Business Objects Exams

A couple of people have asked me how and where they can take the Business Objects exams.

Business Objects exams, which can lead to certification, are delivered by Pearson Vue. Pearson Vue have a number of authorised test centres throughout the world, and there is sure to be one close to you.

To register for an exam, visit their website, and select ‘Information Technology’ from the left hand box. Select ‘Business Objects’ from the right hand box. This will lead you to a section detailing the three certifications currently available from Business Objects. For those that don’t know, these are:

• BOCP – BusinessObjects Enterprise
• BOCP – BusinessObjects Data Integrator
• BOCP – Crystal Reports

Information on each of the certifications is available by clicking on the relevant link.

To book an exam, you need to register with Pearson Vue. Once registered, you can schedule a test. This is a straightforward process.

After selecting the exam you want to take, specify a location or area you want to take the exam in. A list of the five closest test centres are displayed. Select a test centre. A list of available dates and appointment times for that test centre are listed. Select a date and time, and then pay for the exam. Once done, you will receive a email confirming your exam date and time. It is important to check that the details are correct.

In the UK, the BOCP-BOE exams are all priced the same – £90 + VAT (£105.75 including VAT). There may be variations to this pricing in other parts of the world – I do not know. Perhaps someone can let me know, and I’ll update this post.

Whether you pass or fail the exam, you are given a printout of your score. This is must be embossed by the test centre. Your results can be viewed within a few hours on your account history on the Pearson Vue website.

Note that if you fail an exam, you can retake the exam as many times as you like. It does not affect your overall certification. However, you must wait five working days before retaking an exam.

So thats a brief overview of the how’s, where’s and how much of the Business Objects exams.

Study hard and good luck!

XI Release Management/Version Control

What do you use for release management/version control?

We currently use EQM from NoadBI. This product allows us to migrate reports and universes via the EQM interface and allows us to track version numbers and add comments with changes. It also has a suite of built in ‘audit’ reports.

We’ve also used PVCS in the past.

There is also a product called Version Manager/Enterprise Manager from ebi experts. I haven’t used this, but I’ve heard good comments about it.

What do you use?

XI 3.0 – Possible new features

In anticipation of the new XI 3.0 release, I’ve been putting together a list of ‘What’s New’.

To date I’ve compiled the following list:

Web Intelligence Rich Client – online and offline version of WebIntelligence that allows your users to interact and manipulate with reports in offline mode. The client also has a very neat new feature called track changes which works similar to say a track changes in MS Word. What happens is that the report will show you what data/information has changed between data refreshes.

They have also included full support for WebIntelligence Extension Points which make it very easy for you to change the look and feel of the WebIntelligence report panel and viewer. In fact it is now style sheet driven and you can customise for you companies own look and feel.

Personal Data Providers in Webi

Finally a feature that we have all loved in Desktop Intelligence since version 4 and now it has arrived in Webi. It will support locally stored data in Excel, CSV and Text files and has a nice query panel which shows you the data from the Excel file, CSV etc.

Federation

If you have multiple CMS deployments you can now keep these in synch with replication via web services.

Publishing

It is really great to see all the major features of BCA Publisher incorporated into 3.0 and they have also added some nice new features. I used to run the BCA team for BOBJ so this one is close to my heart.

Publishing now supports Webi and Crystal as well as DeskI and there is a nice feature that lets you send one PDF with multiple reports inside.

Administration

The CMC administration has a new look and is organised in my opinion much more like the old 6.5 Supervisor.

LiveOffice

Now supports Office 2007 and they have also extended support to include Outlook. If you use Office 2007 then you will have access to the LiveOffice Ribbon bar which is very cool. You can now copy and paste BOBJ LiveOffice content between Office applications also.

Revamped Migration Wizard

Report Comparison and Conversion tools

More details to follow post-XI 3.0 conference on March 12th.

Business Objects books

A few people have asked if I can recommend a good Business Objects XI book.

Unlike many other applications, there seems to be a distinct lack of third party reading material for Business Objects products. This isn’t specific to XI, but has been the case for all previous versions. Not sure why this is.

While it is true that Business Objects provide comprehensive support guides in PDF format, it is handy to have a book on your desk to look things up as and when required.

It depends on what you are after really. If you are using XI, you can’t really go wrong with the following book: BusinessObjects XI (Release 2): The Complete Reference: Release 2 (Complete Reference). If you need a book which deals with pre-XI releases, consider Cindi’s Business Objects: The Complete Reference (Osborne Complete Reference).

Both books are written by Cindi Howson. Cindi runs her own company specialisign in the BI arena and has written a number of articles.

If you are an XI administrator, you might expect more detail in the CMC area, as this is a radical departure from the pre-XI way of setting up and administering Business Objects.

It is also worth noting that there is no accompanying CD with the XI book. So if you want to read it on the train, you are going to have to lug it around.

Having said that, the best source of Business Objects information simply has to the Business Objects Forum – BOB. Quite simply, this is the definitive destination for answers to your Business Objects problems.

SABE501V3.0 – XI 3.0 update exam?

I spotted the following while booking my SABE310 exam on the Pearson Vue website today:

“Business Objects Certified Professional – BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.0 – Update”

As suspected, it looks like there will be an XI3.0 update to the BOCP certification. I can’t find any details on the Business Objects website, and as it hasn’t been officially release yet, it might be a while before we get further details.

SA310 e-learning course

I recently completed the SA310 Administering Servers e-learning course.

SA310 is the second of three exams required to earn the BOCP certification.

This is a more comprehensive course and delves into the detail behind each of the Business Objects servers.

It covers all the servers in the BOE setup – Web servers, through to the CMS, FRS, Cache, Job and Program servers. Each chapter discusses the role of each server, configuration options and how various tasks are processed.

Like the previous e-learning course, a series of multiple choice tests are presented at the end of each chapter to test your understanding of the subject matter.

The cost of this course is £790. Note, that there are two SA310 courses available. Make sure you select the R2 version of the course. This will include details on the R2 enhancements.

Following on from this I plan to take the SABE310 exam shortly. Update to follow.