Archive for December, 2011

Sorting out Oracle connectivity on BusinessObjects 4.0

Published by Ron Keler in BusinessObjects 4.0 on December 22nd, 2011 | 3 Comments »

The new BusinessObjects 4.0 platform runs on 64bit OS. In an oracle based environment, this can be the source of much confusion.  While the platform itself (the CMS and Audit databases connections) support 64bit oracle driver connectivity, other BO tools do not. For example, the client tools, Universe designer or Crystal Reports 2011 are 32bit applications and will work only with 32bit versions of the oracle driver. So, what is one to do? Well, if you are looking to have the client tools installed on a server (in a development environment for example), or are deploying crystal reports that leverage oracle 32bit client connectivity, you will need to install both the 64bit and 32bit version of the driver on the machine, and in the same home. Once you get both clients installed and configured, you will be able to use applications that need 32bit middleware as well as applications that requires 64bit middleware.

In the example above, the 64bit client is installed into the dbhome_1 directory and the 32bit driver is installed in the client_32bit directory. Both are part of the same oracle home.
To keep things simple, make sure both clients share the same oracle home, as shown in the picture below, and make sure the tnsname.ora file is configured properly on both clients. To test your configuration, make sure you execute the tnsping.exe and/or sqlplus.exe commands from each directory separately to assure both clients are working properly and can connect to your database.

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What’s cooler than 500 rows in Xcelsius? 50,000 rows in Xcelsius!

Published by Ron Keler in Xcelsius on December 17th, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Sap Dashboards (Xcelsius) certainly has its limitations. I will be the last one to argue otherwise. However, i often run into misconceptions about what those are exactly. A good example if the 500 rows limit. By default, Xcelsius is preconfigured out-of-the-box to limit cell bindings to 500 rows in the excel model. However, you can change this initial setting to your heart content. Why was this low limit set to begin with? Well, there are many reasons why you would see degraded performance in flash in general, and Xcelsius in particular, as you cram more functionality and data into your .swf file. The larger and more complex your .swf is, the more work your client computer has to do in order to manipulate and render the functionality desired, and to keep things simple, a 500 rows limit on most component seemed reasonable initially. As more sophisticated business intelligence applications are being built using Xcelsius, this limitation seems out of touch.
In the example below, you can click the Cool hyperlink to fire a javascript function that initialized an array with 500 values and passes it to Xceslius grid component (a list view) via an EIC connection. Or, you can click the Cooler hyperlink to fire the same function, but this time construct  a 50,000 values array and pass it to Xcelsius via EIC.


Does this mean you can have limitless dashboards with tens of thousands of rows of data in them? No, it does not, this is just an illustration to make a point. Realistically, your grid components should not exceed the low thousands if you are expecting good performance, and of course,  many parameters will go into the sizing considerations such as the number and kind of components you are using, the complexity of functionality, as expressed in your model, etc. You can find the sample files here.

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Webi enhancements in 4.0: dynamic chart titles and formula wildcard name searching

Published by Ron Keler in Web Intelligence on December 11th, 2011 | 5 Comments »

Web Intelligence has a lot of new features and capabilities that make life a lot easier for report developers. A couple that i ran across and thought were very useful are the ability to use a formula as a chart title and the ability to easily search for functions right in the formula builder in webi.
The first enhancement I mentioned above is long overdue and very helpful. In pre 4.0, webi charts could only be created with static titles. This could only be overcome by creating complex workarounds (like creating a single cell block with a formula, and using relative positioning to place it on top a chart to make it look like its title). Now, you can simply type the formula you want to use as the chart title. Nice.

The second tip, helps report developers navigate the formulas library in webi. When you open the Formula Editor and select the Ctrl and F keys on your keyboard, you will get a little “Search for:” tooltip on top of the formulas list. You can use a * character as a varchar to search for any formula that contain the word date or format in its name..

 

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Using EIC and z-index to coordinate and layer multiple SAP Dashboards (Xcelsius) swf files

Published by Ron Keler in Xcelsius on December 4th, 2011 | 3 Comments »

Every Xcelsius developer who has any significant real life experience with the tool, knows that one of the greatest challenges of this technology is its scalability. As users get excited about the speed in which new developments can be incorporated to their dashboard application, and imaginations soar, XLF and SWF files become bloated with functionality very quickly, making it virtually impossible  to continue adding new features. Performance slows to a grind, and maintenance becomes very difficult as individual XLF files complexity increases dramatically. Conceptually, the solution to this design problem is to break the dashboard application into components, each with a more manageable set of features. This is, of course, easier said than done. One approach to application fragmentation in Xcelsius is leveraging the built in EIC (External interface Connection) and standard html/div functionality.
In the example below, two Xcelsius swf files are layered on top of each other. A label input selector is used to pass the page number to an eic connection and the combo box is used to pass both filtered results to the chart, as well as pass the selected company to the eic connection. Java script is used to toggle the z-index of the div in which each swf object is enclosed based on the selected page number.
You can find the XLF file (along with the swf, html and js file) here.

(Note: The example below is embedded in an iFrame and may not work in some browsers that do not support iFrames. If it does not work properly in your browser, you can get to it directly here)

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