Blogs

SAP and BOBJ Front End Integration

Chetan Patel Business Card Company: Deloitte Consulting LLP Posted on Dec. 05, 2008 08:27 AM in Business Intelligence (BI)

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Since SAP decided to integrate with BOBJ there is lot of speculation and potential implementation dilemmas around this subject as to how would this work. In this regards to get a clear understanding, I would like to discuss here how the existing SAP front end tools integrate with the future BOBJ front end tools with its independent time horizon limits and the approach moving ahead. I would also like to give you heads-up on some of the SAP front end tools which would get replaced by BOBJ front end tools and the existing SAP front end tools available for migration.There are significant changes involved around the overall product however; I would like to concentrate prima-facie on the front end related changes this time.

To begin with the first slide, it shows Business objects Roadmap and its offering with its respective time horizon.

Note - Products not explicitly mentioned here continue on their existing roadmap.Examples (not a complete list) are SAP Net Weaver BI (EDW), SAP NetWeaverBIA, SAP Net Weaver Composition Environment & VC, Business Objects Rapid Marts, etc.

This slide is the most important of all the slides, it give the 360 degree front end integration overview of SAP with BOBJ. As per my school of thought our memory keeps sharp image of the objects which we see at a glance and hence I pursued combining all the key points on one slide rather than keeping them separated, to avoid confusion

created so far with the myriad tools

KEY POINTS Enterprise OLAP Query Adhoc Report Dashboard Reporting Analysis Designer Reporting Designer CRYSTAL PIONEER BEx WEBI CRYSTAL Xcelcius + to REPORTS to be Query Web LITE be used for to be used used for Designer Intelligence to to be used dashboards. for OLAP is not be used for for report Replaced Enterprise analysis affected byAdhoc Reporting design Tools Reporting Replaced the Universe Replaced Web Tools - roadmap. architecture Tools Application BEx It remains design Bex Report Designer Analyzer a central Designer BEx Web tool for Analyzer SAP NetWeaver BI customers Crystal Pioneer All BOBJ Self-service BEx Report Visual Report to will tools can reporting Designer Composer be used for combine or will and 7.1, last will pick-up highly Voyager's consume analysis,autonom release in further Web formatted intuitive BEx y 2008, Application reporting user queries From IT. maximum Design such as interface either Simple user maintenanc features both managemen with the directly interface e until 2016 in the designt reports or powerful (Pioneer, Designed for as well as in legal reports OLAP Voyager, masses No the runtime, in The capabilitie Crystal, Combine data Migration order to connectivity s of Xcelsius) o from of report support of Crystal today's r via OLAP SAP and non SAP designer to modeling, Reports to Bex OLAP universe in a CR or CR running & SAP NW BI tools (WebI) Single Report lite products personalizatio is achieved Sits on top of n of using NW It will be Business composites BI's MDX available Objects with based OLAP as web Universes. seamlessly BAPI when client as Universes embedded accessing well as connect to SAP Business InfoCubes Excel Net weaver BI Intelligence and queries. client with via OLAP BAPI It is planned tight that Visual

integration Connectivity between to Data the two. Store Pioneer objects DONT works via need Open SQL Universe driver Migratio n will be provided later on from BEx Analyzer/ BEx Web Analyzer to the Pioneer Analysis client

Access objects Bex Queries SAP BI InfoCubes SAP Multiprovider No access to DSO

Composer provides capabilities to embed and call Enterprise Reports (Crystal Reports), Xcelsius Dashboards and the Pioneer Web/Excel client directly from within Visual Composer Models

Important Notes-Bex Query Designer- no Replacement.All BOBJ tools can or will utilize Bex queries either directly (Pioneer, Voyager, Crystal, Xcelsius) or via OLAP universe (WebI) built using Bex Query Designer. Voyager - It is the intermediate tool before the Pioneer is released.As per SAP, for selected areas, such as web- & Excel based OLAP analysis, it will still be beneficial to leverage BEx Analyzer & BEx Web Analyzer for new projects as they provide superior OLAP features compared to Business Object Voyager.Hence I am not discussing in detail about the voyager architecture however, voyager customers will be able to migrate to Pioneer. Universe - They are limited to one source per Universe at this point, but in some cases multiple Universes may be accessed by Webi, Voyager, or Polestar. A Universe is limited to 1 GB of metadata now, which limits the size and complexity of projects. SAP also recommends connecting a Universe to BI through a BEx Query now, for purposes of performance and avoiding problems with hierarchies, navigational attributes, and a few others. Now that we have learnt the new BOBJ tools and its integration coupled points with SAP, let us have a close look at some of the migration overview and possible options.SAP comes with 2 offerings primarily-

