Business Objects Explorer 12.2.0 : Lessons learned

[Former Member]

Hi,

Following are the lessons we  learned ,First time developing the information spaces using  the BO Explorer .

may be helpful to the upcoming BOE users .

Steps: From query to information space

1.1 Step one, prepare a query

Prepare query with all relevant fields and (calculated) keyfigures. This is the place to do calculations as this is not possible in the universe/ information space. Whether the characteristics are in the free characteristics area or in the rows doesn’t matter.

Restrict query to a limited result set you want to report on. If for example you only need open sales orders from 2009->now restrict the query in the filter on these characteristics.

Filters in the ‘default values’ (e.g. non-hard filters) will have no effect, this data will be indexed into the information space.

Using user-input and authorization variables is not possible as the bo-explorer cannot parse them.

1.2 Step two, Create a universe

Use the BO (universe) designer to create a new universe. Login to the BO enterprise server.

Give the universe a descriptive name starting with “BOE Universe”. If no connection to your query exists, create a new connection and use “BOE: ” + query technical name in the connection name. Choose Sap client / “SAP business warehouse” as the type.

Next, create a connection to BWP in the universe. The user BO_USER is used, for the password, contact the BI-architect. The connection parameters of the BWP might change; they can be checked in the parameters of BWP on the sap logon.

In the next screen, find your query and select it.

When the universe has been generated, click on the (property’s) controls tab and set the following parameters:

1.2.1 Set keyfigure aggregation in universe

Using the DB aggregation option ‘database delegated’ for keyfigures does not work with the BO explorer. Therefore, for each keyfigure (‘measure’), the function for aggregation needs to be set to sum.

1.2.2 Set date field formats

For all date fields, set the formatting by clicking object format on (for example) “L01 Calendar Day”.

1.2.3 Choose display type Key or text.

When expanding a characteristic like ‘L01 Calendar Year/Month’, several attributes are shown:

Each of these attributes can be chosen as the return value for this characteristic. For calendar year/month, the key (eg. 06-2009) needs to be returned instead of the text. Therefore we open the desired attribute

which has the internal select name “[0CALMONTH].[LEVEL01].[[20CALMONTH2]].[Value]”. If we paste this value in the default select for the characteristic

the characteristic returns the value of this attribute ( the key):

WEBI can be used to check what values the attributes hold.

1.2.4 Product structure key date

If a product structure key date needs to be set, set it to a date far in the future, eg. 01/01/2040, this ensures the latest product structure is always chosen.

Parameters of universe

On controls tab:

2 . Errors reporting users while refreshing

T.b.d.: Some users get errors in report while information space is refreshing: “data error” -> don’t refresh during work hours?Key figure summation in Universe

Summation of key figures needs to be defined manually. Database delegated does not work properly.

Thanks ,

Balaji.