White Paper INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH - AN INTEGRATION GUIDE FOR WINDOWS USERS (64 BIT) Abstract This paper presents interoperability of SAP Business Objects 4.0 with Greenplum. This paper also illustrates implementation of a Business Objects Universe creation, report execution and prompt function implementation as these are common tasks in the field. October 2011
Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. The information in this publication is provided as is. EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com. Greenplum, EMC, SAP Business Objects and SAP are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC and SAP in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Part Number h8300.1. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 2
Table of Contents Executive summary........... 4 Audience...4 Organization of this paper...... 4 Overview of Business Objects...... 5 What is new in the Business Objects 4.0 version?...6 Overview of Greenplum Database...... 7 Install the Greenplum Database Connectivity Tools... 9 Creating Business Objects Universe and running reports... 11 Designing Prompt function in WEBI and on Desktop... 17 Conclusion............ 26 References......... 27 INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 3
Executive summary SAP Business Objects is one the most sophisticated business intelligence reporting products available for using with databases such as EMC Greenplum Database. Business Objects is an integrated query, reporting and analysis tool, which makes it easy for the user to access and report information. The EMC Greenplum Database is capable of processing, managing, storing and analyzing Terabytes to Petabytes of data in data warehouses. SAP Business Objects 4.0 GA version is available from mid September 2011 [1] and only runs on 64 bit OS for Windows as well as other non-windows OS. As the product is not available in time for this doc, this paper is based on Business Objects 3.1 XI R3. Audience This white paper is intended for EMC field facing employees such as sales, technical consultants, support, as well as customers who are interesting in deploying SAP Business Objects for business intelligence and analytic applications. This is neither an installation guide nor an introductory material. It documents the connectivity and operation capabilities, and shows the readers how it can be used in conjunction with Greenplum Database to retrieve, transform and present data to users. Though the reader is not expected to have any prior SAP Business Objects knowledge, basic understanding of data warehouse (DW) and business intelligence (BI) concepts and reporting tools is assumed. Organization of this paper This paper covers the following topics: OBDC connectivity and configuration Overview of Business Objects universe Designing a simple Business Objects universe Running a simple report using Business Objects universe Prompt function implementation in both desktop and WEBI INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 4
Overview of Business Objects SAP Business Objects (BO) is arguably the most popular BI reporting tool at enterprise level. Compared to other enterprise BI reporting tools, Business Objects is easy and intuitive to use, and is widely accepted as a standard tool by a large user community. Business Objects Release 3.1 was the previous product that is well recognized by the IT community. With release of Business Objects 4.x. Some benefits that are derived from feature rich product: Ad hoc SQL custom reports. Work with reports without connectivity to BO universe or environment. Aggregate aware queries which can make use of aggregate tables automatically. Public folders for immediate access to reports. Scheduler that can run reports are predetermined times. Integration with social networking. Real time analytics with in-memory computing. Mobile platform support. A few important components of BO are compared below. These are listed below as quite a bit of confusion exists in the field related to role of these items. Component Web intelligence (popularly known as Webi ) Target users Business analysts Description Web browser based report with easy design and reporting capability. Desktop intelligence Power users Windows based tool that allows more powerful features. Dashboard Manager Infoview Executives for overall KPI Casual users of reports A typical dashboard Casual users or business admin staff who are interested in reports, not design of reports INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 5
Business Objects Universe: Business Objects uses universe as basic building blocks. Universe does not store any data and are pointers to inform where to find data for queries or reports. Data may get stored or cached at BO server side once a report is executed, depending on the configuration of BO server. This data does not stay within the repository rather BO universe maintains a pointer to the corresponding file on the file system. Domain for Business Objects Universe: Business Objects universe typically is designed for a domain or a subject area. In a retail shopping scenario, you may have two different universes, one for consumer & shopping and another for products and inventory. Note that both data may be coming from the same data mart or database, but for logical separation of business, you may decide to have two different universes. It is possible to connect reports from these two universes by using merge feature. Business Objects Reports: Business Objects reports are based on the universe that is created for a logical or a business area. What is new in the Business Objects 4.0 version? Quite significant improvements made in SAP Business Objects 4.0 compared to the previous version. Only those are popular or most applicable to Greenplum are mentioned below briefly [2]: Monitoring: Ability to monitor at server level as well as different reports and dashboard performance. One can set thresholds or triggers and include KPI for overall or individual component performance. Federated universes in which each universe can point to a different database or data source. Administration Tools: Explorer to quickly create what if scenarios, dashboard design, BI launch pad (previously known as Info view ). INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 6
