Dave’s Adventures in Business Intelligence

Yesterday I mentioned my first talk that I will be giving at the fall BusinessObjects conference this year. Brian Durning and I are going to compare and contrast Crystal and Web Intelligence. But that’s not all. In the session immediately following that one I will be giving a talk about change management for BusinessObjects universes.

Session Code: 804
Title: Don’t Lose Control: Change Management Strategies for Universe Designers
Day and Time: Tuesday, October 05, 2010, 2:45PM – 3:45PM

My final material is subject to change as I see how long each section gets, but here’s a brief overview of the areas I am considering covering.

• Impact of database changes
  What happens to my universe when my database changes? How can I address those issues in a way that causes the least impact on my reporting team?
• Impact of universe changes
  What happens to reports when I change my universe?
• How can I compare two versions of a universe to see what is changing?
  This is the big one… several years ago I started a script that allows me to check two different versions of a universe and see what is different. I have been using the script for a while now and it does most of what I need, but it isn’t complete. I plan to (hope to) get the code finished by October so I can distribute it at the conference, and of course here on my blog. The code will be released under the GNU GPL (open source license). Details of that license and what someone can (or cannot) do are found on the GNU GPL home page. I will demonstrate the code and how it works under various change scenarios during my presentation… assuming I get it all working the way I want it to, of course.

These were the ideas I had in mind when I submitted the abstract. Time will tell which of them make it into the final presentation. Anything that doesn’t make it will very likely show up here as blog posts.

At some point, anyway. I mean I only started working on my universe change script in 2007…

I submitted several abstracts for consideration for the fall conference this year. The one I was the most excited about got accepted into the Webi/Deski track, and is called, “Discovery Versus Delivery: A Comparison of Client Reporting Tools.” Here is the formal track designation information.

Session Code: 603
Title: Discovery Versus Delivery: A Comparison of Client Reporting Tools
Day and Time: Tuesday, October 05, 2010, 1:30PM – 2:30PM

What is this talk about? A while back I wrote a post about a very short (single page) slide from SAP that shows how to pick which tool for a particular problem. For this presentation, Brian Durning and I will be doing a demonstration of strengths of two of the most important tools from BusinessObjects: Crystal and Web Intelligence. We plan to cover (and demonstrate!) several scenarios that should help show where the strengths of each tool lie. I will be covering Web Intelligence, and Brian Durning will be covering the Crystal side of the house.

It should be fun.

Related Links

• Related Blog Post: Delivery Versus Discover

A few weeks back I got an acceptance notice for an abstract I had submitted to TechEd this year. TechEd is in Las Vegas and I will be speaking about universe design to SAP folks that want to learn more about how to use BusinessObjects tools outside of their ERP/BW environment. It should be fun.

Earlier today I got notified that I have also been accepted to speak at the ASUG fall conference in Orlando. This is the conference that replace the Insight conferences put on by BusinessObjects these past few years, which were then followed by the two GBN conferences in Dallas. Since GBN has been folded into ASUG now our fall conference is now under their umbrella. If you are a “classic” BusinessObjects customer who wants to continue to see new and exciting things that you can do with your tools, this is the conference to attend. There will be some great stuff coming from SAP employees about XI 4 that you won’t want to miss, as well as (I am sure) a number of “can’t miss” sessions related to XI 3.x (and perhaps even earlier versions) that will help you make the most of your current environment while we all wait for XI 4 to be generally available.

In a few days I will post more details about my abstracts. I look forward to seeing everyone in Las Vegas or Orlando or perhaps even Both.

