Explaining Data Connections of Xcelsius 2008 – Part 1: XML Data
This is the first blog of the blog series about all data connection types of Xcelsius 2008, about what you can do with XML Data connection, when and how to use it. Most content is from {code:html}my latest book about Xcelsius{code} co-written with Evan Delodder published by SAP Press which is also available on {code:html}Amazon{code}.The user’s default web browser may cachethe URL defined in the XML Data connectivity. That’s, if you request data withthe same URL (its parameter included) twice within a short period (before theweb browser considers the cached URL as expired), the web browser will not sendthe request to the web application server. Instead, it returns the cached pagecontent. To avoid this, you can simply disable your web browser from caching. Abetter way is to append a redundant parameter with Rand() as its value. As anexample, you can update the URL for the XML Data connectivity by concatenating “+&redundant_param=RAND()+” to the realURL in the cell in the embedded spreadsheet. h3. Property panel The Property panel of an XML Dataconnection can be launched from Data Manager. h4. Definition tab You can define the location and format ofthe XML Data connectivity in the Definition tab, as displayed in Figure 2:

http://enterprisegeeks.com/blog/2009/02/18/abap-freak-show-february-18-2009/
So in your diagram above, there does not have to be a Java servlet between an ABAP-based system and Xcelsius.
Cheers,
David.
When I was still in Business Objects I did an initiative to connect to R/3 and BW directly from Xcelsius, with the help of QUERY_VIEW_DATA and XML/A and also exposing bapi functions as web services.
This blog shows an example usage of XML Data. I wish xcelsius designer can make more use of XML Data.
Thanks,
Ray
Thanks,
Ray
To see what was happening I display the load message and the idle message in a label. Immediately after I take the action that launches the query, the load message appears. However, the idle message isn't displayed until 5-10 seconds after I see the returned data displayed.