Altek Solutions Business Intelligence Blog | Archive

Universe Design

Exploring 4.0: Information Design Tool

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

The Information Design Tool is the brand new metadata modeling application used for creating universes in SAP BusinessObjects 4.0. The universe layer has been completely reworked for the 4.0 release and the Information Design Tool (IDT) is the front-end for those changes. The new model takes the traditional universe and breaks it down into three components: the Connection, the Data Foundation, and the Business Layer. These components all existed in some form in previous versions, but now they each get their own editor and a host of new features and options. Let’s review these in a bit more detail.

SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise 4.0 Ramp-up and Analysis!

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

0 Comments

As an SAP BusinessObjects Channel Partner, we have been given the privilege and opportunity to engage in a pre-release version of the SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise 4.0 product stack for evaluation purposes. This is a very exciting time for us here at Altek Solutions as our Center of Excellence has already installed the software and is in the process of analyzing and evaluating the new features that 4.0 has to offer. Be sure to come back often to view any news that we put out regarding the 4.0 release, but to start here are a few things that stick out from what we have found thus far!

Top 5 Misconceptions About Business Objects Universes

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

1 Comment

Top 5 Misconceptions About Business Objects Universes

I recently published the post 5 Reasons Why You Should Use an SAP BusinessObjects Universe to highlight some of the core benefits you’ll see when implementing the semantic layer for you organization. The post was derived from speaking with organizations new to the Business Objects world about the benefits of leveraging the semantic layer. Throughout [...]

5 Reasons Why You Should Use SAP BusinessObjects Universes

Monday, September 27, 2010

1 Comment

5 Reasons Why You Should Use SAP BusinessObjects Universes

In meeting with organizations who are new to SAP BusinessObjects or who are legacy Crystal Reports users, we are often asked the question “Why should I use a Business Objects Universe?”. To organizations who have worked with universes for a period of time, the advantages and value proposition are clear. But for organizations who are [...]

Maintain Peak Performance With a Comprehensive SAP BusinessObjects Health Check

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

0 Comments

Maintain Peak Performance With a Comprehensive SAP BusinessObjects Health Check

We’re about to embark upon a new project to conduct a large-scale health check on one of our client’s primary reporting environments, so I thought it may be beneficial to write about the process we use. Hopefully it will give you some insight into how to conduct a health check, and the benefits your organization [...]

Aggregate Awareness! What is that? (Part 2 of 2)

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

10 Comments

Aggregate Awareness! What is that? (Part 2 of 2)

Finally after three projects and three months later, we are back to finish up our Aggregate Awareness series. In part 1 of our blog, we discussed the definition of aggregates and how to create summary tables. Today we are going to finish the process by showing how to implement these items into a SAP BusinessObjects Universe.

Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 4): I Pay People in IT to Create Reports

Thursday, July 15, 2010

1 Comment

One of the other reasons I hear is that managers don’t want to train end-users to create reports, since they have folks in IT that already tasked with that. Some report authoring will always need to be handled by IT, due to it’s complexity, lack of data availability, etc… But I argue that the lion’s share of the development can be handled within each department instead, freeing IT developers to take on other projects critical to the organization.

Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 3): I don’t want people poking around in data they shouldn’t have access to

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

1 Comment

Data security is typically a really a big deal for organizations, and it SHOULD be. Thankfully, SAP BusinessObjects offers a number of ways to provide security around functionality, content and data. With some careful planning and a well-designed SAP BusinessObjects implementation, you can rest assured knowing that users will have access to only the information that they are supposed to see.

Aggregate Awareness! What is that? (Part 1 of 2)

Thursday, May 6, 2010

3 Comments

Aggregate Awareness! What is that? (Part 1 of 2)

In the SAP BusinessObjects community, when someone talks about “AA” they don’t mean the meetings people attend, they are talking about a pretty cool function that is available in Designer. Aggregate Awareness or @aggregate_aware is a term that we use to describe the ability of a universe to utilize aggregate tables in a database. Using the function correctly can greatly improve the performance and user experience. This will be the first of two blogs and will talk about Aggregation and Summary tables. The second post will show how to implement Aggregate Awareness into a SAP BusinessObjects Universe.

Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 1): Our People Aren’t Smart Enough

Monday, April 5, 2010

1 Comment

Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 1): Our People Aren’t Smart Enough

I recently posted an article titled “Five Reasons Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work In Some Organizations”. In that article, I listed some of the major concerns that I hear from potential clients when the subject of ad hoc reporting is broached. As promised, I will be addressing each of those concerns and showing how they can be overcome. Today, we begin with the first one: “Our people aren’t smart enough to create their own reports”