This is the third of several posts that will review my presentation “Universe Models For Recursive Data” which was originally presented at the 2009 GBN conference, then at the North Texas / Oklahoma ASUG chapter meeting, and finally at the Mastering BusinessObjects conference in Melbourne. As with my other presentations there is a PDF file that can be downloaded from my conference presentations page. The first post introduced the concepts of recursive (as opposed to hierarchical) data and provided a couple of examples. The second post reviewed some of the different design challenges that I have seen in working with recursive data models. In this post I will introduce four different possible solutions and present a scorecard for each, showing how well it solves the issues presented in the prior post in this series. Links to both prior posts are presented at the end of this entry. I have also included Oracle SQL scripts that can be used to create and populate the tables used in this post.

This post will cover slides 22 through 30 from the presentation and will describe the first two solutions (one with two variations) outlined in the presentation. Continue reading “Universe Models For Recursive Data Part III: Alias Versus Flattened”

This is the second of several posts that will review my presentation “Universe Models For Recursive Data” which was originally presented at the 2009 GBN conference, then at the North Texas / Oklahoma ASUG chapter meeting, and finally at the Mastering BusinessObjects conference in Melbourne. As with my other presentations there is a PDF file that can be downloaded from my conference presentations page. The first post introduced the concepts of recursive (as opposed to hierarchical) data and provided a couple of examples. In this post I will review some of the different design challenges that I have seen in working with recursive data.

I decided to identify and cover four different examples of recursive data configurations. These included Clean, Unbalanced, Ragged, and Lateral. As I mentioned in the first post, I am going to use some basic human resources (HR) data for my examples. For this post, in order to show samples of each of the four challenges, I am going to represent my recursive data using a tree. The branches of the tree show the relationships between people. The nodes of the tree contain the information about each person. The data might include their name, hire date, and position (title) within the company. In order to properly interact with my recursive data I have to be able to work with both types of information: relationships and node data as well. If you are not sure what I mean, please continue reading, this will make more sense later on.

This post will cover slides 14 through 21 from the presentation and will describe each of the different recursive challenges that I identified. Continue reading “Universe Models For Recursive Data Part II: Design Challenges”

I got an email yesterday saying that one of my abstracts has been accepted for the 2010 edition of SAP TechEd. I will be talking about universe design over non-ERP data, showing the SAP folks that you can build universes on more than just cubes.

The selection process for the fall BusinessObjects conference in Orlando is continuing through July 2^nd. I submitted several abstracts for that conference as well, including one on universe change management that will feature a (hopefully) completed version of a script to compare universes that I started writing years ago. I am using the script today (thus the abstract) but it’s far from completed, and certainly not ready for public consumption.

As a side note, the “Conferences” category on the right menu for my blog has continued to grow. I experimented with a couple of Wordpress plugins that would allow blog readers to expand / collapse the categories as needed, but so far neither of them have worked to my satisfaction. Either they didn’t work in all of the browsers I tested, or they looked bad, or they were not as functional as I would like. But hopefully I will get something there soon in order to avoid having that category take over the entire side of the screen.

This is the first of several posts that will review my presentation “Universe Models For Recursive Data” which was originally presented at the 2009 GBN conference, then at the North Texas / Oklahoma ASUG chapter meeting, and finally at the Mastering BusinessObjects conference in Melbourne. After presenting it three times it seemed like an appropriate time to (finally) get started writing up the blog posts. As with my other presentations there is a PDF file that can be downloaded from my conference presentations page.

This post will cover slides 6 through 13 as a basic introduction of recursive data and challenges presented to universe designers.

Defining Recursive Data

Sometimes there is confusion about the distinction between hierarchical and recursive data. Hierarchical data does not present a big challenge for BusinessObjects. It can be something related to time (Year, Quarter, Month, Day), geography (Country, Region, State, City), or something more specific like an accounting structure (Business Unit, Account, Sub-Account). What makes this hierarchical structure work easily is that each element is stored in a different place. It could be in a different column in the same table (flattened) or even in different tables (snowflake). As long as I can drill from one column to another in the hierarchy everything works fine.

Self-referencing or recursive data may initially look like a hierarchy. The key difference is that all of the elements are stored in the same place. There are keys that relate one row in a table back to a different row in the same table. That’s how recursive data is different from hierarchical data.