Base offering Premium Offering

Below snapshot shows the products available with Base and Premium offerings

SAP Tools

BOBJ Tools (Replacements)

Bex Pioneer Analyzer Bex Web Pioneer Analyzer Bex Report Crystal Reports Designer Bex Query NA Designer Bex Web Xcelcius+ Application

BOBJ BOBJ Migration Base Premium Availability Package Package Availability Availability N Y Y N Y Y N Y Y Y Y Y N NA N

Designer Visual Composer NA Y Y Y

If you want to start new projects SAP recommends to evaluate and use the Business Object premium packages. For selected areas, such as web- & Excel based OLAP analysis, it will still be beneficial to leverage BEx Analyzer & BEx Web Analyzer for new projects as they provide superior OLAP features compared to Business Object Voyager. Projects requiring an Excel OLAP Integration should be carried out with BEx Analyzer until Pioneer arrives.f you are already experienced with the BEx Web Applications Designer, and want to build heavy weight BI Web applications, you can still do this using BEx Web Application Designer, but please evaluate Visual Composer in NW Composition Environment 7.1.1, as VC/CE tools will be the go-to solutions for design of webbased, composite applications in the future.

Key Takeaways 1) Enterprise Reporting - Crystal Reports Connects to almost everything, including ECC. Nice tool for super users and IT programmers. 2) OLAP Analysis - PIONEER Bex analyzer, Bex Web analyzer, Report designer to be replaced by Business Objects tool called PIONEER. No need of Universe for building reports using Pioneer. 3) Bex Query Designer - No Replacement BEx Query Designer is not affected by the roadmap. It remains a central tool for SAP Net Weaver BI customers. 4) Bex Report Designer 7.1 - Crystal Light product Last release in 2008, maximum maintenance until 2016, to be replaced with Crystal Light product 5) Adhoc analysis - Web Intelligence (WebI) tool Access SAP via Universe ,connects to BI InfoCubes, BI MultiProviders, and BEx Queries, but not DSOs.It cannot for larger complex projects. In 2009 it will be improved to multiple sources (more than one Infocube, etc). 6) Dashboard - Xcelcius Tool Existing Dashboard reporting tools to be replaced by Business objects tool Xcelcius + . Connectivity to SAP is through Crystal Reports or Web Intelligence. Nice tool for End Users,especially future releases . SAP and BOBJ more insightshttps://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/businessobjects-for-sap-faq#section1 https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/businessobjects-for-sap https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/u/251909211 https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/businessobjects-elearning Chetan Patel's SDN Profile https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/profile?userID=3460671 Hope it Helps Chetan @CP..

Chetan Patel Chetan has major contributions in the SAPBI arena for the past 5 years in blogs such as SDN and SAPFANS. Chetan has been top-1 position for consecutive 2 years in SDN SAP Netweaver 2004s forum with over 7000 points(3000+ articles) and has published 1400 articles on SAPFANS forum.
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Comment on this weblog Showing messages 1 through 5 of 5. Titles Only Main Topics Oldest First PIONEER is BOBJ Tool or SAP BI tool ? 2008-12-08 11:45:41 Sreekanth Maddipatla Business Card [Reply] First of all I would like to thank you for clarifying this.

2) OLAP Analysis - PIONEER Bex analyzer, Bex Web analyzer, Report designer to be replaced by Business Objects tool called PIONEER. No need of Universe for building reports using Pioneer.

My Question is PIONEER is SAP BI tool or BOBJ Tool? Do we need seperate BO License if we dont have one ?

PIONEER is BOBJ Tool or SAP BI tool ? 2008-12-08 12:40:44 Chetan Patel Business Card [Reply] Thanks Sreekanth, Below you can find the first and only PIONEER documentation available from SAP to the best of my knowledge,courtesy and thanks to Eric Schemer from SAP

http://www.asug.com/EventsCalendar/EventDetails/tabid/150/EventID/996/Default.aspx Pioneer comes from BOBJ and will be integrated with SAP later as per the roadmap and yes we need a separate licence for BOBJ Regards Chetan

Good insight on BOBJ 2008-12-06 12:32:41 Vijay Rama Business Card [Reply] Chetan, Blog gives good insight and starting point.

Thanks, Vijay Rama.

Good insight on BOBJ 2008-12-06 12:47:11 Chetan Patel Business Card [Reply] Thanks a lot.

Good insight on BOBJ 2008-12-29 13:33:13 V K Business Card [Reply] Nice post...This gives me a topic to learn besides SAP BI... Cheers, vishal

Showing messages 1 through 5 of 5.

