InfoBurst

Technical Overview

InfoSol

InfoBurst Technical Overview

Introduction................................................................................................................................... 3 Documents and Platforms supported .......................................................................................... 4 The Burst .................................................................................................................................. 5 Summary of Key Features .......................................................................................................... 6 Example of the Burst approach ................................................................................................ 8 Operational Control .................................................................................................................... 9 System Architecture.................................................................................................................... 10 Pre-requisite Software ................................................................................................................ 11 Supported Operating Systems................................................................................................... 11 Essential system components.................................................................................................... 11 Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1............................................................................................ 11 Microsoft MDAC 2.6 or later ............................................................................................... 11 Microsoft IIS Web Server..................................................................................................... 11 InfoBurst Repository................................................................................................................. 12 Business Intelligence Software ................................................................................................. 13 BusinessObjects Full Client 5.x, 6.x or Desktop Intelligence .............................................. 13 BusinessObjects WebI 6.x .................................................................................................... 13 BusinessObjects XIR1 or XIR2 ............................................................................................ 13 Crystal Reports 9, 10 or XI ................................................................................................... 13 Office Software......................................................................................................................... 14 Microsoft Office Excel ......................................................................................................... 14 Compatibility Issues.................................................................................................................... 15 Security Issues ............................................................................................................................. 16 Software Licensing...................................................................................................................... 17 Hardware Recommendations .................................................................................................... 18 System Diagrams......................................................................................................................... 19 Catalog Management ................................................................................................................ 19 Burst Management, Schedule Management, Runtime Environment........................................ 20 Document Distribution (Delivery Mechanism) ........................................................................ 21 Document Distribution (Report Format, Email Notification, Burst Options) .......................... 22 Report Bursting......................................................................................................................... 23

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InfoBurst Technical Overview

Introduction
InfoBurst is a powerful and flexible report distribution and publishing solution that delivers business critical information to the right people, in the right format at the right time. InfoBurst supports a wide variety of document types and platforms and offers unrivaled functionality and flexibility to be able to handle everything from a simple report distribution task right up to a complex multi-document report bursting scenario. Since its introduction in 2002, InfoBurst has evolved into the most capable product of its kind and provides a clean and consistent approach to report distribution and bursting while hiding the complexities of the underlying document type or platform. For example, if you currently use BusinessObjects 5.x or 6.x and are planning to migrate to an XIR2 platform you will find that the way that InfoBurst handles your report distribution challenges will be the same, in that the workflow and the way that bursts are defined and executed are consistent even though the 5.x/6.x and XIR2 environments are totally different. In addition to supporting the traditional Business Intelligence documents such as BusinessObjects FullClient, Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports and Microsoft Reporting Services, InfoBurst also has full support for Crystal Xcelsius dashboards and can provide innovative solutions for both distributing these dashboards and also managing and providing dynamic data that can be extracted from either a BI report or even the underlying database.

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InfoBurst Technical Overview

Documents and Platforms supported

What sets InfoBurst apart from other solutions is that it supports a wide variety of different documents and platforms in a single, consistent interface that offers the ultimate in terms of power, flexibility and control. InfoBurst supports the following document types and platforms: BusinessObjects 5.x Full Client BusinessObjects 6.x Full Client BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence Full Client BusinessObjects WebI 6.x Crystal Reports 9, 10 and XI Client Crystal Reports XI (XIR1 Platform) Crystal Reports XI (XIR2 Platform) BusinessObjects WebI (XIR1 Platform) BusinessObjects WebI (XIR2 Platform) BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence (XIR2 Platform) Microsoft Reporting Services v1 Crystal Xcelsius (.swf)

The following static document formats are also supported: PDF Word Excel Text PowerPoint SWF (Flash or Swish) Zip

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InfoBurst Technical Overview

