These days almost every company store data such as users, emails, roles, printers, etc. in what it is call a Directory Service, providing a centralized access to company-related data that can be use across all its systems. One of the most widely used solution is Active Directory from Microsoft, since its tightly integrated with Windows OS systems. The other one LDAP, which stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, has a broad range of users too since the de facto standard in Linux-based systems.
Business Intelligence for SMEs - faster time to value and more affordable than ever
Given the fierce competition and the ever-soaring demands of customers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) today need to invest in having BI capabilities to stay relevant and meet these demands. Yet, with scarce resources available, the alignment of business and IT is vital to ensure success, and new options for hosted BI solutions freeing up cash flow are attractive options for SMEs.
Key Concepts to Optimize SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 Platform
SAP BusinessObjects (BO) BI 4 Platform has come with many improvements that have made the system more complex. Rep-Up-GraphWe, as BI 4 administrators, are required to know how this application works in order to apply the proper optimization improvements to the platform, when it is required. In this blog article, we will cover the most important concepts that need to be considered as a first step to increase the performance of the BI platform. It is very important for a good designer to understand the conceptual tiers in the BI Platform: Application Tier, Intelligence tier and Processing tier. We will refer to each one of them and we will nail down some optimization tips.
Single Sign-On to Folder in BusinessObjects
One of our customers came up with a challenge for us asking if it was possible to open a folder or category in InfoView through a URL. Doing some research we found that in BO3 there is no SAP official solution for this (SAP note 1390226), however we found some workarounds on how to accomplish it, but the real challenge was that none of these supported SingleSignOn, so every time the end user clicked on the URL before entering in InfoView the logon screen showed up.
SAP Explorer Views with Geographical Data
SAP Explorer has become one of the most useful tools in the Business Objects Toolkit, although sometimes we do not appreciate all its potential. If our data set has one or more geographical dimensions, like city, country, state.., we should use the geographical variable types for these dimensions. This kind of dimensions allow us to introduce map analytics in our Exploration Views, which is a plus. Below we will proceed to explain the needed steps in order to set up these dimensions and explain how to better use them. First of all, we need to log on SAP Explorer with an account with permission to "Manage Spaces".
Automating queries to SAP BusinessObjects System repository
The system CMS is an encrypted transactional repository where we can find the “current snapshot” of what is going on in BusinessObjects. Everything related to content, security and platform services can be found here, at a real time. Bringing this information into our reporting environment has always been key for administrators and power users and a line of investigation for years. Automating the capture of this data is the starting point for projects involving data quality reports, monitoring, alerts and corporate portals.
Running SAP BusinessObjects Explorer on top of SAP BW
Running SAP Explorer on top of BW This blog describes the only successfully tested way to run SAP Explorer on top of SAP Netweaver Business Warehouse (SAP BW) info-providers. This is not a straight forward configuration and it requires knowledge of Information Design Tool, Data Federator Administration Tool and SAP Logon application for SAP BW.
SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence report showing prompts with scientific notation
A while ago I was delivered a relatively easy task: create a SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence report that only needed one user entry in the prompt to calculate all the needed parameters for the query. After creating all the calculations and receiving the correct data in the Universe I proceeded to update the query of the Web Intelligence report, but encountered a problem. Due to unknown circumstances the report started showing the numbers and dates with scientific notation. When modifying my Web Intelligence report with the new values for the prompt, the SQL generated was showing the numbers in exponential form. "5.93e2" for example, as opposed to the actual value "593".
Migrating SAP BusinessObjects Explorer spaces to BI4
Configuring SAP Data Services 4.x with SAP ERP
In SAP® Data Services 3.2 some of the SAP system security standards were overlooked, allowing you to run any ABAP program in a production environment. As part of the improvements on SAP Data Services 4.x (SAP DS) this was fixed and it is now compliant with the SAP security standards. This means that for any ETL development including ABAP dataflows you will be forced to upload the ABAP code following the typical SAP system security process: upload to development (DEV), transport the changes to quality (QA) and, finally, transport the changes to production (PROD). In this article I would like to share with you some insights on how to get your new SAP DS 4.x environment ready using SAP systems.