SAP Business Objects Architecture [Source: SAP web site] The above diagram shows the SAP Business Objects architecture. ODBC at lower left corner allows us to connect to Greenplum database. Overview of Greenplum Database Greenplum Database is designed based on a share-nothing MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) architecture which facilitates Business Intelligence and analytical processing built on top of it using commodity hardware. Data is distributed across multiple segment servers in the Greenplum Database to achieve no disk-level sharing. The segment servers are able to process queries in a parallel manner in order to promote the high degree of parallelism and scalability. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 7
Highlights of the Greenplum Database: Dynamic Query Prioritization Provides continuous real-time balancing of the resources across queries. Self-Healing Fault Tolerance Provides intelligent fault detection and fast online differential recovery. Polymorphic Data Storage-MultiStorage/SSD Support Includes tunable compression and support for both row-and columnoriented storage. Analytics and Language Support Supports analytical functions for advanced in-database analytics. Health Monitoring and Alerting Provides integrated email and SNMP notification for advanced support capabilities. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 8
Install the Greenplum Database Connectivity Tools Greenplum provides database drivers and a C API for connecting to Greenplum Database. A psqlodbc driver is included in this connectivity tools package which will be used to connect to Business Objects. psqlodbc is the official PostgreSQL ODBC driver. This driver is currently maintained in PostgreSQL project. Here are the steps to install the Greenplum Database Connectivity Tools [3]: 1) Download the greenplum-connectivity-4.x.x.x-winxp-x86-32.msi package from Powerlink or Subscribenet or from Greenplum [4]. 2) Double click the package to launch the installer 3) Click Next on the following welcome screen: 4) Click I Agree on the License Agreement Screen: 5) Select the components that you want to install. By default, all components will be installed. Click Next after you made the selection. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 9
6) Click Install 7) Click Finish to complete the installation and exit installer 8) After the installation, the Greenplum Connectivity Program will show up in the Add/Remove program: INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 10
Creating Business Objects Universe and running reports This is a very brief outline of steps involved in creating Business Objects reports. 1) Install Business Objects: Install Business Objects to make sure to get proper license keys and establish OS / Network level infrastructure. Ensure network access from within and from outside an organization. Make sure proper Business Object clients are installed, usually administered through Central Configuration Manager; typically, you will see a short cut on your web browser favorites as this is a web based interface. 2) ODBC connectivity: Get data source established; this is a typical ODBC data source connection. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 11
3) Business Objects Universe Designer: This is a Windows (possibly Linux as well) program, after starting Universe designer, you will see a blank IDE or main window frame. Either choose File / New or click on the left most icon on the tool bar to create a new universe. Note that we are choosing the same ODBC DSN that was created in the first picture (highlighted within the dialog box here). 4) Right clicking on the left frame window gives you 'Tables...', click on this and it will give you all the schema. Note that database selection is already done through DSN, here we choose schema within that database. We *strongly* suggest that you not to use upper case letter. For instance, 'Srini_Schema' may create problems when trying to run reports as Postgres upper case names are required quotes around them. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 12
I am choosing the first table within public schema. Note that this table has only two columns. Obviously, this is a very simplified case. On the left, we right clicked to add a class and even a sub class. These are like folders and sub folders. We have to add field names (namely, 'a' and 'b') to this sub folder (or folder) so that they appear in the desktop intelligence (or other tools) for designing INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 13