The Burst
InfoBurst is unique in its approach to report distribution; it uses a concept called a Burst to group together documents of any type rather than just work on a single document. This greatly reduces the number of objects that need to be created and managed and is very useful to consolidate information. For example, email recipients within a burst will receive only one email, but depending on the distribution conditions they could receive multiple file attachments or notifications that include a direct link to the report. Each document in a burst can have multiple delivery options, each of which offers a comprehensive choice of format and destination. The available destinations are: Network Share Email Attachment Email in-line (embedded content with images) FTP Secure FTP WebDAV share (web folders) InfoBurst Server BusinessObjects repository (5.x and 6.x) XIR1 platform (instance or new object in a folder) XIR2 platform (new object in a folder)

The available formats are: Native PDF Excel HTML Text (Plain, CSV) XML

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InfoBurst Technical Overview

Summary of Key Features

There are so many features and functions in the product that are not obvious at first glance so here is a list of some of the most used and more important features that you should be aware of. Powerful report bursting options (single and multi-pass or both) Mix and match any document type (BusObj,Crystal,Microsoft) in a burst Enterprise Document Providers (EDP) allow for multiple connections for a single type, so you could define both a test and production XIR2 platform Templates can be defined for any distribution to avoid re-tying each time Date prompts for a document can be supplied using macros with any format string and date calculations are supported (if you need yesterday or last day of month) Multi-pass bursting can be easily setup for any document by using an IPL or EPL to drive the refresh (IPL=Internal Parameter List, EPL=External Parameter List) Email distribution to a dynamic list of recipients can be done using an EDL (External Distribution List) which can be a file or a dynamic query EPL/EDL can be a dynamic database query against virtually any database Email using HTML format converts the report and any graphics to in-line format meaning no attachments You can configure a backup Email server and InfoBurst will switch to this if it fails to connect to the primary server Zip compression can be used for Email attachments either each file or all files delivered as part of the burst Zip compression can use a password and optional data encryption to secure the contents When distributing to a network share, FTP site or WebDav share, InfoBurst will automatically create any sub-folders as needed Distribution macros can be used to fully control the directory and/or file-name generated (e.g. store file on \\rptserver\Daily\[=State]\Sales for [=City].pdf will take the current values for State and City and create a new sub-folder for each state and create a PDF with a name that includes the city). You can run your own script using Network distribution if you wish to perform a specific action such as onward publish to your own portal system (InfoBurst will deliver the file to the network and invoke your command-line) Report-tab selection is available for BusObj/WebI documents allowing you to only deliver certain tabs (you can even send one tab as PDF and the other in Excel if you wanted to). Email notification allows you to publish a file to a central location such as a network share and send an email with a link to the file When scheduling a burst (or multiple bursts) you can use Events (one or more) to wait for an external dependency to be true (such as when the datamart has loaded). Events can be database queries, files or Boolean triggers. If you want to be informed if a burst aborts, you can setup automatic burst abort emails for all bursts or just selected high-priority bursts

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InfoBurst Technical Overview

InfoBurst can deliver data to an Xcelsius dashboard using either a BI document or a series of database queries as the data source. The data can be arranged into various formats such as a crosstab and the resulting XML data is cached on the InfoBurst server for quick access InfoBurst can distribute Xcelsius dashboards using email and embed the dashboard into the message InfoBurst can create an off-line Dashboard Package for dashboards that use dynamic XML data to allow for off-line viewing (you do not need access to the server) When bursting a Desktop Intelligence report, InfoBurst will use both the XIR2 server and also the local InfoBurst server to maximize the throughput You can create your own macros using System->UserFunctions if you need to re-use a common macro, for example you could create a macro called YESTERDAY that returns the date for yesterday in a certain format. You can use user functions everywhere you can use macros (prompt values, distribution etc) If you want to customize an Excel output, you can catalog a workbook with InfoBurst and use it as a base and optionally run a macro to perform any specific tasks before the file is distributed When performing a bursting operation using email distribution, any EDL (External Distribution List) query will automatically be supplied with the current bursting values, so you if you were bursting by State (AZ,CA..) you could easily retrieve all sales managers email addresses where State=? and InfoBurst will supply AZ for the first cycle then CA etc. FTP can be normal, secure using SFTP or secure using S/Shell options You can deliver documents back to the InfoBurst server and control the number of versions to keep. Users can view the documents by logging into InfoBurst (this is a good option if you dont have InfoView) It is possible to ignore a distribution if there was no data after a refresh For BusinessObjects FullClient documents you can select which data providers to refresh For BusinessObjects FullClient documents it is possible to extract data elements while bursting (e.g. burst on customer, store by zipcode) Using the AtEnd option for a schedule you can set a trigger that another schedule is waiting for (this allows for ScheduleA to run first, then run ScheduleB) System overview and Document usage dashboards are available as an option to show you the system burst/document throughput and most used documents

