As we all know, SAP BO is a reporting tool. It is also called as data warehousing tool as it acts as a layer between database and user. Let's look into a little history about this tool.
History and Evolution :
Bernard Liautaud co-founded Business Objects in 1990 together with Denis Payre and was chief executive officer until September 2005, when he became chairman and chief strategy officer until January 2008. In 1990, the first customer, Coface, was signed. The company went public on NASDAQ in September 1994, making it the first European software company listed in the United States. In 2002, the company made Time Magazine Europe's Digital Top 25 of 2002 and were BusinessWeek Europe Stars of Europe.
On 7 October 2007, SAP AG announced[2] that it would acquire Business Objects for $6.8B. As of 22 January 2008, the corporation is fully operated by SAP; this is seen as part of a growing consolidation trend in the business software industry, with Oracle acquiringHyperion in 2007 and IBM acquiring Cognos in 2008.
Business Objects had two headquarters in San Jose, California, and Paris, France, but their biggest office was in Vancouver, Canada. The company's stock was traded on both the Nasdaq and Euronext Paris (BOB) stock exchange
Various Versions of SAP BO till date :
Please check the below link for the detailed list of release dates and the evolution of BO logos.
http://www.romanov-memorial.com/bobti/en/art_historique.htm
Please note that there is a misconception in the market about the versions of SAP Business Objects. The most common questions asked in any interview are if you have worked on XI R2 or XI R3. That's wrong. If you see the above link you would see that, after the version BO XI R2 (Release 2), there isn't any R3 but BO XI 3.0, BO XI 3.1 etc., Then, it went to the version 4.0 and 4.1. But, people have the misconception that BO XI 3.0 is BO XI R3. They are not the same. Somewhere I read that SAP renamed the new versions as XI 3.0, XI 3.1 etc., to avoid confusion about its other product SAP R/3. So, please consider this naming convention going forward.
How SAP Business Objects works :
As SAP BO is a reporting tool, we use it on any database to get the reports required by the management. First, let's see how SAP BO works.
There are few major components in SAP BO. We'll see one by one. The most important component of BO is Universe Designer. This is the heart of Business Objects tool. This is where everything required for the project is designed. As BO is a tool, we use it on top of any given database to get the data. We use Universe Designer to graphically see the tables in the database and make joins between them. As we know, the database is a collection of tonnes of tables. So, to get any report, we have to access the concerned table to fetch the data. Sometimes, we may require to get data from multiple tables. In such cases, we have to join the tables with a query. As we write query, we cannot really see how the tables are joined visually. That can be overcome by using the Designer.
Basically, Universe Designer is a window through which we can import the required tables from the database and make the required joins.
Here's a glimpse on how the Universe Designer looks like.
I would explain going forward on how to get the tables and make joins. Just for now, I wanted to show how the Universe Designer looks. The blocks you see in the above picture are the tales from the database. You can also see the lines between the tables which are nothing but joins. We'll cover that topic going further.
What we learnt here is, when given a requirement to get a report from the database using multiple tables, we open Universe Designer to Insert the tables on to this window and make joins. It's just the visual representation of how the tables are joined. The combination of all the tables required to get the report is nothing but Universe. We use this Universe as the input to the next component to design a report.
There are few components to build a report based on the version of the Business Objects you are working on. They are,
- Desktop Intelligence (DESKI)
- Web Intelligence (WEBI)
- Web Intelligence Rich Client
We use any one of the above component to design the report. Desktop intelligence is the mostly used one as it was available till version 3.1 and its a client machine installed application. The others are Webi and Webi Rich Client which are a little graphically advanced but do have the same features as a Deski. Depending on the client and report requirement, a developer chooses one of the above to design the report.
Here's how Deski and Webi Rich Client looks like..
Once the report is designed, it should be handed over to the users. Users can get reports in multiple ways. One way is that the developer builds the report and copies it to an excel sheet and send it over to them. The other way is they upload the reports on to a portal called BO Infoview. This Infoview is a Java powered online portal which can be accessed through a web link and need not be installed on any machine.
Here's how Infoview looks like..
What we learnt today is, we use Universe Designer to import the tables from database and make any joins required and use Deski or Webi or Webi Rich Client to design the reports and finally Infoview to see the reports.
We'll discuss these topics in details going further.
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