What is the difference between Explorer, formerly called Polestar, and the new accelerated version for BW?
SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is the new name for the intuitive search and exploration capabilities from the portfolio of SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions. The product was formerly called SAP BusinessObjects Polestar. It was recently renamed into SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to clearly describe the value it provides. Explorer is deployed with SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise and it can access any data via universes. It is important to note that although Explorer can access BW cubes via universes, SAP recommend customers to deploy search and exploration based on the accelerated version (see below) to benefit from optimal performance and scalability.
SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, accelerated version for SAP NetWeaver BW is a bundled offering that combines Explorer capabilities, as described above, with the high-performing, scalable in-memory analytics and acceleration capabilities from SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator. The accelerated version provides direct access to BW cube data that has been indexed in BW Accelerator. It does not require universes to do so.
The accelerated version is available as a blade server appliance preloaded with all SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator and SAP BusinessObjects software required. Series of blade servers certified for the accelerated version are available from the same hardware partners as for BW Accelerator (i.e., Fujitsu, HP, IBM, and SUN) and SAP customers are free to choose any of those. SAP recommends the blade server appliance approach for optimal performance and scalability.
Explorer and the accelerated version can be deployed together in the same SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise environment already in place and/or aimed at supporting an enterprise BI strategy. In such an enterprise-wide deployment all business users can search and explore all data sources in the organization, the full benefit of accelerated exploration will only apply when exploring the BW data sources, though.
I have a question: we use a lot of calculated and restricted key figures defined on our multiproviders. You say that users will have access to the cubes indexed in BIA, but do they have access to the calculated or restricted key figures?
Thanks,
Gabriel
Current release of BObj Explorer does not support MultiProviders (only InfoCubes) yet, and only Cube's KFs (not CKFs/RKFs) are available for Explorer today.
Regards,
-Vitaliy
This is disappointing news regarding Calculated/Restricted Key Figures as defined in BI queries.
Is the BObj Explorer able to handle navigational attribues as opposed to just simple characteristics from the cubes?
Regards
For the past 12 years, us BW designers have been limited by the concepts of Multiproviders and Infosets (limited unions and joins) and have thus gone to snapshot data models.
This is far from ideal as it takes us away from real time BI, provides multiple versions of the truth and increase and imposes on us batch.
With the new world of the BOBJ products, vertical data models offering a single version of the truth via universes has now become a possibility.
This design concept lets us have real time BI by moving the business modelling out of the data model and into the presentation layers..
Problem for us then is the BO explorer operating outside these new design principals.
I understand why the Explorer has been designed that way.. perhaps thought may be given to deconstruct a complex SQL query given by a universe into it's component parts and then BWA will be able to utilise those "partitioned SQLs" against the cubes.
True you are in effect having to create a front end to the BWA aggregation layer to bring the data back again... but I can;t think of another way around it..
We really do not want to have to design snapshots - they are the cause of so much user pain. (ie they force business processes to align with IT processes)
Regards
Can you tell what are the configurations/requirements needed in the BW server side (for a non SAP sw expert) to be able to work with the Explorer once it is installed in the BO server side?
Without BWA can we install and configure the Explorer? If we include query in the universe, is CKF/RKF available for search?
Thanks
Kiran
We have SAP BusinessObjects enterprise 3.0 Setup in our company environment now I wanted to install polestar 3.1
Can I do that? Is it required any settings/configuration? If yes please let me know if you have a any documents regarding this please send me on manku6@gmail.com
Is SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise 3.0 having the Polestar software? if yes where to download this?
Very good post. We have not configured BWA yet in our environment and we are on SP23 currently. Is EHP1 SP2 a key requirement for installing explorer or can we install explorer with the current patch we are on.
Thanks,
Kris
Thanks for the response. I saw the Note 1248905 -SP Equivalence for update/upgrade to EHP 1 for SAP NW 7.0 and since we are on Support Package Stack 21/BI Patch 23, my impression was the SAP BO Explorer driver would come with that.
Thanks,
Kris