Tips and Tricks for Deploying BI Web Services Within Your Web Intelligence Environment Chris Greer EV Technologies

Transcription

2 In This Session Demonstrate creating Web Services with Business Objects s BI Web Service How to create Advanced techniques Introduction to SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 s Navigation s Scheduling basics SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius ) s Using Web Services as connections s Relative URLs 1

3 What We ll Cover What is a Web Service? Introduction to SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 BI Web Service Introduction BI Web Service Advanced Techniques BI Web Service Scheduling SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and BI Web Service BI Web Service Building a Relative URL Wrap-up 2

4 Defining Web Service Wikipedia definition ( s The W3C defines a Web service as a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-processable format (specifically Web Services Description Language, known by the acronym WSDL). Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with other Web-related standards. 3

5 My Web Service Definition Web Services allow companies to leverage XML and other industry standards to share data s Allows you to leverage vendor products (i.e., Business Objects) for creating and consuming Web Services s Industry standard interface for transmitting data between systems internally or to external business partners s Not for every situation Security concerns Performance (XML tags) 4

7 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Log On Notice the new URL with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 6

8 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Launch Pad The New Default Home Page 7

9 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Documents Change to the Documents tab 8

10 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Applications Use the Application dropdown to create a new Web Intelligence document instead of the New dropdown 9

11 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Web Intelligence (WebI) Now that you have the Web Intelligence application open you can create a new document 10

12 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 WebI Data Source Any data source should work but we will use a universe 11

13 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 WebI Universe Selection Select a Universe 12

14 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Web Intelligence Query Panel Build the results and filters using universe objects 13

15 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Web Intelligence Report Now we can review the resulting report 14

16 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Demo 15

17 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Summary The same but different from XI 3.1 InfoView s New landing page when you first log in s Introduces Applications separate from the navigation This makes creating a new Web Intelligence document different than the way it was in XI 3.x InfoView s Web Intelligence now uses Ribbons to organize features More intuitive for new users For XI 3.1 users, all the functionality is still there, but some of it is hard to find at first s Better access to SAP data sources 16

19 Business Objects Web Service History BI Web Service s Introduce in XI 3.1 SP2 Now you build a Web Service against any block inside a Web Intelligence report Only available with the Web Intelligence Rich Client s SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Still available in Rich Client, but no longer required 18

20 Publish the BI Web Server Right-click the edge of the report block 19

21 BI Web Service Error? Error caused by not saving the report before trying to publish the Web Service 20

22 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Save the Web Intelligence Report Save the Web Intelligence report, remember that the dashboard user will need to have access to the location were the BI Web Service-based Web Intelligence report is saved 21

23 BI Web Service Wizard Now that the report is saved, this time when we select publish as a Web Service the wizard opens 22

24 BI Web Service Duplicate Check The wizard will perform a duplicate content check 23

25 BI Web Service Publish Content From here we can set the filters and manage the host 24

26 BI Web Service Default Filters By default all objects that are included in the report block will be included as filters 25

27 BI Web Service Select Filters We will need to update the selection to only include the filters we want 26

28 BI Web Service Hosts You can set up a host name in case you want to use something besides the default. You might want to do this if you have a URL alias. 27

29 BI Web Service (BIWS) Folders Web Services have their own folder structure, which is shared between BIWS and QaaWS 28

30 BI Web Service Naming Now we need to name our BI Web Service 29

31 BI Web Service Is Successfully Created Once we get the successfully created message we are done 30

32 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Web Intelligence Web Services Now we can see our Web Service in the Web Service Publisher Notice the WSDL URL, you will need this later 31

33 BIWS Basics Demo 32

34 BI Web Services Basics Summary SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Web Intelligence BI Web Services s No longer required to use the Rich Client like you had to with Web Intelligence XI 3.1 s Web Services are tied to a report block not the whole tab or document s You have to save the document before you can create a BI Web Service against it s You can manage your Web Service through the Web Service Publisher within Web intelligence This is also a place where you can get the WSDL URL 33

36 Adding Columns Unlike QaaWS you can add columns that are not defined in the universe to your Web Intelligence report block 35

37 Creating Formulas You can also add formulas and variables to your report blocks All Web Intelligence functions are supported 36

38 User Full Name Here we can see a simple formula added to a new column in the report block 37

39 Vertical Table Here we have a vertical table block that would be better represented in a cross tab 38

40 Turn Into Wizard We can use the Turn Into wizard to convert the vertical table into a cross table 39

41 Cross-Tab Table The updated report cross table report block is much easier to interpret and formatted in the way we need for display in the dashboard we are going to build 40

42 Calculated Headers In a different report block, we add an extra row to the header so we can include some calculations 41

43 BIWS Advanced Demo 42

44 BI Web Services Advanced Summary You can add extra columns to a report block You can build complex formulas and variables for use in your report block You can convert your published block to a cross tab You can leverage the header and footer of your report block in your BIWS s There is a bug with footers in SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 s Footers work fine with XI

45 BI Web Services Advanced Summary (cont.) You can leverage existing reports to build BI Web Services, but I recommend creating a separate report for each Web Service you create s Prevents BIWS changes from impacting your existing report s Prevents changes to the report from impacting your BIWS s Makes it easier to organize and maintain your BIWS s Purge data from the report to make it smaller Consider creating a separate universe to support your BIWS s A smaller universe can improve performance s Prevents other report changes from inadvertently impacting your BIWS 44

