Your 1st DF project in less than 15min (part 2)

In our previous post, the DF project has been deployed in the DF Query Server in the

catalog /PP.

At this stage, the DF Query Server behaves like a database and we are ready to create the associated business layer (Universe) to end up with the following architecture.

Create a Universe connection

First of all, you have to configure the BOE XI 3.x JDBC driver to point to the Data Federator JDBC driver (thindriver.jar).

To summarize, you have to edit the file jdbc.sbo installed under C:\Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\win32_x86\dataAccess\connectionServer\jdbc

Add the following line in the “Data Federator Server” section entry

C:\Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Data Federator 12 Drivers\JdbcDriver\lib\thindriver.jar

Update the parameters with the following values

com.businessobjects.datafederator.jdbc.DataFederatorDriver

jdbc:datafederator://$DATASOURCE$/$DATABASE$

At this stage, the BOE JDBC driver is properly configured to connect to Data Federator.

Let’s create a new connection in the Universe Designer pointing to our DF data foundation.

Click on “Tools” > “Connections…” then click “Add”

Enter the name of the connection (DF JDBC in our case) and click on “JDBC Drivers”, click “Next”

Enter the following connection parameters

Username: sysadmin

Password: sysadmin

Server: localhost (this is the hostname or the IP address of the machine running the DF Query Server)

Database: PP (this is the name of the catalog we used for our deployment – Cf. Deploy the DF project)

At this stage, we have a connection called “DF JDBC” pointing to our Data Federator data foundation.

Let’s create a business layer on top of it.

Create a business layer

In the Universe Designer click on “File” > “New” to launch the Universe creation wizard.

Enter the name of the Universe (DF in our case) and select the connection we previously created (DF JDBC)

In step 2 of the wizard, we can see all the tables available in /PP.targetSchema
In our case, the “Customers” table we designed in Data Federator.

Select the “Customers” table and click “Add >>” then click “Next >”

We don’t have any specific measures in our “Customers” table so you can skip the step 3 and complete the wizard.

Congratulations! We complete our multi-source Universe exposing 9 dimensions.

Don’t forget to go to “File” > “Parameters” > “Parameter”

Click on ANSI92, set value to Yes and click “Replace”

Export the Universe to the repository

Click on “File” > “Export” and select the destination folder.

Your end users are now able to use this Universe to create their reports.

Create a WebI Document

Log in InfoView then click on “New” > “Web Intelligence Document”

Select the “DF” Universe

The WebI Query Panel is launched and you can create a query using the objects exposed by the Universe.

Drag the objects in the result part and click on “Run Query” to generate the associated report.

A default WebI report is created federating our CRM and TechSupport sources.

This last step completes our end to end workflow from the sources definitions up to the WebI report.

I hope this post will help you to get a better understanding of the Data Federator workflows and how it complements our traditional BI tools.

Don’t hesitate to post comments and remarks or ideas for future posts you would like to read on this blog.