Why is recursion is a problem for BusinessObjects? The language used “behind the curtain” is SQL, and SQL does not natively support recursion. Some database vendors offer extensions (for example the CONNECT BY PRIOR structure in Oracle) but these are not used by BusinessObjects.

How common is recursive data? It is certainly not unusual. Consider any of the following:

• Company organizational structure
  Object levels: President – Vice President – Director
  Object type: Person
• Inventory BOM (Bill of Materials)
  Object levels: Product – Assembly – Sub-Assembly – Component
  Object type: Inventory item
• Project Management
  Object levels: Project – Task – Sub-Task
  Object type: Project entry
• Multi-Level Marketing (MLM)
  Object levels: Founder – Recruit – Recruit Level 2
  Object type: Person

In each of the above examples the type of object (or node) type is the same at any level. For example, a company organization chart is made up of people. Some people are at different levels, and there are therefore relationships from one person to another. In order to show all of the relationships from the top of the company to the bottom (or the bottom to the top) I have to keep going back to the same table. That is recursion.

Because it’s easy to think about a company organizational structure I used that example for the rest of the presentation.

Note: The Motors database is used in the standard Universe Designer training course and will not be presented in its entirety in the download package for this presentation for copyright reasons. However, I will be providing the standard HR table and all of the modified versions used in this presentation. Continue reading “Universe Models For Recursive Data Part I: Introduction”

I was fortunate to once again be invited down to the Mastering BusinessObjects conference in Australia. I hope this conference continues to do well because I certainly enjoy going. Two weeks prior to this conference I was at ASUG Annual Conference / SAPPHIRE, and the difference is substantial. SAPPHIRE is HUGE, which might explain why their name is in ALL CAPS. The Mastering conference is much smaller (they’re only just getting started, really) and feels much more intimate. I talked to quite a few folks and got to hear some really interesting stories.

And like last year I got a few pictures… Continue reading “Mastering BusinessObjects 2010 Review”

If you procrastinated just enough to miss the deadline, or if you were inspired by some extra stupendous ideas just after the submissions window closed, you are in luck. The call for speakers for the fall BusinessObjects conference has been extended until June 13^th.

To repeat something I mentioned earlier (a tweet from Jamie Oswald)

Did you know that speakers at #SBOUC get free admission. That’s like making $1,000/hr. Go submit an abstract. http://ow.ly/1KefI #ASUG #BOBJ
10:40 AM May 19th

Today we closed the Mastering BusinessObjects 2010 conference. I presented my “Return of the Variables” talk, and afterwards I had someone come up to me and saw what I always love to hear: “You just solved one of my problems.”

Tom Nather did a very detailed session on setting up the configuration for single sign-on (SSO). I’ve been away from the server stuff for a while, so it was good to see the process laid out so cleanly.

Fellow SAP Mentor Ingo Hilgefort did a keynote this morning where he outlined current (SP3) and future (XI 4) product features, concepts, and directions. He was (rather predictably I think) asked about Desktop Intelligence, and just like every other time I have heard this question asked, the answer was: “It’s gone.” With folding now in 3.1 and the data manager coming in 4.0 it really seems like it’s time to read the writing on the wall and move on. The only big remaining “gotcha” for Desktop Intelligence users is the lack of scripting support (VBA) in the rich client. In many cases what I have seen scripting used for is now covered by the standard scheduling or other processes.

I had some really good conversations with folks here in Melbourne, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time here at the conference. It’s so much easier (it seems) to connect with people in a smaller setting.

After the conference Tom invited me to go with his family to eat dinner on a train. Who was I to refuse? It was a wonderful dinner, served on a trolley car that drove around the city for an hour and a half while we ate. The food was wonderful, the company even more so.

Tomorrow I am delivering a full-day seminar titled, “From Universe Development to Report Generation: The Untold Story.” It should be fun.