47 Schedule Report We schedule a Web Intelligence report with BIWS the same way we would any other report 46

48 Schedule Recurrence This will be determined by the frequency with which the source data is updated daily, weekly, monthly, etc. 47

49 Schedule Instances We can see when the scheduled report last successfully ran and the number of instances 48

50 BIWS Scheduling Demo 49

51 Scheduling Summary You should purge the results in the base reports s It is more efficient s Helps avoid people mistakenly looking at stale data You schedule your reports with BIWS the same way you would any other Web Intelligence report s Consider leveraging event triggers; they can be set up to trigger the report to run based on data being loaded in the database 50

53 Import the WSDL URL The Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) URL can be found in the Web Intelligence Web Service Publisher or in the Query as a Web Service Designer tool 52

54 Input Values Once imported, the rest of the screen will be populated 53

55 Input Filter Values Map the filter input value to a cell Prompt Filter Operators EQUAL (default) GREATER GREATER_OR_EQUAL LESS LESS_OR_EQUAL NOT_EQUAL INLIST NOT_INLIST 54

56 Output Values Set the input value for getfromlatestdocumentinstance to 1 to make sure we pull the last successful scheduled instances data Map the output values cell to get the data from the report block 55

57 Output Headers and Footers You can also map the output headers and footers 56

58 Other Output Map the output value for lastrefreshdate, which will provide us the timestamp for when the Web Intelligence report was last scheduled successfully 57

59 Connection Usage The connection s Usage tab controls when the Web Service runs. In this case we will use a trigger value change. 58

60 Cross Table Cross Table Header from the BIWS Last time the scheduled Web Intelligence ran successfully Cross Table Data from the BIWS 59

61 Triggered Updates Selecting a row from the scorecard on top passes its system ID and triggers the BIWS associated with the second scorecard 60

62 SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards with BIWS Demo 61

63 SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards with BIWS Summary Both QaaWS and BIWS use the Web Service Query (Query as a Web Service) connection type Running against a scheduled instance of a report can greatly improve your dashboard performance Filters can also improve performance and let you restrict a large amount of data from a scheduled instance Leverage the BIWS headers and footers in your dashboards There are several useful items in the output values besides the report block itself 62

65 Web Service URL Start with the Web Service URL from an existing connection 64

66 Creating a Base URL Now we create the Base URL, which we will use for testing and previewing Take that Web Service URL and call it our Original URL s &cuid=adkpb7nfbsrous9mvfil_hw&authtype=enterprise&locale=en_us &timeout=60&convertanytype=true Move the &cuid=adkpb7nfbsrous9mvfil_hw to the end s &authtype=enterprise&locale=en_us&timeout=60&convertanytype=true&c uid=adkpb7nfbsrous9mvfil_hw Then we drop the cuid value s &authtype=enterprise&locale=en_us&timeout=60&convertanytype=true&c uid= 65

67 URL Table Build a table that lets you append the Connection CUID to the Base URL 66

68 Web Service URL Mapping Map the Connection Web Service URL to the new URL you built 67

69 Creating a Relative URL Now we create the relative URL, which we will use when we deploy our dashboard to the enterprise Take the base URL we created s &authtype=enterprise&locale=en_us&timeout=60&convertanytype=true&c uid= Remove the http and the server name to create the relative URL s /dswsbobje/qaawsservices/queryasaservice? &authtype=enterprise&locale=en_us&timeout=60&convertanytype=true&c uid= 68

70 Relative URL Table Add the relative URL to our table and then add a formula to make it easy to switch between relative and base 69

71 Preview Relative URL Table The relative URL will fail if you try to preview the dashboard 70

72 Deploying Relative URL Dashboard Save the dashboard to your Business Objects environment 71

73 Finding Your Relative URL Dashboard Navigate to where the dashboard was deployed and then select View 72

74 Testing Your Relative URL Dashboard 73

75 Relative URL Demo 74

76 Relative URL Summary Relative URLs allow you to migrate your dashboards between development, test, and production without changing your dashboard source XLF file The CUID (Cluster Unique Identifier) stays the same when components are migrated to different environments Relative URL will not work in preview mode, so keep the base URL around for when you are developing Test your relative URL dashboard by deploying it 75

78 Additional Resources SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence User s Guide Chapter 27 Sharing content with other web applications s xi4_ia_en.pdf Dashboard Design and Presentation Design User s Guide s xi4_dashd_user_en.pdf Using Functions, Formulas and Calculations in Web Intelligence s xi3_web_intelligence_formulas_functions_calculations_en.pdf Ryan Goodman s Blog (Xcelsius) s EV Technologies Blog s 77

79 7 Key Points to Take Home BI Web Services allow you a simple way to build powerful Web Services SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 has an improved look and feel that will take time to adjust to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 allows you to create BIWS from Web Intelligence without using the Rich Client BIWS allows you to use cross-tabs and report specific formula that are more flexible than traditional QaaWS BIWS allows you to apply filters that can be used to get around the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards recommended 500 row limit BIWS created from Web Intelligence allows you to run against scheduled instances of a report Relative URLs allow you to migrate BIWS between environments without having to make code changes in your dashboards 78

80 Your Turn! How to contact me: Chris Greer 79

81 Disclaimer SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Wellesley Information Services is neither owned nor controlled by SAP. 80