BusinessObjects XI Release 2 For Dummies

Part I

Getting Started with BusinessObjects

In this part. . .

Undoubtedly, you’re itching to get started. But as you probably know if you’ve taken the trouble to pick up this book in the first place, business intelligence can be a complex subject and it’s worth taking the time to find your bearings a little before getting started with BusinessObjects

With this in mind, Chapter 1 gives you a general introduction to the world of business intelligence and some of its key concepts, before going on to look at how you can use BI applications and technologies to help you and your organization make better business decisions, and provides a brief overview of all the different products that make up the BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Enterprise product suite.

Part I then walks you through the steps involved in installing BusinessObjects, both on your local machine (Chapter 2) and, as is more typically the case, on a server (Chapter 3).

Chapter 4 introduces you to the workings of the Central Management Console (CMC), a Web-based system administration tool that lets you manage user profiles, security and access rights once your system is up and running.

Chapter 1

Business Intelligence and BusinessObjects XI Release 2: Working Hand in Hand

In This Chapter

bullet Discovering how business intelligence can help your business

bullet Delving into BusinessObjects XI Release 2

Before you roll your sleeves up and get running with BusinessObjects XI Release 2, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the bigger picture. At the beginning of this chapter, we give you an overview of business intelligence, and show how you can use business intelligence applications and technologies to help you make better business decisions.

If your business has been running Crystal Enterprise or BusinessObjects, you’re probably faced with having to upgrade — specifically, to BusinessObjects XI. If so, welcome to some enhanced capabilities. If not — if you’re just starting out with Business Objects XI — welcome to a whole new business universe. The last half of this chapter provides an overview of the different components that make up the BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Enterprise product suite — and offers some pointers on finding the right tools for the job — both for the migration and the projects to follow.

Fitting Business Intelligence into Your Business

Business intelligence (BI) is a business management term for the tools and methodologies used to collect, provide access to, and analyze data (which, in a typical organization, usually means information about a firm’s operations such as details of sales, production, or human resources).

Business intelligence lets you keep track of what’s going on in your company. It provides you with timely and pertinent insight so you can measure your performance against your company’s established goals, and take action at a time when it is still possible for you to influence the outcome. Best of all, it lets you do it all yourself, rather than having to depend on IT professionals to provide you with the data you need at a time that suits their schedule.

Put simply, BI lets you make better business decisions because it gives you access to the right information at the right time.

BusinessObjects XI Release 2 has four main functional areas, which allow you to track, understand, and manage your business:

bullet Reporting: Reporting, as its name suggests, enables you to format and deliver information to large audiences both inside and outside your organization in the form of reports.

bullet Query and analysis: Query and analysis tools provide you with a means of interacting with business information (by performing your own ad hoc queries) without having to understand the often complex data that lies underneath this information.

bullet Performance management: Performance management tools let you keep track of and analyze key performance indicators and goals using Dashboards, Scorecards, and Analytics.

bullet Data integration: Data integration lets you extract information from a range of sources and transform it so that it becomes usable by your other BI tools, data marts, and data warehouses.

Life before business intelligence

In the beginning was the data, and the data was hidden away somewhere deep in the bowels of the corporate databases where only an elite of highly trained users were able to reach it.

If you needed access to any of this data to do your job effectively, the only way to get at it was to beg one of those highly trained elite users for help. But when your query finally made its way to the top of Mr. Elite User’s in-tray, often several months later, the information that trickled down to you in the form of a spreadsheet or even a printed report would be horrendously out-of-date. As for whether Mr. Elite User was likely to understand your business requirements in the first place and so avoid supplying you with wrong (or at best irrelevant) information. . . well, you’re better off not even going there.

Timely? Pertinent? I’m sorry, we don’t do those. Can I interest you in these global sales figures from the first quarter of last year instead?

A tale of two products

BusinessObjects XI has illustrious ancestors: Both Crystal Enterprise and Business Objects products brought efficient, interactive reporting to databases — and a host of other tools that helped lay the foundation for what we now call business intelligence. Then their powers combined: Business Objects and Crystal Enterprise merged in late 2003 — and BusinessObjects XI fully integrated the features of both companies’ products.

BusinessObjects XI Release 2 has been around since 2005; about a year and a half later, an update appeared: BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Productivity Pack. That’s the subject of this book. And a formidable — though sometimes confusing — toolbox it is.

Taking a Closer Look at BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Enterprise

In this section, we take a look at some of the different members of the BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Enterprise family.