reports. To add these fields into folder or sub folder, just drag and drop. They will appear under that sub folder. Simply put, we are using universe designer to create universe. Desktop intelligence to run reports; you may use webi, etc. for reports. 5) Start 'Desktop Intelligence' and you choose a 'new' to create a new report. This will step you through a dialog box. Note that we are choosing the universe that we designed above. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 14
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As you can see 'a' and 'b' fields appear in the left frame. You may want to drag and drop them to the right. This is where fields are selected and they will apear in the report once run (see below). You may apply certain conditions on the bottom right frame, such as where clauses. 6) Report appears in the right frame. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 16
This is just a two minute step through Business Objects reports through Universe. Designing Prompt function in WEBI and on Desktop Following shows creating a prompt function in Business Objects for both WEBI interface and desktop intelligence. WEBI is easier to use compared to the windows desktop tool, they work in a similar way as one would expect. Steps, briefly: 1) Create a universe, if not already existing. Universe is based on Greenplum database using open source Postgres driver. 2) Use WEBI to generate prompt, see a couple of screen shots below. Note that above connection is utilized through Business Object universe; meaning, based on Postgres open source driver. Double click on the red button, an arrow is pointing downwards to this icon. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 17
Choose universe In my case, choose (this was created previously created; please see above section on how to create universe) "GP_101U". This opens a create query window: INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 18
For demonstration purpose, we chose 'Address' (from public.address table in Greenplum) and 'City' (from public.city table in Greenplum). We dropped 'Address' and 'City' from the left pane to the top right portion. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 19
Then, drop from top portion 'City' to the "Query Filter" area and constructed a prompt. Chose 'Equal to' from drop down, from the last list down portion, chose 'Prompt'. WEBI automatically fills in 'Enter City' (because 'City' is the name of the field, you can change text here). INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 20
You can click on the question icon (between 'Enter City:' and the drop down list icon), this presents you with additional controls for the prompt: INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 21
You need to choose 'set default values' to enter values below under 'Type a value'. Enter Dayton, Ipoh and a dummy name. Close this dialog box and 'Run Query' in the "Create Query" window. As you can, the default 'Dayton' is pre-populated, though you can choose from the list. Obviously, Ipoh and the others are not displayed, they are meant for multi-valued selection. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 22
3) For reference, my universe looks this way: tableau=# select city_id from city where city='dayton'; city_id --------- 140 (1 row) INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 23
tableau=# select * from address where city_id=140; address_id address address2 district city_id postal_code phone last_update ------------+---------------------+----------+----------+---------+-------------+-------- ------+--------------------- 299 32 Pudukkottai Lane Ohio 140 38834 967274728547 2006-02-15 09:45:30 (1 row) Just to check that out on 'Desktop Intelligence' (windows based interface, WEBI's cousin), paste SQL from WEBI and then ran the same SQL code. One can copy SQL text and put in the desktop intelligence (cousin of WEBI). Click on right of refresh button on the top row of tool bar). (icon INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 24
Clicked on the "SQL" icon on the next window and pasted this text in that SQL window. IMPORTANT: Make sure to choose the check box 'Do not generate SQL before running'. This preserves the SQL just pasted, otherwise the new SQL is discarded. Run the query by choosing 'Run' button on the "Query Panel" window. This gave this window: INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 25
As you can see, Dayton is selected by default and the other values can be selected by choosing the 'Values." button. Conclusion In this white paper, the process of Greenplum connectivity, universe design and report execution and design of prompt function in both WEBI and Desktop are demonstrated. This doc also verifies that these features are supported through open source ODBC driver. INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 26
References 1) SAP Business Objects availability: http://blogs.sap.com/analytics/2011/09/16/sap-businessobjects-bi-4-0- generally-available/ 2) What is new in SAP Business Objects 4.0: http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/boexir4/en/xi4_whats_ne w_en.pdf 3) Greenplum connectivity tools for windows: http://powerlink.emc.com/km/live1/en_us/offering_technical/technical_docu mentation/300-012- 435.pdf?mtcs=ZXZlbnRUeXBlPUttQ2xpY2tTZWFyY2hSZXN1bHRzRXZlbnQsZG9jdW 1lbnRJZD0wOTAxNDA2NjgwNTk0ZWM3LGRhdGFTb3VyY2U9RENUTV9lbl9VU18w 4) Greenplum connectivity package: http://powerlink.emc.com/km/live1/en_us/offering_technical/technical_docu mentation/300-012- 435.pdf?mtcs=ZXZlbnRUeXBlPUttQ2xpY2tTZWFyY2hSZXN1bHRzRXZlbnQsZG9jdW 1lbnRJZD0wOTAxNDA2NjgwNTk0ZWM3LGRhdGFTb3VyY2U9RENUTV9lbl9VU18w INTEROPERABILITY OF SAP BUSINESS OBJECTS 4.0 WITH 27