Blogs

SAP and BOBJ Front End Integration

Chetan Patel Business Card Company: Deloitte Consulting LLP Posted on Dec. 05, 2008 08:27 AM in Business Intelligence (BI)

Subscribe Print Permalin k

Since SAP decided to integrate with BOBJ there is lot of speculation and potential implementation dilemmas around this subject as to how would this work. In this regards to get a clear understanding, I would like to discuss here how the existing SAP front end tools integrate with the future BOBJ front end tools with its independent time horizon limits and the approach moving ahead. I would also like to give you heads-up on some of the SAP front end tools which would get replaced by BOBJ front end tools and the existing SAP front end tools available for migration.There are significant changes involved around the overall product however; I would like to concentrate prima-facie on the front end related changes this time.

To begin with the first slide, it shows Business objects Roadmap and its offering with its respective time horizon.

Note - Products not explicitly mentioned here continue on their existing roadmap.Examples (not a complete list) are SAP Net Weaver BI (EDW), SAP NetWeaverBIA, SAP Net Weaver Composition Environment & VC, Business Objects Rapid Marts, etc.

This slide is the most important of all the slides, it give the 360 degree front end integration overview of SAP with BOBJ. As per my school of thought our memory keeps sharp image of the objects which we see at a glance and hence I pursued combining all the key points on one slide rather than keeping them separated, to avoid confusion created so far with the myriad tools

KEY POINTS Enterprise OLAP Query Adhoc Report Dashboard Reporting Analysis Designer Reporting Designer CRYSTAL PIONEER BEx WEBI CRYSTAL Xcelcius + to REPORTS to be Query Web LITE be used for to be used used for Designer Intelligence to to be used dashboards. for OLAP is not be used for for report Replaced Enterprise analysis affected byAdhoc Reporting design Tools Reporting Replaced the Universe Replaced Web Tools - roadmap. architecture Tools Application BEx It remains design Bex Report Designer Analyzer a central Designer BEx Web tool for Analyzer SAP NetWeaver BI customers Crystal Pioneer All BOBJ Self-service BEx Report Visual Report to will tools can reporting Designer Composer be used for combine or will and 7.1, last will pick-up highly Voyager's consume analysis,autonom release in further Web formatted intuitive BEx y 2008, Application reporting user queries From IT. maximum Design such as interface either Simple user maintenanc features both managemen with the directly interface e until 2016 in the designt reports or powerful (Pioneer, Designed for as well as in legal reports OLAP Voyager, masses No the runtime, in The capabilitie Crystal, Combine data Migration order to connectivity s of Xcelsius) o from of report support of Crystal today's r via OLAP SAP and non SAP designer to modeling, Reports to Bex OLAP universe in a CR or CR running & SAP NW BI tools (WebI) Single Report lite products personalizatio is achieved Sits on top of n of

using NW It will be BI's MDX available based OLAP as web BAPI when client as accessing well as InfoCubes Excel and queries. client with tight integration Connectivity between to Data the two. Store Pioneer objects DONT works via need Open SQL Universe driver Migratio n will be provided later on from BEx Analyzer/ BEx Web Analyzer to the Pioneer Analysis client

Business Objects Universes. Universes connect to SAP Net weaver BI via OLAP BAPI Access objects Bex Queries SAP BI InfoCubes SAP Multiprovider No access to DSO

composites with seamlessly embedded Business Intelligence It is planned that Visual Composer provides capabilities to embed and call Enterprise Reports (Crystal Reports), Xcelsius Dashboards and the Pioneer Web/Excel client directly from within Visual Composer Models

Important Notes-Bex Query Designer- no Replacement.All BOBJ tools can or will utilize Bex queries either directly (Pioneer, Voyager, Crystal, Xcelsius) or via OLAP universe (WebI) built using Bex Query Designer. Voyager - It is the intermediate tool before the Pioneer is released.As per SAP, for selected areas, such as web- & Excel based OLAP analysis, it will still be beneficial to leverage BEx Analyzer & BEx Web Analyzer for new projects as they provide superior OLAP features compared to Business Object Voyager.Hence I am not discussing in detail about the voyager architecture however, voyager customers will be able to migrate to Pioneer. Universe - They are limited to one source per Universe at this point, but in some cases multiple Universes may be accessed by Webi, Voyager, or Polestar. A Universe is limited to 1 GB of metadata now, which limits the size and complexity of projects. SAP also recommends connecting a Universe to BI through a BEx Query now, for purposes of performance and avoiding problems with hierarchies, navigational attributes, and a few others. Now that we have learnt the new BOBJ tools and its integration coupled points with SAP, let us have a close look at some of the migration overview and possible options.SAP comes with 2 offerings primarily-

