SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x delivers a largely enhanced integration with SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP ERP, but you want to look at a few key areas to make sure you understand the strengths and weaknesses of the current 4.x integration. I’ll provide guidance in these three areas:

• Data connectivity and metadata handling
• Hierarchical reporting capabilities
• BEx query design and connection sharing

Data Connectivity and Metadata Handling

With SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x, data connectivity with SAP NetWeaver BW for the SAP BusinessObjects BI client tools underwent a major change. In the SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 release, the connectivity was a mix of several options:

• Crystal Reports 2008 is able to connect to BEx queries directly
• Web Intelligence XI 3.1 is using an OLAP universe to connect to BEx queries
• Xcelsius 2008 is able to connect directly to BEx queries
• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer XI 3.1 is able to connect to SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator directly and leverage the OLAP universes
• SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office is able to connect directly to BEx queries
• Data Federator is able to provide a relation (SQL-based) connectivity to SAP NetWeaver BW InfoProviders

Now, with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x, not only are the BI client tools able to share the connectivity, but they are also based on the same technology: BI Consumer Services (BICS). Starting with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x, you can leverage a direct connectivity to your BEx queries in SAP NetWeaver BW without creating an OLAP universe. All your BI client products are able to use the BEx queries and present the necessary information to your end users.

In addition to this direct connectivity option, you can also leverage the semantic layer and establish a link to your InfoProviders in SAP NetWeaver BW based on a relational data connectivity. Because this option is based on a relational data connectivity, which exposes the underlying star-schema of the InfoProvider in the semantic layer, certain multi-dimensional concepts of SAP NetWeaver BW are not available as part of such a connection.

Looking at Figure 1, you can see that the direct connectivity through BICS provides you with a large set of improvements compared to the previously available options in SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1. First, the new connectivity options allow you to connect BI clients directly to your existing BEx queries. All you have to ensure is that the property Allow external access is configured in the BEx query.

Figure 1

Comparing BICS and multi-source universes

In addition to this new capability of being able to connect directly to the BEx query without creating an OLAP universe, all BI clients can share the same connection. This not only leads to users being able to use the same metadata in all BI clients, but also to a reduced effort for the administrator, as only one connection is required for all BI client tools. Most importantly, this direct connectivity is able to use all elements (e.g., restricted key figures, calculated key figures, SAP variables, and structures) to provide the metadata to the different tools.

On the other hand, direct connectivity does not provide you with a semantic layer artifact like the universe. That means that you are unable to create any custom objects, and that you are unable to change descriptions or definitions of objects. Basically, your BEx query must contain all the necessary information that you need to fulfill your reporting requirements.

The alternative to the direct connectivity using BICS is to establish a universe based on a relational (SQL-based) data connectivity to the InfoProvider in the SAP NetWeaver BW system.

Figure 2 shows you the known limitations when using the option to create a relational universe on top of the InfoProvider. This connectivity type is unable to provide you with calculated and restricted key figures, SAP variables, and conditions, and most importantly this connectivity is not able to provide you with the information on the hierarchies for the InfoProvider.

Figure 2

The relational universe for SAP NetWeaver BW with known limitations

Now that you have looked at the different options to connect to your corporate data in SAP NetWeaver BW — directly or with a relational universe — my recommended approach is to use direct connectivity based on the richer metadata support.

Now let’s look into the more detailed level of metadata support for the different BI client tools in the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x. The following is a list of items broken down by product that are not fully supported yet as part of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x. Remember, some of these items might be addressed in a future version or Service Pack.

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP:

• Display attributes are not available
• Key figures leverage the configured scaling factor from the underlying BEx query, but the user does not receive any information on the actual scaling factor in SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP

SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence:

• In the case of a compounded characteristic, the key value for the compounded characteristic shows both key values combined. In addition, SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence are unable to support the cascading factor in a scenario in which the compounded characteristics are used for prompting.
• Default values (in the Defaults area of the BEx query, not for variables) are not used
• A Selection Option variable results in a range variable
• Key figures configured with a local calculation (e.g., ranking) are not visible in SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise or SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
• Key figures use the configured scaling factor from the underlying BEx query, but the user does not receive any information on the actual scaling factor in SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise or SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
• Conditions are not supported, which results in SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence receiving all data instead of the filtered dataset
• Configured exceptions are not leveraged, but you can use the highlighting capabilities in SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence to achieve the same

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (the items below refer to the direct connectivity of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards using the connectivity provided by SAP NetWeaver BW, not by SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise):

• In the case of a compounded characteristic, the key value for the compounded characteristic shows both key values combined. In addition, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards is unable to support the cascading factor in a scenario in which the compounded characteristics are used for prompting.
• Display attributes are not available
• In SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0, only single and multi-single value prompting is supported. Multi-single refers to a prompt that allows the user to enter multiple single values.
• Configured exceptions are not leveraged, but you can use the alerting function in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards

As you can see, there is no list of limitations shown for SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft. This is because all the elements designed in a BEx query are supported.

