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Showing posts from January, 2011

SAP Business Objects Universe Designer Preventing Chasm and Fan Traps - Context & Alias

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In this article I would like to talk about Chasm traps and Fan traps . These are problems that we often experience while building universes and reports. When encountering these traps, one may wonder what is going on? How come my sum statements aren't adding up correctly? Or why am I missing some rows? A properly designed universe will help avoid these problems. In addition, a good understanding about measures and contexts from report designers will help as well. Chasm Traps Let’s talk about Chasm traps first. In short, a Chasm trap can be imagined as a bottomless pit where some rows may unknowingly fall in and never come back out. So when viewing a report caught in a Chasm trap, one may ask “Hey where did Record X go??”. Many to one joins from two fact tables converge on a single look-up table. This type of join convergence is called a Chasm trap . Looking at the eFashion Universe (note that this is a modified version of the efashion

Difference b/w SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence (WEBI) Reports, Crystal Reports and Crystal xcelsius ?

'ALL' IN @Prompt('Enter a value or All', 'A', 'Class/Object', Multi,) table.column in @prompt('Enter value or All', 'A', 'Class\Object',Multi,) The Datasource for Xcelsius is not limited to excel, it can fetch data through some data connectivity components like Web service, Live Office connection, SAP connection, many more…… The main difference between teh BusinessObjects Web Intelligence(WEBI), Crystal Reports and Xcelsius is BusinessObjects Web Intelligence(WEBI) and CR are reporting tools and Xcelsius is a Dynamic Dashboard tool where we can provide a What-If scenario to the end-user. The output of the reports in BusinessObjects Web Intelligence(WEBI) and Crystal Reports are limited to pdf, word etc.. but Xcelsius gives output as all the above mentioned formats and a unique format .swf (a flash file). In BusinessObjects Web Intelligence(WEBI) and Crystal Reports we can find the page refresh rate where as i

Acronyms come across SAP & Non-SAP

SAP BO Universe Types: .unv, .unx CNX:files for connections DFX:Data Foundation BLX:Business Layer A UNX is the result of CNX + DFX + BLX. SAP BO Crystal Reports: The Java version of Crystal Reports supports .unv, .unx extension universes. The C++ version of Crystal Reports only supports .unv universes New Naming Conventions in SAP BO XI 3.1 VS 4.0: SAP BO XI 3.1 SAP BO XI 4.0 Universe Designer Tool Universe Design Tool Information Design Tool Web Intelligence Web Intelligence Voyager Advanced Analysis Tool InfoView BILaunchPad