Base offering Premium Offering

Below snapshot shows the products available with Base and Premium offerings

SAP Tools Bex Analyzer

BOBJ Tools (Replacements) Pioneer

BOBJ BOBJ Migration Base Premium Availability Package Package Availability Availability N Y Y

Bex Web Pioneer Analyzer Bex Report Crystal Reports Designer Bex Query NA Designer Bex Web Xcelcius+ Application Designer Visual NA Composer

N Y Y N Y

Y Y Y Y Y

Y N NA N Y

If you want to start new projects SAP recommends to evaluate and use the Business Object premium packages. For selected areas, such as web- & Excel based OLAP analysis, it will still be beneficial to leverage BEx Analyzer & BEx Web Analyzer for new projects as they provide superior OLAP features compared to Business Object Voyager. Projects requiring an Excel OLAP Integration should be carried out with BEx Analyzer until Pioneer arrives.f you are already experienced with the BEx Web Applications Designer, and want to build heavy weight BI Web applications, you can still do this using BEx Web Application Designer, but please evaluate Visual Composer in NW Composition Environment 7.1.1, as VC/CE tools will be the go-to solutions for design of webbased, composite applications in the future.

Key Takeaways 1) Enterprise Reporting - Crystal Reports Connects to almost everything, including ECC. Nice tool for super users and IT programmers. 2) OLAP Analysis - PIONEER Bex analyzer, Bex Web analyzer, Report designer to be replaced by Business Objects tool called PIONEER. No need of Universe for building reports using Pioneer. 3) Bex Query Designer - No Replacement BEx Query Designer is not affected by the roadmap. It remains a central tool for SAP Net Weaver BI customers. 4) Bex Report Designer 7.1 - Crystal Light product Last release in 2008, maximum maintenance until 2016, to be replaced with Crystal Light product 5) Adhoc analysis - Web Intelligence (WebI) tool Access SAP via Universe ,connects to BI InfoCubes, BI MultiProviders, and BEx Queries, but not DSOs.It cannot for larger complex projects. In 2009 it will be improved to multiple sources (more than one Infocube, etc). 6) Dashboard - Xcelcius Tool Existing Dashboard reporting tools to be replaced by Business objects tool Xcelcius + . Connectivity to SAP is through Crystal Reports or Web Intelligence. Nice tool for End Users,especially future releases . SAP and BOBJ more insightshttps://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/businessobjects-for-sap-faq#section1 https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/businessobjects-for-sap https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/u/251909211 https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/businessobjects-elearning Chetan Patel's SDN Profile https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/profile?userID=3460671 Hope it Helps

Chetan @CP..

Chetan Patel Chetan has major contributions in the SAPBI arena for the past 5 years in blogs such as SDN and SAPFANS. Chetan has been top-1 position for consecutive 2 years in SDN SAP Netweaver 2004s forum with over 7000 points(3000+ articles) and has published 1400 articles on SAPFANS forum.
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit Comment on this weblog Showing messages 1 through 5 of 5. Titles Only Main Topics Oldest First PIONEER is BOBJ Tool or SAP BI tool ? 2008-12-08 11:45:41 Sreekanth Maddipatla Business Card [Reply] First of all I would like to thank you for clarifying this.

2) OLAP Analysis - PIONEER Bex analyzer, Bex Web analyzer, Report designer to be replaced by Business Objects tool called PIONEER. No need of Universe for building reports using Pioneer.

My Question is PIONEER is SAP BI tool or BOBJ Tool? Do we need seperate BO License if we dont have one ?

PIONEER is BOBJ Tool or SAP BI tool ? 2008-12-08 12:40:44 Chetan Patel Business Card [Reply] Thanks Sreekanth, Below you can find the first and only PIONEER documentation available from SAP to the best of my knowledge,courtesy and thanks to Eric Schemer from SAP

http://www.asug.com/EventsCalendar/EventDetails/tabid/150/EventID/996/Default.aspx Pioneer comes from BOBJ and will be integrated with SAP later as per the roadmap and yes we need a separate licence for BOBJ Regards Chetan

Good insight on BOBJ 2008-12-06 12:32:41 Vijay Rama Business Card [Reply] Chetan, Blog gives good insight and starting point.

Thanks, Vijay Rama.

Good insight on BOBJ 2008-12-06 12:47:11 Chetan Patel Business Card [Reply]

Thanks a lot.

Good insight on BOBJ 2008-12-29 13:33:13 V K Business Card [Reply] Nice post...This gives me a topic to learn besides SAP BI... Cheers, vishal

Showing messages 1 through 5 of 5.