Business Objects Lifecycle Manager

It looks like Business Objects may have seen the ‘light’ on version and source control.

As you may be aware, Business Objects has never included version control functionality into its software. The moment you release a report into production, that’s it, no turning back. (Unless of course you done the smart thing and took a backup of the original report or universe). This led to a number of third party software companies to develop Business Objects versioning and migration software. The three third party tools of note are Noad’s EQM, Version Manager from Infosol and Version Manager from ebi experts.

Business Objects has now decided to integrate version control and migration functionality into its new XI 3 software. Currently available as an open beta on the XI 3.1 platform (itself a beta), Business Objects LifeCycle Manager can be downloaded from the following link:

http://beta.businessobjects.com/lcm

This product allows users to manage promotions between environments, version control and rollback functionallity and dependency checking. It also appears that there is a scheduling feature which allows for releases out of hours. To be honest, I think it is safer to release manually to avoid the potential problem of releasing something to production that you shouldn’t have. But then again, some users are bound to find this handy.

This looks like an interesting development from the part of Business Objects. I am looking to download the beta and will feedback my findings.

I’m not sure however, how this sits with the third party developers. Obviously they have filled an obvious gap in the market with their products. I’ve used EQM extensively and find it to be a very good product. However, if the Lifecycle Manager is any good, and if the pricing model for this new product is competitive, or dare I say it, bundled in for FREE, then these third party developers will need to slash their prices or find they no longer have a market for their product.

Addendum – I’ve just read that this product will be part of BOE with no separate license required.

Hans Rosling – The best stats you’ve ever seen

I was left speechless recently by a fantastic presentation by Dr Hans Rosling. Recorded in February 2006, Dr Rosling communicates in an effective manner various misconceptions we have about the developing world. What has this to do with Business Intelligence? Well, to add a bit of spice to his presentation, he presents a mass of statistical information (which on it’s own can be quite boring), using software he and his team have developed. This software is called Trendalyzer. I’m sure you will find his presentation interesting.

So what is this software called Trendalyzer? Well to quote Gapminder – “Trendalyzer software unveils the beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations. “

This is certaintly true, as Dr Roslings excellent presentation demonstrates. And guess what company has recently acquired Trendalyzer? Stand up messrs. Brin and Page of Google. This should prove to be very interesting.

Business Objects Support woes

We’ve recently been trying to help out a number of our clients who are having problems with Business Objects technical support.

This has been caused by problems in migrating Business Objects support to SAP. As you may be aware, Business Objects migrated all their support to the SAP system in early July. This does not appear to have been a smooth process by any stretch of the imagination. Users have reported problems with gaining access to support, lost cases, etc.

Such is the fury of users, that a post in the excellent Business Objects forum now runs to 9 pages! PC World has picked up on this and has posted an article on the topic. Several other magazines have picked up on this story. However, it appears to have been a syndicated story as they all reprint the same article.

So what can you do during this transition period? Well, three main things.

First, if you have an urgent support case, escalate it to your account manager. He or she will have access to the support team and can direct your query to the correct person.

Second, if you use a Business Objects partner or third party consultancy, call upon their expertise to solve your particular issue.

Third, make use of the excellent Business Objects community forum. This is simply one of the best forums available on the internet. This is independent from Business Objects and SAP, and works on a volunteer basis. More often than not, you will find answers to your questions here. If you have a question which has never been asked before, post it. It’s free. You’ll find that the community will try to help you with an answer before long.

While this appears to be a real problem which will take time to sort out, once migrated, you should find the SAP support site a whole lot better than the old Business Objects site.

New Business Objects Certifications

Business Objects have released a few more exams. The Pearson Vue website now offers the following two exams which lead to a new certification: Business Object Certified Professional – Web Intelligence.

• QAWI201V3.0: Business Objects Certified Professional Web Intelligence XI 3.0
• QAWI301V3.0: Business Objects Certified Professional ? Business Objects Web Intelligence XI 3.0 ? Level Two

I’ve also noticed that there are two new exams for certification in Crystal Reports 2008:

• RDCR08201: Business Objects Certified Professional – Crystal Reports 2008 – Level One
• RDCR08301: Business Objects Certified Professional – Crystal Reports 2008 – Level Two

This will lead to Business Object Certified Professional – Crystal Reports 2008. If you are thinking of certifiying in Crystal Reports, make sure you take the correct path – XI or 2008.

Bullet Graphs in Google

If you’ve been following Stephen Few’s articles regarding data visualisation, you will be familiar with the terms Sparklines and Bullet Graphs. I’m a big fan of these types of graphs – they make so much sense and present a great deal of information simply, cleanly, concisely and in a very small footprint.

Several people have been implementing their versions of sparklines and bullet graphs with great success. I came across an article recently describing how to create bullet graphs using the Google Chart API in seven steps. This is quite a powerful tool, as you can now pass a series of parameters into a URL and get Google to display a bullet graph on your web page. An example of a bullet graph using the Google Chart API is shown below:

If you’d like to read more about Sparklines, Bullet Graphs and data visualisation, I’d highly recommend that you borrow, or even better, buy Stephen Few’s Information Dashboard Design. Stephen highlights many of the failings of the current data visualisation tools available from all the BI vendors. He goes on to describe why they fail to get the message across and goes on to produce his version of how information can be displayed in a more meaningful and uncluttered way. Essential reading in my view, if you are responsible for, or invlving in developing graphical reports, dashboards and analytics.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence 2008

Gartner have produced some interesting research on the Business Intelligence market for 2008.