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InfoBurst Technical Overview

Example of the Burst approach

A burst can be as simple as a single document with a single distribution or it can be as complex as you like. There are no restrictions on how many documents you can add to a single burst, or any restriction on the mix of document types. If you have a BI deployment that consists of a mixture of document types (e.g. BusinessObjects FullClient/DeskI and Web Intelligence) or Crystal and Microsoft Reporting Services you can freely add any combination that you like to a burst. A burst can be changed at any time; you can add or remove documents, edit existing distributions or add new ones as needed. Documents within a burst can be disabled if you need to skip them at any time and individual distributions can also be disabled. These features help when testing and can be useful in production also if you need to re-run a burst in the event of a failure. When you create a burst, you will most often be driven by what you are trying to achieve and these real world scenarios are what InfoBurst does best. To help get the basic idea of a Burst, lets consider this simple requirement: A BusinessObjects full-client document with a date prompt needs to be refreshed and delivered to a number of external Sales Managers via email, and a group of internal financial analysts also need the information but they prefer Excel format. With InfoBurst, we can create a burst and select the document from the catalog and for the parameter we can use some InfoBurst date macros to fill in the date in the correct format (for example, if we wanted yesterdays date in YYYY-MM-DD format we could use the syntax [TODAY-1,YYYY-MM-DD]. For the distribution, you can create one to handle the email, using either PDF format if they prefer an attachment or HTML if they just want to view the report as easily as possible (and this can render on some capable PDA devices also) and a second distribution for the same document using Excel format and publish to an internal network share (if you wanted, you could add an email notification to inform them the report is available and provide a link to the file). As your requirements change, you could easily edit the burst and add a second or third document and add the distributions as needed. When using email distribution, InfoBurst will always group together attachments and notifications per recipient so that where possible one email is sent to each person rather than a flood of emails each with a single message or attachment. By default InfoBurst will allow up to 5mb of attachments per message and this value can be changed to suit your email server limits.

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InfoBurst Technical Overview

Operational Control
InfoBurst excels at Enterprise report distribution, meaning that reports are scheduled to be delivered to a wide variety of recipients and destinations, typically overnight and often these schedules are coordinated with external events (such as when the datamart has been loaded). For large and complex reports, true report bursting is often used to break a report by some key data element (such as customer or state). As you requirements grow, so does the number of reports that you will process, and the number of people that will rely on getting their reports in a timely fashion. If there is a failure to deliver this information for any reason (database error, network issue etc) it is critical for the administrators of InfoBurst to be able to troubleshoot, re-run bursts and find out what has happened. InfoBurst has very complete operational auditing and logging so that you always know what is scheduled, what is running and what has previously run. There are three main logs that can be viewed on-line: 1. Burst activity logs 2. System usage audit logs 3. Document delivery logs For every burst that runs, an Activity Log is created that records a detailed step by step account of what the burst did, for example connect to BusinessObjects, open a document, supply a parameter, refresh the data, save in PDF. Each step has a status and the burst as a whole has a status, so in the event of a failure it is possible to filter the display to show only those bursts that have aborted and then to see each step of the burst. Any aborts can be automatically emailed to a support group who will receive a copy of the detailed activity log. As users log-on and perform tasks such as creating or editing bursts and schedules, the Audit Log records each action so that an Administrator can review who did what and when. For each separate delivery (Network share, FTP, Email etc) InfoBurst creates an entry in the Delivery Log and records information such as date, time, size of file, format and location. The administrator can search the delivery logs by either document or by location to verify that the report was delivered (for example, a search by email recipient on a particular date can confirm that a report was emailed).

