Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those people that tend to dive straight into things, without first  reading through all of the documentation (of course only when it comes to non-production environments). This goes well most of the time, but sometimes it means I’ll run into problems and have to start from scratch and/or start reading the documentation after all. This was one of those times. Fortunately, I’d made a snapshot of my front end image (I use two, one for front end BOBJ applications and one for the back end stuff), so it was easy to revert to the state it was in originally.

The first thing I noticed when downloading the application was that since its initial release in June (probably a ramp-up release) five service packs have been released. The next thing that got my attention was the fact that you don’t get to choose whether you want the functionality for either PowerPoint or Excel. No, you either get both – if we’re talking about 2007 – or only Excel – in case we’re talking about 2003. In my situation, I only had Excel 2007 installed on my image to use in combination with Xcelsius. But it turns out that this situation isn’t really an option, as the add-in throws an error related to the fact that PowerPoint is not installed, when starting up the add-in for Excel. The only remedy, it seemed, was to also install PowerPoint on my machine (long live MSDN accounts). This was actually a bit of a *sigh* moment for me.

I then proceeded to start up the application and ran into the next problem (see above). Apparently a dll file,  BiXllFunctions, failed to register, meaning the whole add-in simply didn’t show in Excel. In PowerPoint, however, the extra tab did show up. But when trying to connect to my BOE XI 3.1 system, none of the connections to my cubes were visible, whereas in InfoView they were (see below).

So, it wasn’t working at all for me. And even though Windows Server 2008 was supported, I decided to try over on Windows 7 64-bit, hoping it was some sort of glitch, but, alas, it wasn’t, because the same thing occurred.

Of course I proceeded to do a little search on Google, BOB and SAP Notes, but there wasn’t really anything to find, unfortunately. I also checked the new book that came out on SAP Press (which a colleague had brought in), to see if I’d done anything wrong during installation, but that didn’t seem the case, meaning I’m slowly starting to run out of options. I think I’ll just post a summary of what I’ve written here on BOB and, perhaps, SDN to see if someone else has experienced the same issue and has managed to solve it.

Unfortunately the same functionality wasn’t available in Web Intelligence until the introduction of XI 3.0. Why is beyond me, because having the ability to merge data providers on the document level and not being able to use the MultiCube function was a bit of nuisance. It is now, however, even though they gave the function a different name: ForceMerge.

To me the help text and especially the example that come with the MultiCube() function is much more helpful than the one that comes with the ForceMerge() function. The ForceMerge functions  description states:

Includes synchronized dimensions in measure calculations when the dimensions are not in the measure’s calculation context

While the Desktop Intelligence description isn’t much better, the example is. So what I am going to try and do is recreate the example given in Desktop Intelligence in a Web Intelligence document. We’ll make use of the Island Resort Marketing Universe.

You have two queries. Query 1 returns city and country of origin of the customer.

Query 2 returns revenue per city.

Data Provider Results

Auto-merge dimensions is ticked by default, so the two city objects are automatically merged.

The results are as follows.

And combining the results is no problem either (there are obviously no customers living in certain cities).

The issue becomes evident when I remove the City object from the block. Keep in mind that the two data providers are merged by City. When that object is no longer present in the block, the measures should roll up (if set properly in the Universe and not disabled by the relevant property in the document).

That doesn’t seem right, right?

ForceMerge() to the rescue

Looking again at the description of the help text for ForceMerge we can see that this clearly is a situation where the dimension City definitely is not part of the measure’s calcuation context (because we deleted it from the block). So what do we need to do? Right, add the function to the measure.

=ForceMerge([Revenue])

And look what automagically happens to the results.

It seems about right, since the clients from the countries that don’t display any revenue are there in the database but never spent a dime in any of the resorts. Wondering why the block behaves as if an outer join is used? So am I, but perhaps that’s something for some other time.

In short

ForceMerge() AKA MultiCube() function) changes the behaviour of the, in this case Web Intelligence, report engine. Even though the merged dimension is no longer in the block, they are still taken into account by the measures that have the function wrapped around them.

Unfortunately it won’t fix every problem you’ll encounter, but it’s definitely worth taking a look at when you are forced to use several Universes and to combine the data to display in your document.

Attention

The help file also says:

• ForceMerge returns #MULTIVALUE if applied to a smart measure because the grouping set necessary to calculate the smart measure does not exist.

Now that SQL Server 2008 R2 has gone gold, finally more details about the different versions are becoming available about the different edtions, which makes it easier to determine which version one requires. It seem geographical maps are available in all version. Shared components, however, are available from the Standard edition onward. I’m still sifting through posts with information on what has changed (apart from the obvious). One thing is for sure, to Integration Services there really have not been that many features added.

Some of the features might be appealing to a business user, whereas from an IT point of view installing the Rich Client is probably not a preference, but that’s an entirely different story and perhaps merits its own blog post in due time.

There are several modes in which you can start the Rich Client. The obvious one is the Online Mode (the only one available previous to XI 3.0), where different types of authentication can be used (Enterprise, LDAP, Windows AD or Windows NT), but I’m referring to both the Standalone Mode as well as the Offline Mode.

Standalone mode

In standalone mode the Rich Client is not connected to a CMS and no security is enforced (hence you need not log in). You can only work with local, unsecured documents and universes. I believe there were once plans to start selling the Standalone Rich Client in combination with a Standalone Designer as a lightweight query and analysis tool. Whether this can actually be bought now I don’t know.

Offline mode

In offline mode the Rich Client is also not connected to the CMS repository, however, CMS security is applied, meaning you can work with local documents and universes that are secured by the CMS that you select at login or with unsecured local documents and resources. You obviously cannot import documents to the CMS repository in Offline mode and you need to have the relevant connections set locally as well.

When setting security for a single user, a best practice is to create a group first, then apply the desired security rights to the group and add the user to that group. Rather than applying rights to individual users each time a new user requires the same privileges, the administrator can simply add them to the group, thus saving administrative time.

It seems like good practice, even if you never add another person to the group, because it becomes much more transparent which rights are applied to who – in comparison with applying the rights to a single user.

8.4 Fix Pack 1 is a version of IBM Cognos 8 aimed at upgrading existing Cognos 8 customers. It includes updates to 8.4 BI Server, Metric, Go! Dashboard, Go! Search and Go! Mobile.

I feel fairly confident that I will pass the exam. I’ve been working with the new version for some time now and have done three migrations, one to 3.0 from 6.5 and two from R2 to 3.1. I must say that I like the new features that are sprinkled around the suite, not to mention quite a few usability enhancement. The CMC, for example, has had a much needed makeover and Web Intelligence has had some really useful enhancements, as well.

It’s not all joy, though. When I said that I’d been working with this version for some time now, I almost added at the expense of my customers, because it’s also still quite buggy (especially 3.0). This in combination with flaky support can be a cause for major headaches. It has definitely strengthened my belief that implementations should not be done in the field until the first Service Pack is out.

I was actually prompted to start typing this up because I was reading the following in one of the notes I’d made on auditing.

The auditing features in XI R3 bring the usage reporting capabilities into parity with the features in BusinessObjects Enterprise 5.x/6.x. This eliminates a significant roadblock for customers of 5.x/6.x to migrate to the XI platform.

Around four years ago XI was introduced as the successor of 6.5 and it has taken all this time to arrive where we started. Things have come full circle since then, but the question I guess, at least in my case, is why has it taken this long?

Rest in peace trusty ESD. I know we had our troubles at times, but being with you sure beats the heck out of being with the SAP MarketPlace. Oh well, I guess everything takes getting used to.