Web Intelligence report life cycle management

Web Intelligence offers a wide set of features to manage the life cycle of a report such as:

• Add or remove objects in a query
• Add or remove queries
• Use different data sources: universe, text, Excel, BEx query, Analysis View, SAP HANA, Free hand SQL
• Change source:
  • from one universe to another universe
  • from a BEx query to another BEx query
• etc.

There is a missing feature that we can address using existing Web Intelligence resources: replace query objects by other objects.

This requirement is only available for Universe and BEx queries.

Web Intelligence report life cycle management

Creating Web Intelligence can be time consuming but maintaining such documents can be obviously time consuming and also very cumbersome. Many variables need to be reviewed and updated; Document structure, tables and charts need to be reviewed, etc.

As mentioned above one of the requirements that a customer may have is to change the query: replace some objects (measures, dimensions, details) by other objects.

The objective of this document is to describe how we can simplify report changes and therefore minimize the impact on the risk and reduce the time to do the changes.

Example:

Here is a query I created from a universe …

… to build the following report.

As you can see, this is a fairly basic report.

I also created 2 variables:

• Initial: =Left([Product Department];1)
• Percent: =[Store Sales] / [Store Sales] ForAll ([Country];[Year])

And the Title report formula is: =NameOf([Store Sales]) + ” by ” + NameOf([Product Department]) + “, ” + NameOf([Year]) + “, ” + NameOf([Country])

The customer new requirement is to have now a report with the same structure but with the following changes:

• Product Category
• State Province instead of Country
• Store Cost instead of Store Sales

What can I do today?

1. Edit the query
2. Add new objects in the query: Product Category, State Province, Store Cost
3. Run the query
4. Modify the report:
   1. edit variables,
   2. update the table,
   3. update the chart,
   4. etc.
5. Re-edit the query
6. Remove obsolete objects from the query: Product Department, Country, Store Sales
7. Run the query again
8. Then cross the fingers to hope I didn’ forget someting ….

As you can imagine it can be very long and risky for a more complex report.

What is the new solution?

As I mentioned in the beginning of this document, to simplify the life cycle management of the report I will use existing Web Intelligence features.

I mentioned that this solution works only for Universes and BEx queries.

1. Open the Web Intelligence report
2. Click on “Data Access” tab and “Tools” sub-tab.
   
3. Click on “Change Source” and select you query.
4. In the dialog box, click on “Specify a new data source” then “Universe”
   
5. Now, select the SAME UNIVERSE you have used in the query
   
6. Click on “Next” button
7. Click again on “Next” button in the next window
8. You are ready to do the new mapping asked by the customer.
   Please do not forget that you can only map objects with the same data type and the same definition.
   
   
9. Click on “Finish” button
10. Then run the query
    

Now the report has been automatically updated: variables, tables, charts, etc.

In conclusion, this is an easy way to save time if you want to replace objects in a query.

Didier MAZOUE