Evolution of the BO XI platform – from XI R2 to XI 3.1 SP2

With BO XI 3.1 SP2 out in July this year, it is probably time to make a trip down the years to find out how the XI platform has evolved and matured.

The timeline:

• XI R2 SP2 – service pack release in March 2007 with productivity pack – QaaWS and LiveOffice connectors
• XI 3.0 – new major release in February 2008 – the first release after SAP acquired BOBJ in October 2007
• XI 3.1 – upgrade release in September 2008
• XI 3.1 SP2 – service pack release on 24 July 2009 – with enhanced SAP integration

Where were we with XI R2:

• Change to Crystal service-oriented platform (Crystal 10 architecture)
• Ability to plug Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence, OLAP Intelligence, Dashboard Manager, Performance Manager directly into the framework
• Single repository, security, system management, publishing, portal
• Infoview (Replaced old BO Infoview and Crystal ePortfolio)
• Central Management Console (CMC)
• Import Wizard (upgrades from BO 5, 6, XI, Crystal 8.5, 9, 10)
• Desktop Intelligence (new name for BO full client + ability to query and display Unicode data)
• Publishing, Encyclopedia, Discussions, OLAP Intelligence, Performance Management
• Changes to Data Integrator, Composer, Metadata Manager

XI 3.0 (Titan)

• All administration moved to the Central Management Console – CMC – with new GUI
• Bulk action support in CMC
• Central Configuration Manager – CCM is still there (to manage multiple nodes) with 2 entries : Tomcat & SIA
• Server Intelligence Agent (SIA) – handles service dependencies
• Server Intelligence in CMC – clone server deployments
• Repository Federation – replicate repository on other BO cluster
• Repository Diagnostic Tool (Infostore vs FileStore – repair inconsistencies between CMS database entries and files in FRS)
• Improved Import Wizard
• Web Intelligence Rich Client (offline viewing of WebI reports, no session timeout)
• Data change tracking in Web Intelligence
• Designer – “Database delegated” projection on measures
• Universe based on stored procedures
• Prompt syntax extension (persistent/primary_key undocumented features, finally!)
• Personal data provider – combine data from Excel, text, csv and get into a single report
• Smart cubes – support for non-additive measures (percentages, ratios) and RDBMS analytical functions
• Multi language support – dimensions, measures, prompts automatically localized to report viewer’s language
• Native Web Intelligence printing (without PDF)
• Enbed image in Web Intelligence report
• Hyperlinks dialog box makes links easy to create – syntax generated by WebIntelligence (remember opendocument()?)

What’s new in XI 3.1

• Support for multi-forest Active Directory authentication
• IP v6 support
• Lifecycle Management Tool (LCMBIAR files, replace Import Wizard)
• Saving Web Intelligence documents as CSV (data-only files) – new sheets for every 65K rows of data
• Web Intelligence Autosave
• “Begin_SQL” SQL prefix variable
• Prompt syntax extension (support for key-value pairs!)
• Business Objects Voyager enhancements
• Live Office enhancements
• WebIntelligence – Automatic loading of cached LOVs, interactive drag-drop, report filter bar, cancel refresh-on-open

What’s new in XI 3.1 SP2

• WebIntelligence Input controls
• OLAP universe based access to SAP BW using MDX
• BI services – expose WebIntelligence document components as web services
• Query on Query
• Fold-unfold UI improvements
• New SDKs – WebI Calculation Extension Points, Custom Data Provider plugin, Interactive viewing extension and integration points
• New universe SQL parameter SMART_AGGREGATE allows using most detailed aggregate tables
• @Prompt editor in universe Designer
• Backward compatibility is broken. Web Intelligence documents created using BO XI 3.1 SP2 cannot be opened in BO XI 3.1

In one of my next posts, I’ll cover selected new features in detail.

-Maloy

SAP drops Business Objects Performance Management

In what seems to be a speedy decision to clean up an overlapping product line, following its acquisition of Business Objects (BOBJ), SAP has decided to retire the Business Objects Performance Management product.

Taking its place would be SAP Strategy Management (a product biguru is SAP certified). SAP Strategy Management is the new name for what used to be Pilot Software’s flagship product PilotWorks product, which SAP acquired in February 2007. No doubt about the fact that PilotWorks Server which is based on a powerful OLAP engine, and has an extremely user-friendly GUI on top of it, is a few notches above the clunky Performance Manager of BOBJ.

Another interesting part of the announcement was that SAP would keep alive the Outlooksoft product (rebranded as SAP Business Planning & Consolidation) while planning to retire Business Objects’ SRC Software (which BOBJ acquired in 2005) . At the same time, it would like to find out the consumers’ preference by offering both Cartesis and the Outlooksoft financial consolidation softwares.

It is a matter of conjecture, how far SAP will go in its decision to retire overlapping BI products. The Business Objects offerings have grown unwieldy over time and with increasing overlap between Crystal Reports and Business Objects Web Intelligence – the main two product lines have become a confusing choice. Add to this the direction shown by XI 3.0 with its Web Intelligence rich client, and Xcelsius 2008 going the Adobe Flex/Flash way. Business Objects however maintains that Web Intelligence remains for ad-hoc casual reporting over the web while Crystal Reports is for highly formatted reporting required for printing etc.

The SAP BI roadmap is available here.

And here is the SAP BI head (former BOBJ CEO) John Schwarz talking about the challenges of integration and independence.