjects to do is to run existing java applications through the BusinessObjects framework.

Let me explain how this will work in practice.  The BusinessObjects Administration Console, the CMC, is written in Java.  Instead of rewritting this application in .NET, BusinessObjects simply added the WACS to the BusinessObjects service bus and will execute application via this service.  The beauty of this solution is that the .NET administrator never has to worry about it.  BusinessObjects manages everything.

What other Applications can use the WACS?

Besides the CMC, there are a number of other applications that could within the WACS.  This includes:

• Interactive DHTML Viewer for WebIntelligence
• Query as a Web Service (for supporting Xcelsius)
• LiveOffice

There is an important document that covers what is supported and what is not supported within the WACS framework.  In theory all native java-based aspects of the BusinessObjects application suite could be run through the WACS but the question is whether or not it is officially supported.  This document is called:  Web Application Container Server (WACS): Supported and Unsupported Features for BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1and it explains the details.  You can download it here.

Additional Platform Enhancements

BusinessObjects XI 3.1 supports IPv6 100% across the product suite (except for Desktop Intelligence).  They have also added their first native 64-bit architecture.  Since BusinessObjects XIr2 SP3, the platform has been able to run on 64-bit operating systems however the platform still runs as a 32-bit application.  The first native 64-bit release is an the HP-UX IA-64 Itanium hardware.

Life Cycle Manager

Life Cycle Manager, LCM for short, s a web-based utility that allows the administrator to:

• Promote BI content from one system to another (without affecting the dependencies of the content)
• Manage dependencies of BI content
• Manage different versions of BI content
• Roll back (yahoo!) promoted BI content

This tool does not install with the platform, but is a separate install.

“So isn’t that what the Import Wizard is for?”, you may be asking?  Well, certainly the import wizard has been used to provide this type of functionality in the past – especially with the introduction of BIAR files in BusinessObjects XI; however I think you’ll see from the list of features in LCM, it is better to have a specialized tool for the LCM process.

Life Cycle Manager provides a number of features over the Import Wizard (besides rollback) including:

• Granular control over the objects selected (yes, we trust you)
• Scheduling Promotions Jobs (a job is a collection of BI content or InfoObjects to be precise)
• Integrated Version Control (via Subversion)
• Database connection overrides and mapping (Tired of changing database connection strings?)
• Auditing
• The ability to “preview” to changes before committing them
• Rollback, Did I mention rollback?

There is a new LCM Job server which has been added to the platform to manage the promotion process.

Have you ever created a BIAR file and realized you missed a file?  Now with LCM you can save your Promotion job and use it to generate a BIAR file.  If you find that something is missing, you can simply open up the promotion job , select the missing objects and regenerate the BIAR file.

BIAR ≠ BIAR

When is a BIAR file not a BIAR file?  Well, with the LCM tool, the BIAR files which are generated by the LCM tool are LCMBIAR files.  As the name indicates, the LCMBIAR files are NOT compatible with the BIAR files used with the Import Wizard.  Bummer.

Voyager

Voyager was the other biggie.  A lot of work was put into providing interface enhancements and increased performance.  This is probably the last release before the eagerly anticipated release of “Pioneer” in 2009, which will combine Voyager’s intuitive user interface with the powerful OLAP capabilities of the BEx OLAP tools.

Voyager now has a number of new visualizations including Box-Plot, Scatter, Bubble and Radar charts.    There are also a number of features that were in OLAP Intelligence, which were missing in earlier versions of Voyager, namely, Exception highlighting, URL Linking to other BI Content and Favorite Groups.

Have you ever made a mistake when building a Voyager workspace?  Well, now you have full undo/redo capabilities.  After being so used to the undo/redo capabilities in WebIntelligence, I always found the missing feature extremely annoying and I’m sure other did to.

Fly Over Of Additional Features

Rather than talk about additional features in detail, I thought I would briefly mention some of them here and perhaps in the future I can blog about them in detail if there is interest.

Semantic Layer -Support for BEGIN_SQL, Prompt support for codes AND descriptions.

Crystal Reports – Dual Monitor support, flash printing to PDF.

WebIntelligence -Support for Extension Points, Auto-Save, RelativeValue(), Multi-Pass Bursting

SAP Integration – SNC for BusinessObjects Universes (Prior to XI 3.1, this was only available for Crystal Reports), Improve Prompt Support for Hierarchy and Hierarchy Node dependencies.

Dashboard Builder – Printing, Interportlet Communication

Summary

There are some good things that have come out in this latest release.  This release is also the latest ‘reset point’ for BusinessObjects XI 3.X maintenance, so you can expect fix packs for XI 3.0 to no longer be released.

Hope you found this information useful.  I’ve tried to keep it short and sweet.

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