Russell Beech, Author at BI System Builders

Posted on April 6, 2013March 29, 2019 by Russell Beech — Leave a comment

Business Intelligence Platform – BusinessObjects XI Version (BOXI) – Archive

To build your BI System you will need to install and configure a Business Intelligence platform. The Business Intelligence platform is the heart of your BI System and for SAP BusinessObjects this comes in two main versions. These are SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI and it’s bigger brother SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise. SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise has full BI Platform Scalability. After installing and configuring your BI platform you will be able to leverage its many capabilities. The capabilities will vary depending upon which license you buy.

There are some very useful BI capabilities available such as SAP BusinessObjects Encyclopaedia which you can use as a BI knowledge management tool and BI Content Search which will allow you to make powerful searches through your BI library of reports, or use Explorer (Polestar) which will allow you to make google like searches on your BI reports and data. You can use the Threaded Discussions capability to collaborate your Business Intelligence with your colleagues.

There is a full administration console known as the Central Management Console which will allow you to do many important things such as configurations and setting up your security model. Through the Central Management Console you will also be able to know what is happening on your BI System by activating SAP BusinessObjects Auditing. Many organisations set up at least two environments such as a development and production environment. You may also opt for testing, training, and pre-production environments. To promote your BI content through the environments you can take advantage of the BI platform’s Lifecycle Manager.

Databases are queried with technical languages such as SQL and MDX code. However, the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform includes two tools Universe Designer and Universe Builder that will enable you to build your own universes. These universes generate the query code behind the scenes so that business users don’t have to write it themselves or make requests to IT. In fact business users do not even need to know that the code exists.

The BI platform is also capable of supporting dashboards and by purchasing the Xcelsius Dashboards product you can create many interactive dashboards for your KPIs. You can also incorporate your Xcelsius Dashboards with other components such as Widgets and Web Intelligence Reports into a single dashboard with Dashboard Builder.

Posted on November 6, 2012March 29, 2019 by Russell Beech — Leave a comment

The End to End BI Concept

Considering the Full Landscape

Cornerstone Solutions^® use an End to End BI approach and here’s why. When thinking about Business Intelligence architecture we need to consider the entirety of the component parts as a whole and not simply individually. In other words consideration is made of the full BI system as a whole and the individual components are not treated in exclusivity of each other. This is because the components will need to act interdependently regardless of whether they have been procured from a single or multiple software vendors.

In this respect the BI system is similar to the human body i.e. everything is so closely related that a felt symptom in one area (a pain in the arm) may be caused by an unseen symptom in another part of the body (a problem with an internal organ). To relieve the pain felt in the arm we treat the unseen causal effect in the internal organ. The same concept of unseen relationship and causal effect applies to the Business Intelligence system. Data flows from end to end through the Business Intelligence system in a similar way to blood circulating in the body and must not be blocked, lost or corrupted at any stage. The BI Architect must ensure this.

Interdependency of the BI system

The early phases of a BI implementation can be usefully considered as akin to those of the Rational Unification Process (RUP) stages of Strategy, Inception, Elaboration, and Construction. A well defined BI strategy is very important. However, perhaps paradoxically the Construction phase is often delivered using an Agile delivery method.

Construction frequently commences with source system analysis, end user requirement gathering and the installation and configuration of the software components. If using SAP Business Information Warehouse, cubes and queries will be developed, or if a relational platform is used a dimensional modelling exercise is undertaken and then the physical tables are developed. The ETL system is designed and developed and reports and dashboards are built.

The relationship between these things is one of interdependency. It’s like a linked interdependent chain. This is why in the implementation methodology of BI System Builders we practice our philosophy of End to End BI. End to End BI takes the view that as each component in the BI system has interaction with and therefore dependency on its related components, BI Breakpoints can occur. BI System Builders take full consideration of the interdependencies in the landscape to ensure prevention rather than cure in their End to End BI project delivery method.

Posted on October 21, 2012March 29, 2019 by Russell Beech — Leave a comment

Death Of The Cube – Long Live The Cube!

The acquisition of BusinessObjects by SAP paved the way for a very welcome tighter integration between the two softwares. One of the challenges coming out of that tighter integration was the performance of Web Intelligence against an OLAP universe generated on SAP cubes and BEx Queries. The reality of SAP project implementations was that SAP Netweaver experts designed large cubes and large queries. And why not; after all this was the OLAP world?! Large SAP cubes and large BEx Queries make sense for OLAP.

However, Web Intelligence is not an OLAP tool, it builds a cache of data referred to as a ‘microcube’. Note the word ‘microcube’. Attempting to pass large volumes of data from an OLAP query to the microcube could cause the Web Intelligence engine to perform poorly or crash. BISB have observed this on numerous occasions when undergoing performance testing at client site. Problems with the version of Explorer dependent up on the Web Intelligence engine have also been observed for the same reason.

But failing to process large volumes of data was not a weakness of Web Intelligence. On the contrary, Web Intelligence was designed for smaller, fast, ad hoc queries. Users experiencing problems with large volumes of data and Web Intelligence could consider the use of Crystal Reports. Crystal Reports uses a different cache infrastructure to Web Intelligence.

The above mentioned data volume issues have made the SAP BI 4.0 road map very welcome. Using the new Data Federator connectivity through the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 universe means that the SAP MDX engine (OLAP) is bypassed. This removes one of the big issues of the SAP OLAP data volumes, namely MDX crossjoins. Other development means that the BI 4.0 universe now has connectivity to SAP HANA. If you have the budget available this makes SAP HANA highly desirable for Big Data and Analytics.

Finally, ardent OLAP users that cannot live without a cube have not been left out in the cold. BI 4.0 ushered in the end of the Voyager OLAP tool, replacing it with the new Advanced Analysis for OLAP tool.

The view expressed in this article is from BISB and not necessarily SAP. Russell Beech was Senior Analyst in the BusinessObjects Analytic Applications Division for almost six years. Check out Web Intelligence In Under Three Minutes here.