At first glance, BusinessObjects seems to offer a confusing range of tools that do the same job. But at least for the immediate future, there’s a good reason for the overlap in product functionality: Crystal Enterprise and BusinessObjects were originally different products. Check out the sidebar A tale of two products to find out more.

Tools for migrating from previous installations

Which tools you’ll need for the migration depends mainly on whether you’re coming from a BusinessObjects or Crystal environment. Be patient, and follow the ancient wisdom that says Get the right tool (or, in this case, wizard) for the job.

Import Wizard

The Import Wizard (see Figure 1-1) is a locally installed Windows appli-cation used by administrators to import user accounts, groups, reports, and folders from Crystal Enterprise, BusinessObjects, or Crystal Info into BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Enterprise. You can also use the wizard to move a test deployment of BusinessObjects XI to a production environment.

In BusinessObjects XI Release 2, the Import Wizard supports upgrades from these existing implementations:

bullet BusinessObjects 5.1.4 and above

bullet BusinessObjects 6.0, 6.1, and 6.5

bullet Crystal Enterprise 8.5, 9, and 10

bullet Application Foundation 6.1.b, 6.1.3, and 6.5.1

bullet BusinessObjects XI (if you haven’t installed the Productivity Pack until now)

You can also administrate remote servers from the Import Wizard.

Repository Migration Wizard

The Repository Migration Wizard has a much more specific use than the Import Wizard: It’s used solely to migrate a Report Design Repository from previous versions of Crystal Enterprise Server into the BusinessObjects XI Release 2 repository.

The repository is the database server that stores all the information about your BusinessObjects system and its users.

Data Source Migration Wizard

The Data Source Migration Wizard lets you migrate reports based on Crystal queries, dictionaries, and InfoViews to BusinessObjects Enterprise XI.

The Data Source Migration Wizard has a slightly misleading name, because you can use it to migrate two types of objects: data sources and reports. It works by converting the data source for each report into an object that can be used in BusinessObjects Enterprise, and then resetting the report’s data-source location so it points to the new object.

Report Conversion Tool

Okay, the Report Conversion Tool is not (strictly speaking) a migration tool — but you can use it to convert Desktop Intelligence reports to the Web Intelligence format — and then publish the converted reports — so it does serve as a bridge between technologies. It can convert the following types of report to the Web Intelligence XI Release 2 (.wid) format:

bullet Legacy BusinessObjects reports (.rep) previously migrated to the Desktop Intelligence (.rep) format using the Import Wizard.

bullet Desktop Intelligence reports created directly in the Desktop Intelligence tool.

The Report Conversion Tool isn’t a panacea. It can’t convert all Desktop Intelligence reports, nor all Desktop Intelligence features. Exactly what gets converted depends on the features of the original report; some features prevent the report from being converted at all; other features may be modified or removed during the conversion process.

You can also use the Report Conversion Tool to open reports from previous versions of the BusinessObjects desktop-reporting tool directly in Desktop Intelligence. However, to be sure that you take full advantage of the product’s security features, you’re better off using the Import Wizard to import your legacy reports.

All it takes to design a universe

As we explain in Part III, the concept of a universe (in effect, a collection of business objects) lies at the heart of any BusinessObjects XI Release 2 installation. When it comes to building and managing these universes, you have a couple of different tools at your disposal.

Designer

Business Objects Designer is the tool that enables BusinessObjects XI users to create universes (see Figure 1-2).

The person who creates business universes is called (believe it or not) a universe designer. Depending on the situation at your company, this person may be the database administrator, a programmer, a project manager, or even a report creator who has sufficient technical skills to create universes for other users.

Whatever the purpose of the larger universe may be, the purpose of a business universe is to let nontechnical users run queries against a database in order to create reports and analyze data. Its simple interface is designed to provide a business-focused front end to make the SQL structures in the database more easily understandable, using vocabulary that’s familiar to business users.

Universe Builder

Universe Builder is another tool that you use for — you guessed it — building business universes. How it differs from Designer mainly concerns whether or not your metadata source was compatible with BusinessObjects XI Release 2 at the time it was released. If it was, you’re probably better off building your Universes with Designer. If not, use Universe Builder instead.

For more information on the specifics of Universe Designer, see Chapter 5.

BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence

BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence is a desktop reporting tool that allows you to analyze data, perform ad-hoc queries to fetch new data, and create new reports of your own. Now a feature of BusinessObjects XI, it was previously known as BusinessObjects — a stand-alone flagship product. It makes a seriously powerful desktop tool.