This is particularly interesting as a number of the larger BI pure play vendors such as Business Objects and Cognos have been purchased by some larger software vendors – notably SAP and IBM. Some of the small BI pure plays have also been snapped up – Microsoft’s purchase of ProClarity and Tibco’s purchase of Spotfire.

There is also a useful section at the bottom which lists the strengths and weaknesses of a number of the vendors which makes for some interesting reading. Have a read of the research article.

Business Objects News – #1 BI vendor by revenue

BusinessObjects have reported on their website that they are the Number 1 Business Intelligence vendor by revenue.

Analysis by firm IDC states that BusinessObjects has a 19.2% market share and has exceed the $1bn revenue mark – apparently the first BI vendor to do so.

These are still early days following their purchase by SAP. However, this does provide some form of comfort to clients that have invested in the BusinessObjects platform, as well as those developers and consultants who make a living from this working with this software.

BusinessObjects v Other BI Tools

So what is the best BI Reporting Tool on the market today?

This is a difficult decision and one which is subject to personal preferences. I’ve worked with a number of BI tools over the years using products such as:

• Business Objects
• Cognos
• ProClarity (now Performance Point Server)
• Panorama
• SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services)
• Oracle Forms & Reports
• …a bit of Crystal

So which of these is the best BI reporting tool?

Panorama and ProClarity provide a ‘freshness’ to reporting. Users find their tools easy to use and the type of output these products generate should really make the larger BI vendors sit up and take notice. ProClarity introduced a number of new graphical representations of data which I haven’t seen in other products. I’m not sure why, but once you play around with these charts, you can’t help but be impressed. One of my favorites graphical displays is the heat map. An example of a heat map in action can be found here. This example shows the the NASDAQ-100 in one dimension. ProClarity allows you to add another dimension which will determine the size of boxes depending on a second variable. Nice.

I haven’t used Cognos products for a while, so my opinion may be outdated. However, I didn’t find it’s product suite as integrated as that of BusinessObjects. It does have it’s fan base however, and it’s customer base suggests it is no small player. Recently bought out by IBM, it is going to give BusinessObjects a real fight. I welcome this. You need companies to be competing with each other to push forward innovation.

I found that Oracle Forms/Reports and Crystal Reports good for static reporting – the kind of reports that are not likely to change any time soon. Crystal is an excellent product, especially if you want to embed reports into existing code or applications. It is fairly simple to pick up and I find it quite powerful. One of BusinessObjects’ better purchases I think. To be fair to Oracle, I haven’t used it’s BI product suite. Hyperion, which was bought by Oracle, was a highly regarded BI vendor, so I am sure Oracles BI suite is impressive. Note to self: I should really become familiar with Oracle BI.

And finally, SSRS. To be honest I’m not a massive fan of SSRS. It not really and end user type of product.  However, its low entry price (and often no additional cost as most sites will be using SQL Server) make this a popular choice. However, I don’t think it offers the features of some other products in my list. Things are changing in the Microsoft camp however. Following it’s purchase of ProClarity, it has integrated it’s BI toolset into Performance Point Server. Microsoft has quite a strong BI case now. For sites using SQL Server as it’s database, it now has an attractive stack whereby for a low cost, users can product OLAP cubes, develop powerful reports, and integrate all of this into the well established Office suite of products. At the end of the day, many sites have been using Excel as their ‘reporting tool’. It is going to be difficult to wrestle users away from Excel, and with Microsoft building on that platform, it is making life difficult for the bigger BI players.

So what about BusinessObjects? It is now quite a mature product, and immensely powerful. I dare say that most users merely scratch the surface of what BusinessObjects is capable of. Its products are very well integrated, and it offers a full product stack from the warehouse ETL to dashboards. But that is exactly the point. I find BusinessObjects strong in Query and Analysis and ETL, but weak in Analytics and Dashboards. Yes, BusinessObjects has Xcelcius and Performance Manager, but I do believe that Panorama and Performance Point Server/ProClarity offer a better Analytic/Dashboard tool.

So what do  prefer? Difficult to nail it down, but if I were setting up from scratch:

1. BusinessObjects Data Integrator for ETL. (I know Informatica is the market leader, but Data Integrator really is a fantastic product and integrates well with the rest of the BusinessObjects stack).
2. BusinessObjects XIR2 for Query and Analysis (XI 3.0 is not yet established enough)
3. Panorama or Performance Point Server for Analytics and Dashboards.

It should be interesting over the next few months. XI 3.0 will become more established, PPS should begin to mature and integrate more functionality from it’s ProClarity purchase, and it will be interesting to see how much influence SAP and IBM have on their recent purchases.

I’m keen to hear your views. Feel free to share your views and comments – I’ll add them to the post. It is quite lonely in the blogosphere…

Addendum: SAS are also a strong player in this market space. However, it appears to be somewhat of a closed shop. I have no experience of SAS. Anyone care to add a comment comparing SAS to the other tools I have discussed?

Woops – user deleted folder and it’s contents

It not the first time I’ve come across this issue.

A user has misinterpreted the X on the folder list as a close button, and before you know it, a frantic call is made to IT support to recover a deleted folder.

In nearly all cases where I’ve set up security, I’ve strongly recommended that the delete object functionality is disabled. Some clients want that functionality, and who am I to deny them that? But once they become aware of the issue, they are normally happy to change the permission.

CMS performance problems

Having CMS performance problems? I found the following post on the Business Objects forum which may help.

It involves tweaking a registry entry and increasing the ‘MaximumObjectsToKeepInMemory’ parameter.

I’ve made this change on my test system, however, it really needs a larger installation to check whether it works. One thing to try if I come across a client with performance issues.

Usual caveats about changes to registry – BACKUP, BACKUP and BACKUP.