Tammy Powlas

November 9, 2013 4 minute read

Enterprise Self-Service BI from the Desktop to the Web and Cloud- TechEd Online Notes

SAP’s Matt Lloyd gave this EA102 session from Las Vegas TechEd, covering desktop and Cloud,the future and how bring Lumira to on-premise. You can watch the recording of this session here.

The usual disclaimer applies that things are subject to change.

He said the Lumira Cloud version is touch-enabled as it works on your iPad

Overview of Self Service BI

He reviewed the single version of the truth; IT created universes and everyone asked questions on the same dataset. Data has been growing at an exponential rate and IT cannot keep up the demand.

Self-service would allow you to mash up the date sources. Everyone at all levels of operation has questions.

Figure 1: Source: SAP

The business wants an engaging application, to get data in real time in a repeatable fashion.

If you have a quick question can you share it through your devices on the go.

IT wants to enable self-service so they don’t need to create the queries but leverage the existing data sources

Today there is Lumira and BusinessObjects Explorer. Someone would create the InfoSpace so you can go and ask questions.

With Lumira you can publish to Explorer and create an Infospace and not ask someone to do that.

Lumira Desktop

Lumira is SAP’s self service tool. You can take the data in and publish to HANA as a table without HANA modeling.

Figure 2: Source: SAP

Figure 2 shows the Lumira Desktop for the PC. There are two versions – 32 bit and 64 bit

For questions about the Mac version he suggested seeing the EA 187 session.

Sybase IQ is the columnar database stored locally in the desktop.

With the connected mode you can look at HANA data or download where you can use the enrichment.

The new desktop tool is based on HTML5 with sample data built in

Currently you cannot share the Storyboard to the cloud but they are working on that; you can share the dataset

Lumira Cloud

This was released at SAPPHIRE in May

Figure 3: Source: SAP

This is for the Business Users; Lumira Desktop is for the business analyst

Once data is in the cloud they can collaborate and it does not require IT as it is hosted by SAP

Anyone can sign up at cloud.saplumira.com for a free account

Figure 4: Source: SAP

It is similar to desktop as you can pull in from Excel CSV; it is touch friendly

Figure 5: Source: SAP

The Lumira Cloud supports geo maps but the difference with the desktop version is in the desktop version you can enrich the hierarchies; this is not available in the cloud yet. You need latitude and longitude data.

You can do reverse geocoding using Google (I had not considered that).

Figure 6: Source: SAP

Figure 6 covers the free option on the left and the Enterprise version – “share with named users” for team work. There is a 5 user minimum for the Enterprise license.

Figure 7: Source: SAP

This is a hosted service by SAP – does not require IT

It is built on HANA but it is hidden from the users

If you have an SCN account and you can use that to sign up and with a token it supports SSO

It is built on HTML5 technology for cross platform support

This is part of the HANA Cloud platform.

Future

Figure 8: Source: SAP

Future is subject to change. In the future you can publish on Lumira for HANA, an application on HANA, using your HANA roles, security and views.

Figure 9: Source: SAP

They are working on Lumira for BI4 – integrating Lumira into the BI Platform.

Figure 10: Source: SAP

Figure 10 is a recap of the session comparing today and the future. He said there will be more to share at SAPPHIRE next year.

Figure 11: Source: SAP

Figure 11 is the summary. Future they are working for Lumira for HANA on premise and integration with the BI4 platform.

He suggested going to saplumira.com, a new site announced at SAP TechEd.

Question & Answer

Q: How does it handle security?

A: If pull in Excel or CSV – no security

If connect to database, BIP/HANA – you are providing credentials

Q: How large can it be?

A: Depends on memory on machine; recommend 5M cells (not rows/columns) – recommend to leave everything in HANA

You get a warning at 30 million cells

Q: Does it work with BEx Queries?

A: It currently does not work today; but it is part of the roadmap

Q: Does it support .UNV?

A: It supports both UNV and UNX

For BW it only supports UNX

Q: Is there a way to see what transformations?

A: Do keep track of and someday they plan to share it; make want it available in future

Q: How do you publish a report with UNV?

A: You are publishing a copy of that data