Using a desktop tool instead of a permanent network connection gives you a handy advantage by freeing up your IT resources as you use less bandwidth.

Part III explains the workings of BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence in more detail.

BusinessObjects Web Intelligence

Sometimes, having to open a full-client application just isn’t the most convenient way of working, especially if your machine isn’t powerful enough for the job.

Fortunately, BusinessObjects also features a tool that makes it possible for you to perform a range of query and reporting tasks directly from a browser-based interface: BusinessObjects Web Intelligence.

Part IV looks in more detail at how Web Intelligence works.

Enterprise Performance Management

Although Desktop Intelligence and Web Intelligence are powerful tools in their own right, there may still come a time when you want to move on from the reports they let you build and take your use of the BusinessObjects XI suite to the next level.

Part V describes how you can use the suite’s Performance Management tools to create more complex dashboards, metrics, and analytics that allow you to keep track of how your organization is doing.

Publishing Wizard

The Publishing Wizard lets you add new documents to BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Enterprise. You can assign object rights to specific BusinessObjects Enterprise folders — allowing you to control who publishes what, and where (within the company, anyway).

Although the Publishing Wizard is a Windows application, you can use it to publish reports to servers running on both Windows or Unix.

InfoView

Consider InfoView your company’s business intelligence portal. As a browser-based tool, InfoView is the main interface for most users who work with objects in BusinessObjects XI Release 2. You can use InfoView to view, manage, and work with your organization’s different business-intelligence objects — including Crystal reports, Web Intelligence documents, and Desktop Intelligence documents, as well as the suite’s Enterprise Performance Management tools.

Part IV looks at InfoView in more detail.

Central Management Console

The Central Management Console (CMC), shown in Figure 1-3, is the Web interface that lets you or your administrator control and make best use of your BusinessObjects deployment. It enables you to carry out such tasks as setting up user roles, server administration, managing passwords, and more.

Chapter 4 examines this tool more closely.

Chapter 2

Deploying on a Single Computer

In This Chapter

bullet Checking the minimum requirements

bullet Installing BusinessObjects Enterprise on your computer

Typically (as you might suspect), BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Enterprise is not to be found on just any old home computer. Most end users interact with the tools that make up this product suite over the Web, using InfoView. However, the following client tools are also available as stand-alone applications you can install on your local PC:

bullet BusinessObjects Designer: Enables you to create Universes (which requires fewer superpowers than you may think).

bullet Desktop Intelligence: Allows you to analyze data, perform ad-hoc queries to fetch new data, and create reports. Often referred to as DeskI.

bullet Publishing Wizard: Makes it easier for you to add new documents to BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Enterprise.

bullet Business Views Manager: A tool from the Crystal Reports world that lets you build Business Views — objects that give report designers and end users access to specific types of business information.

bullet Import Wizard: Used by administrators to import user accounts, groups, reports, and folders from Crystal Enterprise, BusinessObjects, or Crystal Info into BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Enterprise.

bullet Report Conversion Tool: Lets you convert Deski reports to the Web Intelligence (WebI) format, and then publish them.

bullet SDKs: Used by developers to integrate Business Objects products into other applications.

In this chapter, we show you how to install these applications locally if you’re responsible for developing applications or migrating data, or if you manage BusinessObjects Enterprise content.

Making Sure You’re Ready

To run BusinessObjects XI R2 — even if all you want to do is install the client software on your local PC — you need a pretty decent (and recent) machine.

Forget about trying to put BusinessObjects XI R2 on that old laptop that the IT department has had hanging around for the last five years; it just won’t be powerful enough.

To run BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 effectively, your computer must meet the following minimum hardware requirements:

bullet Pentium III 700 MHz

bullet 1GB of RAM

bullet 5GB hard-drive space

bullet CD-ROM drive (unless you are installing directly from a network)

In addition, you must be running one of the following operating systems:

We recommend not running BusinessObjects XI R2 with Windows Vista. You might get BusinessObjects XI R2 to run on Vista, but Business Objects won’t give you any help if you run into problems.

Installing BusinessObjects Enterprise on Your Computer

After you determine that your computer is up to the task, you are ready to get down to the nitty-gritty of actually installing the product. Sit back, hold tight, and follow these steps:

1. Insert the installation CD (or DVD) in your CD-ROM drive (or browse to the location on your network where the installation files are stored, and then click the Setup.exe file).

The Installation Wizard runs automatically; you’re given a choice of languages (a quite impressive 12 at the time of writing) in which to install the product, and links to other relevant reading material (as shown in Figure 2-1).