Hierarchical Reporting Capabilities

After reviewing the support for the existing metadata of your BEx queries, let’s now look into the details about its hierarchical reporting capabilities. Before listing which products support which functionalities, I first outline the functionality to ensure that you have the same understanding.

• Hierarchical report design, which means the capability to use an external hierarchy as part of the underlying BEx query and integrate it into the report. That enables the user to differentiate hierarchy nodes and leaves and to be able to drill down along a hierarchy.
• Hierarchical prompting, which allows the end user to see the complete hierarchy and to select hierarchy nodes and leaves from a true tree that displays the hierarchy according to the hierarchical structure. In addition, it is important that the tool is able to identify the dependency between a hierarchy variable and a hierarchy node variable.
• Hierarchical member selection and filtering, which refers to the option of selecting members and leafs based on the actual hierarchical structure. In the case of reporting and analytical workflows, users are able to leverage hierarchies for filtering in two fundamentally different ways. They can select hierarchical members and leaves based on either the actual structure or based on levels. A selection based on the actual hierarchical structure can lead to situations in which not all data is shown in the report because the corresponding nodes or leaves are not part of the selection.
• Level-based selection of hierarchical members, which allows the user to simply select those levels of the hierarchy that are required for the report. When users select the levels, they are not selecting specific members or leaves. As a consequence, the report shows all data available for the selected levels.
• Switching between or an exchange of hierarchies, which allows the end user to create or edit reports and switch between different hierarchies at any point in time without the use of variables. In this scenario, switching between hierarchies can mean that the user starts with a report showing a cost center hierarchy, and then exchanges the cost center hierarchy with a product hierarchy. It also means that the user can switch between hierarchies based on a single dimension (e.g., switching between multiple available hierarchies for dimension cost center).

In Table 1, you can see if the SAP BusinessObjects BI client products are able to provide the described capabilities in regards to hierarchies as part of the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x release. You might wonder how SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards is able to provide a hierarchical member selection without providing a hierarchical report design. SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards is able to read hierarchical data, but the 4.0 suite release does not provide any hierarchical data visualizations.

Table 1

Hierarchical capabilities

BEx Query Design and Connection Sharing

In most scenarios, users create a one-to-one relationship between reports and BEx queries. This relationship is not necessary any more with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x. Users can now look into options to create BEx queries with a broader focus. On the other hand, you shouldn’t try to create a single BEx query on top of the InfoProvider because such large queries might lead to a situation in which having a large number of BEx queries could lead to a decrease in the SAP NetWeaver BW performance.

Instead, try to build a small number of BEx queries focusing on a departmental or line-of-business area so that you reduce the overall number of BEx queries and also avoid very large BEx queries.

In addition to the above recommendation, below is a quick list of reminders to help you achieve better BEx query design:

• Configure your BEx queries with the property Allow External Access.
• Don’t worry about the placement of the elements in the BEx query designer as the placement of objects does not influence the list of available objects for the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x tools.
• Ensure that any necessary calculations are part of the BEx query in the form of calculated or restricted key figures.
• For BEx queries with a large set of calculated or restricted key figures, activate the property Use Selection of Structure Members in transaction RSRT. This configuration needs to be done for each BEx query. For any reports and analytics that require a time-based data selection (e.g., a report showing the last 12 months), use a BEx query with an EXIT variable for the time-based selection. This recommendation is based on the fact that there is no universe between the BI clients and the BEx query anymore. A time-based selection is not possible in all BI clients. 
• As much as possible, use the variables in the BEx query because all variables configured with Ready for Input result in parameters for the report and can be shared across multiple reports

Ingo Hilgefort

Ingo Hilgefort started his career in 1999 with Seagate Software/Crystal Decisions as a trainer and consultant. He moved to Walldorf for Crystal Decisions at the end of 2000, and worked with the SAP NetWeaver BW development team integrating Crystal Reports with SAP NetWeaver BW. He then relocated to Vancouver in 2004, and worked as a product manager/program manager (in engineering) on the integration of BusinessObjects products with SAP products. Ingo's focus is now on the integration of the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite with  SAP landscapes, such as SAP BW and SAP BW on SAP HANA, focusing on end-to-end integration scenarios. In addition to his experience as a product manager and in his engineering roles, Ingo has been involved in architecting and delivering deployments of SAP BusinessObjects software in combination with SAP software for a number of global customers, and has been recognized by the SAP Community as an SAP Mentor for SAP BusinessObjects- and SAP integration-related topics. Currently, Ingo is the Vice President of Product Management and Product Strategy at Visual BI Solutions, working on extensions to SAP’s product offering such as SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio and SAP Lumira. You may follow him on Twitter at @ihilgefort.

You may contact the author at Ingo@visualbi.com.

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