WebIntelligence 3.0

by: Joe Roberts, Principal Consultant, Certified Instructor

It’s finally time to start talking about Web Intelligence 3.0 and the significant changes and enhancements included in conjunction with Business Objects Enterprise 3.0. In this article we will review several of the most requested and significant new features. With the pending retirement of Desktop Intelligence (Full Client) there are many issues that concern the users of current and previous versions of this tool as they attempt their migration to Web Intelligence. Web Intelligence 3.0 makes some significant steps toward accommodating those requirements. In all there are about 30 advertised enhancements in Web Intelligence 3.0 and we certainly can’t review every one of them in this article (I have to leave some subject matter for later articles).

Several of the enhancements listed for Web Intelligence are really enhancements to Universes that benefit Web Intelligence designers like:

· Support for Stored Procedures

· Derived Tables on Derived Tables

· Semi additive measures; smart cubes

· Java Bean, JDBC driver support

· Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 driver support.

These are all significant enhancements and will certainly help report designers but are more pertinent to articles on universe design. For this article we will stick to Web Intelligence.

Rich Client/Offline

Probably the most significant addition with Web Intelligence 3.0 is the creation of a client installed Rich Client and Offline designer and report viewing tool. WebI documents can be created in client-server, 3-tiered or Offline modes and saved and retrieved locally; even without connectivity to the Business Objects Enterprise environment. The new Rich Client contains all of the features of the web-based client and a few more.

You can create and save WebI documents completely disconnected or retrieve documents from Enterprise, modify or run them the save them either locally or publish them back into Enterprise.

The WebI Rich Client can be installed from the basic installation (Files/CD/DVD) or installed on-demand from InfoView by clicking “Modify” for a Web Intelligence document.

Personal Data Sources

One of the most requested enhancements has been to be able to uses personal data sources (excel, text, CSV) in Web Intelligence like Desktop Intelligence. Starting with Web Intelligence 3.0, in conjunction with the Rich Client, you will be able to add these personal data sources to existing or new reports. When creating a query in the Rich Client you now receive the following dialogue:

Once you select “Local Data source” a window will open to allow you to select one of the supported file types. Once you define the data elements of the data source you can combine the local data source with the universe data source(s) in the usual manner (stand alone tables or charts or merged dimension).

You can also save the modified document, with its personal data source, back into Enterprise for normal consumption. When the report is refreshed the universe data sources will be refreshed but not the personal data source.

Embedded Images

With previous version of Web Intelligence the only way to display a logo or other image was through the use of skins or a URL link to an image on a web server somewhere. While there are several advantage of this methodology it’s not always a practical solution for all designers. Now any object on which you can define a background image gives you four options:

1.) None

2.) Skin

3.) Image from URL

4.) Image from file.

Once you select an image to embed in your document you can format the display:

· Normal

· Stretched (Not support for viewing in HTML)

· Tile

· Horizontal Tile

· Vertical Tile

You can then define the Position (Top, Center, Bottom, Left, Center, and Right). This applies to all objects that have a background image property including Blocks, Cells, Free Standing Cells, Reports, etc. Embedded images supports all the most common types of web based graphic files (.gif, .jpg,.bmp,.png).

Screen shot

Optional Prompts

Anyone who has ever wrestled with providing an “All” option to parameters will appreciate this new feature. In Web Intelligence 3.0 we now have the option (pardon the pun) of designating any query prompt as optional. Once the prompt has been designated as optional, the user will be allowed to enter a value for the prompt if they choose or ignore the prompt by not entering a value. If they choose not to enter a value the prompt will be ignored in the query this will have the exact same effect as selecting all values. It will, however, be more efficient since there will be one less qualification analysis in the query.

One word of warning about optional parameters; data integrity issues could cause this to come back and bite you! For instance, if you have a prompt for State (as below) that is optional and the user chooses to ignore the prompt they will see all records; even the ones without a state designation if that condition exist in the data. Having clean data may be more of a factor that it previously was in your environment.

There are several more enhancements that will have a significant impact on you report design going forward but that’s about all we have time for in this installment. In future articles and seminars we will be diving deeper into many of them. Below is a list of the enhancements not mentioned here, if you have a particular interest in any of them let us know and we’ll look at them in future seminars, user groups and articles. These include:

Multilingual prompts
Enhanced OLAP source access capabilities
Query Sampling, Query Percentage Rank
Native printing in rich client and applet
Track data changes
Semi-additive measures; smart cube
Link to URL Wizard
Report to Report Linking Wizard
Extension points
Publishing
Layering
Align objects
Filter map
Format painter
Zoom content
New undo/redo
Find values in report, find objects, chart or tablename in doc structure
Keyboard shortcuts
Structure View and Structure View Navigation shortcuts
New formulas

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