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Archive for the ‘Business Intelligence’ category

0812: Working with Auditing Data in the Activity Universe

August 9th, 2010

October 7th – Will be at ASUG speaking on how there is a wealth of information about your BusinessObjects system that is only available in the Auditing database. Getting access to these questions (and answers) takes a good understanding of the auditing database and the confidence to extend the activity universe to meet your needs. With some real world examples we will show you how to get the answers to some tough questions.

http://asugew.asug.com/displaymod/detailevent.cfm?conference_id=95&event_id=18468

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Posted in Business Intelligence, Business Objects, XI 3.1

Tags: Business Intelligence BusinessObjects

Multi-node BOE

July 31st, 2010

Had the great opportunity to present a webinar on some of the more complex options when configuring SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1. The link is here http://jive.asug.com/docs/DOC-25624 if you are an ASUG member.

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Posted in asug, Business Intelligence, Business Objects, XI 3.1

Reminder: Who manages RI in a data mart?

July 19th, 2010

Reviewed the data model and loading today with the DBA. To explain the reason for not enforcing RI through foreign key constraints there are few concepts.(see page 536 of the toolkit book mentioned below for more explanation)

1) This is a read only data mart not an operational system so there are single threaded ETL jobs and read only queries. The ETL process handles the RI by loading the Dimensions and Facts as part of a single correlated load stream. This means there are not outside applications adding and removing rows so RI can be maintained by the ETL application logic.

2) We are not rejecting fact records based on their keys. If keys don’t match an appropriate value in a dimension, then the value is added to the dimension (e.g. new title is added)

3) We are not rejecting dimension records based on their keys. If keys don’t match the lookup attribute table then the Unknown key is used (i.e. -1)

Example: So if a series of web sites that have an invalid country code we are still going to load web site attributes into the sites dimension tables, but we will insert the key for an “unknown” country into the country foreign key.

4) We needed to first load a significant amount of data in order to validate that the data model was going to match the proposed model. We can always add foreign key constraints but since items 2 and 3 handle valid and invalid keys programmatically they constraints would not come into play.

From Oracle: “Unlike many relational-database environments, data in a data warehouse is typically added and/or modified under very controlled circumstances during the ETT process. Multiple users typically do not update the data warehouse directly; this is considerably different from the usage of a typical operational system. Thus, the specific usage of constraints in a data warehouse may vary considerably from the usage of constraints in operational systems”

Disappointed in boe_reposcan

June 21st, 2010

After reading the document I thought that it was going to be a cool new tool for disaster recovery. I thought that boe_reposcan would publish orphaned files left in the file repositories after a database outage.

I event spent the time to update the script syntax and find the proper location to execute the program

./boe_reposcan.sh -dbdriver oracledatabasesubsystem “-connect “UID=BO_data;PWD=b0_data;DSN=database-server;HOSTNAME=ip-address;PORT=1521” -repair -inputfrsdir “/usr/apps/bobj/bobje/data/frsinput” -outputfrsdir “/user/apps/boj/bobje/data/frsoutput” -scanfrs

But to no avail. the program told me that my reports did not synch with the repository but I was on my own to republish them. After all that work comparing I think a synch option would have been the perfrect match

I will add this as another item for Admin Launch for the future.

./boe_reposcan.sh -dbdriver oracledatabasesubsystem “-connect

UID=BO_NEXUS_data;PWD=b0_nex1s_data;DSN=bradpit;HOSTNAME=bradpit;PORT=1521” -inputfrsdir /usr/wbol/bobj/bobje/data/frsinput -outputfrsdir /user/sbol/boj/bobje/data/frsoutput -scanfrs

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Posted in Business Intelligence, Business Objects, XI 3.1

What I Do

March 22nd, 2010

What we do: Some asked recently for what was going on related to our tools. Here is a summary
At a 50K foot level we have 5 tools

1) Report Launch allows you to embed Crystal and Webi reports from any application without needing the SDK.

2) Dashboard Launch (You will have to see this). Caches webi content and many other things for really fast dashboards. SAP certified too

3) Admin Launch – bleeding edge web based BOE administration tool that you can train to do what you need it to do for you (beta just started).

4) Audit Launch : Export extends BOE auditing for advanced analysis by syncing CMC attributes into an extended audit database. Audit Launch Import syncs security from 3rd party apps into BOE

5) Activity Launch – allows you to create business activity monitoring events into report schedules and trach when a batch of schedules completes so you can continue the notification or event process

All of our software is 100& web based on Java SDK so it runs on Windows, Unix, and Linux

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Posted in bursting, Business Intelligence, Business Objects, Business Objects SDK, BusinessObjects, Report Launch, Uncategorized

Tags: BusinessObjects Report SDK

BI Tool Selection

February 6th, 2010

When a company thinks that a BI system will benefit their ability to access and analyze data, a great door of opportunity is opened. Through that door will come many vendors and products that may or may not be a match for your company’s needs and abilities. From the beginning, the success of a system is establishing the needs or requirements and the proposed benefits to the company. Without these, every product can be made to look like it fits and is “just what you are looking for.”

One thing to keep in mind is that these requirements are going to change throughout the life cycle of the design process as requirement-gathering processes uncover additional application issues. Benefits can be directly related to monetary issues (such as cost savings though eliminating unsuccessful spending) as well as non- monetary benefits (such as reducing the time it takes to analyze the last month’s sales trends).

How then does a company choose which product is right-one that will match the current needs and also support the requirements of future applications? There are some simple processes that can help in this decision. The first is to break the requirements into their separate entities. These entities will separate the kinds of questions that need to be asked of the products you are considering and identify your expectations of the application.

The primary classifications are simply by data related issues and by application functionality. While other factors exist (such as corporate relationships as well as vendor characteristics) and are influential, these should be viewed as external forces on the decision process. Other external forces, such as staffing requirements, should also be considered.