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.

I figured that he was either mistaken, or that, since he works for a company that is in the SEP programme, he was in the know and I wasn’t. It turns out he was in the know and I wasn’t.

For me it doesn’t really make a difference as I already passed the first exam under the old programme and most probably won’t have the time to do the second exam before they are phased out, which means I’ll take the new-style exam somewhere this year. I guess that, just like with the other exams, my advice would be to wait with booking the exam until it can be booked from mid-March onwards, unless you’re in the process of becoming certified, but still one exam short, I would make sure to have booked and sat the exams by the end of April. If you’ve already booked your exam(s), but haven’t taken any yet, I would cancel the exam(s), get a refund and book the new exam as soon as it becomes available.

I’m secretly hoping that exam is also updated with a new set of exam questions, since the product has been updated to Data Services 3.2 recently, but I’m guessing that’s wishful thinking.

• SAP Certified Application Associate – SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.x (exam code C_BOE_30)
• SAP Certified Application Associate – Crystal Reports 2008 (exam code C_BOCR_08)
• SAP Certified Application Associate – BusinessObjects Web Intelligence XI 3.x (exam code C_BOWI_30)

Anyone who has ever spent some time investigating the certification possibilities for Business Objects will notice that, interestingly enough, there doesn’t seem to be a replacement for the Data Integrator certification (nor has the Migration Specialist accreditation been turned into something more substantial, but that was a long shot anyway). According to the blog post the new exams will be available via both Pearson VUE as well as the SAP Education Centres around the world.

I’m wondering, are any of you certified or planning to become certified? I guess my advice would be to wait with booking an exam until the new exams can be booked from mid-March onwards. If you’ve already booked your exam(s), but haven’t taken any yet, I would cancel. However, if you’re in the process of becoming certified, but still one or more exams short, I would make sure to have booked and sat the exams ASAP.

Update: After some people had posted replies, a FAQ was promised, which is now online. Additionally, some more information can be found at the SAP Education pages.

I haven’t had time yet to fully read the document. From what I’ve heard about it, it should add some long awaited features to Web Intelligence, like being able to use the result of one query as a condition on another (query on query). The What’s New document should give more insight into that. Personally I hope that with this service pack we’ll see a more stable product, with 3.0 being quite the opposite and 3.1 a step closer to a production quality product. In my opinion XI 3.0 was rushed to the market, because of the acquisition by SAP. This service pack will give us a good idea what future releases will hold in store in terms of stability and what the impact of SAP’s acquisition is in terms of internal processes like release management. Who knows I might even reconsider advising clients not to upgrade to a new release before a second service pack has been released (never stop dreaming).

I’m guessing that the release of SP2 for XI 3.1 is also good news for organisations and individuals using other products in the SAP BusinessObjects stack, like Crystal Reports and Xcelsius, as their service packs will be released around the same time.

I’m not sure whether the same holds true for other products of the stack, such as Web Intelligence, as well, but I wouldn’t put it past them. The same goes for blog posts, what if I publish a tutorial or something along those lines, will an SAP BusinessObjects sollicitor come knocking on my door? If you’re interested in the subject, do a search on Ken’s site to learn more about the subject.

Disk partition alignment is a powerful tool for improving SQL Server performance. Configuring optimal disk performance is often viewed as much art as science. A best practice that is essential yet often overlooked is disk partition alignment. Windows Server 2008 attempts to align new partitions out-of-the-box, yet disk partition alignment remains a relevant technology for partitions created on prior versions of Windows.

I’d personally never even heard of the term partitioin alignment, but according to Chris Webb it is a must-read. If you’re running SQL Server on Windows 2003 or before, or, rightly pointed out by Chris, running Windows Server 2008 on partitions created by an earlier version of Windows Server, then this paper might prove to be a great way to further tune the performance of SQL Server.