2. (Optional) Choose a language from the menu on the left.

You are then presented with links to a whole host of reading material, including the Installation Guide and the Release Notes, the Education and Consulting pages on the Business Objects Web site, and the Technical Support Web site.

3. Click Install.

You are greeted with a Welcome Screen that invites you to exit all Windows programs you may have running before continuing with Setup.

4. When you’ve closed all Windows programs, click Next.

The License Agreement appears.

5. Read the License Agreement (you do read those things, don’t you?), select the I Accept the License Agreement option button, and then click Next.

On the following screen, you’re presented with a choice between performing a Client Installation and a Server Installation, as shown in Figure 2-2.

Because you’re installing BusinessObjects on your computer, the Client Installation, which installs Designer, Desktop Intelligence, Publishing Wizard, Business Views Manager, Import Wizard, Report Conversation Tools, and SDKs, is what you’re interested in.

6. Select the Perform Client Installation option button, and then click Next.

The next screen invites you to specify the folder where you want to install the software, as shown in Figure 2-3.

7. Choose to accept the default option ( C:\Program Files\Business Objects\ ) or click the Browse button to select an existing directory or create a new one. In either case, click Next when you’re done.

The final screen offers you one last chance to go back and change any of the details, as shown in Figure 2-4; or, more precisely, a chance to click the Cancel button and start over from scratch! (If you’re a Business Objects User Interface designer, a summary of what those details are would have been nice to see at this point!)

8. If you can remember what options you selected and you’re completely certain they correspond to what you want to do, click Next.

Now you can sit back while the software is installed. When everything is ready, the final screen of the installation wizard informs you that the installation is complete. You’re good to go!

Chapter 3

Performing a Server Installation

In This Chapter

bullet Making sure you’re ready

bullet Installing BusinessObjects Enterprise on your server

Although (as Chapter 2 describes) you can install some of the client tools that make up the BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Enterprise product suite on your local PC, the fact is, you’re far more likely to install the suite on a server. Then you can allow several, several dozen, or several hundred users to connect to these tools remotely over the Web.

This chapter describes how you perform such an installation — first by ensuring that you have everything in place before you start, and then by taking you through each of the steps involved.

Making Sure You’re Ready

Before you go anywhere near that shiny installation DVD, you must first examine the system you already have in place: Ensure that it meets the minimum requirements for running a server-based installation of the BusinessObects XI R2 product suite.

Minimum requirements

To run BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 effectively, your server must meet the following minimum hardware requirements:

bullet Pentium III 700 MHz

bullet 1GB of RAM

bullet 5GB hard-drive space (plus 1.5GB for the Performance Management feature)

bullet CD-ROM drive (unless you’re installing directly from a network)

You must also be running one of the following operating systems.

The computer you’re setting up as your server needs to have both an application-server program and compatible database software that can store information about the system and its users. Ideally, these should be in place before you start installing the BusinessObjects software, but you can always install them as part of the BusinessObjects installation process. The upcoming sections describe these two requirements in more detail.

Choosing an application server

The machine on which you plan to install and run BusinessObjects XI R2 must have an application-server program up and running before you do the installation. Fortunately, BusinessObjects supports a range of application servers; while you’re deciding which one to use, take a good look at your current environment:

bullet Note which application servers you currently have in place.

bullet If you intend to develop custom applications, decide which Web-development environment you want to use.

If you don’t have an application server already in place on your server computer, BusinessObjects comes with one on your installation CD: Tomcat, which you can install along with BusinessObjects. Indeed, when we walk you through the installation process later in this chapter, we assume you’re doing just that.

The first question you need to address is which development environment — the programming language or languages you intend to use to develop your custom Web applications — you want to work in.

As it happens, the choice is pretty simple: Active Server Pages (ASP) or its more recent successor ASP.NET or JavaServer Pages (JSP). Be aware that whichever option you go for also affects, or is influenced by, your choice of application servers (the machine hosting your Web applications):

bullet If you want to develop your custom applications using ASP or ASP.NET, you must use Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS).

bullet If you want to develop your custom applications using JSP, you can choose any of the supported application servers shown in Table 3-1. (Tomcat is one of those.)

Examining the relative merits of the ASP and JSP environments is beyond the scope of this book. A simple Web search will reveal scores of sites that debate the benefits of one or the other; if you don’t have your own opinion on the matter already, we’re pretty sure you will before long. Nonetheless, it’s worth noting that certain features — including support for DHTML in Web Intelligence, and