Web Intelligence XI 3.x – Reporting off the BusinessObjects Enterprise CMS Via Data Access DDK
I work for SAP Business Objects Developer Support, helping developers create custom applications using the SDKs supplied with Business Objects products. If you log a SAP Incident concerning an issue with our SDKs, I might be the one calling to help fix the problem! A not infrequent request I receive is for a way to report off the BusinessObjects Enterprise Central Management Server (CMS) database. There’s very compelling business reasons for doing so – to record details of scheduled reports, user activity and server usage and load. The Enterprise Auditing features have come a long way and been greatly expanded since version 10, but there’s still some data that’s not being recorded in the audit database. h5. Question: How to Report off the CMS Database? You cannot connect to and report off the CMS database directly. Much of the info is blobbed in a composite column in the repository tables, and this data cannot be decrypted without having to go through the CMS service. To access the repository data, you would use the Enterprise SDK or Enterprise Web Services to send an Enterprise query (a SQL-type query) or a path query (BusinessObjects Enterprise SDK – XI 3.x Path Queries and Query Builder) (an XPath-type query) to the CMS, that then will return a collection of InfoObject objects. An InfoObject is a programmatic, object-oriented representation of data held in the CMS database.Another possibility is to use the POJO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POJO) reporting functionality of Crystal Reports. You can write Java code that uses the Enterprise SDK or Web Services to retrieve InfoObject objects and copies the desired InfoObject properties to a POJO collection. This solution, however, is restricted to Crystal Reports reports only. What of Web Intelligence? Or Query as a Web Service (QaaWS)? Fortunately, there is a way. h5. POJO Reporting using the DDK In a previous blog entry, POJO and RSS Feed Reporting with Web Intelligence Using the Data Access Driver Development Kit (POJO and RSS Feed Reporting with Web Intelligence Using the Data Access Driver Development Kit), I describe how you can use the new Universe Data Access Driver Development Kit (DDK) SDK (https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/sdklibrary) and the {code:html}Crystal Reports Java SDK POJO ResultSet Factory{code} to create a Universe Connection that consumes POJO collection data sources. This blog entry is a continuation of that blog, so that blog is worth a read if you’re interested in this current subject. What I’m going to describe here is how to connect the BusinessObjects Enterprise BIPlatform Web Services to the POJO data driver. The connection will pass a specified path query to Enterprise via Web Services, and fill a POJO collection with returned InfoObject collection properties. The data flow in this workflow is: CMS -> Web Services -> CRJ SDK -> DDK -> Universe To understand this blog, you should be familiar with the following: * [BusinessObjects Enterprise Web Services | https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/sdklibrary] programming * BusinessObjects Enterprise Path Queries * How to download {code:html}Crystal Reports for Eclipse 2.0 (CRJ SDK){code}0.1. Configuring the DDK JavaBean Driver (https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/sdklibrary)0.1. Creating Universe connections and Universes I think the results well worth the effort. Here’s a screenshot of what I was able to accomplish:
Thanks for another great post on extending functionality through the various SDKs. I have yet to move to the 3.x line, but the new DDK looks very promising.
The DDK does allow Universes to consume more data source types than before, so it's closing the gap with even Crystal Reports, which is still the Champ when it comes to vendor-neutral data source support.
Sincerely,
Ted Ueda
I have zero Java experience, and so would be hesitant to take on the steps you've described myself. IMO you should send a link to this blog entry over to your friends at BO Labs. I'd like to see this packaged up as an installable thing, delivered with the product. That is, a universe and some QaaWS queries delivered with the BOE core product install, with the underlying bits already wired together.
i am guessing they never packaged it did they?
This blog is really just a POC.
The direction SAP BOBJ is taking is to enhance the Auditing capability to give admins the info they want.
From XI -> XI 3.x -> BI 4.x, the Auditing DB have gone from pretty useless to useful to really informative.
Auditing combined with Monitoring in BI 4.0 does give Admins a lot of insight into the BOBJ Platform.
Sincerely,
Ted Ueda