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InfoBurst Technical Overview

System Architecture
InfoBurst is designed to be a solution that can be deployed on a single server for a standard sized Customer, or deployed across a whole enterprise consisting of one or more InfoBurst servers. The benefit of deploying multiple servers will be visible to those Customers who require a high throughput of report processing and are reaching the capacity available on a single server.

InfoBurst is a web based application developed in Microsoft .NET. InfoBurst stores information using its own repository. This can be created under SQL Server or Oracle. Users and Administrators access the system using the Microsoft web browser Internet Explorer. Installed software consists of a core set of components that comprises a windows service called IBSERVER (the cataloging and scheduling service) that is the control component of the product, IBRUN the execution program and a set of supporting Utilities for use by an Administrator. The User Interface is provided by a web application that installs and runs under IIS. A typical InfoBurst installation consists of one Primary server and optionally, one or more secondary servers. Each server supports concurrent instances of IBRUN, this number being configurable by the Administrator. InfoBurst communicates with Business Objects, Crystal or Microsoft Reporting Services using a series of document handlers that are loaded as needed by the runtime engine. Each handler will use the published API for the document type/platform to establish a session, open and process the document etc.

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InfoBurst Technical Overview

Pre-requisite Software
InfoBurst is designed for installation on a Microsoft server platform. Full details on all pre-requisite software can be found in the InfoBurst Installation & Configuration Guide.

Supported Operating Systems

Windows 2000 Server Windows 2003 Server Windows XP (testing, not suitable for production)

We recommend that the latest Service Packs, updates and security patches are applied.

Essential system components

An InfoBurst Server will require essential supporting software to be installed: Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 InfoBurst is developed in .NET it requires the .NET framework The latest version is v1.1.4322 Microsoft MDAC 2.6 or later This includes the SQL Server OLEDB drivers required by the DBSETUP utility. The current version of MDAC is 2.8 Microsoft IIS Web Server Required to host the InfoBurst Website Version 5.1 for XP and Win2000 Version 6.0 for Win2003 (Note: IIS 6.0 requires some additional configuration to ensure that ASPX.NET web pages are enabled)

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InfoBurst Repository
The following are supported for the InfoBurst repository SQL Server 2000 or 2003 Oracle 8+ MySQL 5+

For SQL Server there are no additional steps that need to be taken as InfoBurst ships will all required drivers to connect. For MySQL, it is recommended that you ensure the MAX_ALLOWED_PACKET variable is set to a value greater than the default of 1MB. Edit the MY.INI file in the MySQL folder and add the following entry: [mySQLd] Max_allowed_packet=50M For Oracle, InfoBurst supports both OleDB and ODP.Net drivers and therefore you need to decide which one you would prefer to use. We recommend the ODP.Net driver from Oracle as it is better suited to a .Net application. InfoBurst has been tested using the 9.2.0.4 version of the OleDB driver and the 10.1.0.4 version of the ODP.Net driver.

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Business Intelligence Software

If you wish to process BusinessObjects or Crystal reports documents on the InfoBurst server you will need to install and configure the appropriate client software. To allow InfoBurst to connect and process documents on an external server platform such as WebI or XI, you will need to install the client software. BusinessObjects Full Client 5.x, 6.x or Desktop Intelligence Install the full client of BusinessObjects on the InfoBurst server. In addition, InfoBurst must have access to the security key file produced by the BusinessObjects administration setup procedure for versions 5.x and 6.x. . This file is known as the BOMAIN key file, and InfoBurst uses this to determine the names of the Universe and Document domains. BusinessObjects WebI 6.x To connect to a WebI node, you can either configure the InfoBurst server to be a WebI client node using the BusinessObjects Configuration utility or install the InfoBurst WebI interface server direct on the WebI primary node. Refer to the Installation & Configuration guide for full details. BusinessObjects XIR1 or XIR2 To connect to an XI platform, a client install is required to install the required SDK software onto the InfoBurst server so that InfoBurst can establish a session with a remote CMS. Crystal Reports 9, 10 or XI InfoBurst supports the use of Crystal 9, Crystal 10 and Crystal XI documents. For Crystal Reports 9 Users, you will need to install the redistribution package for Crystal Reports 9 and .NET on the InfoBurst Server. For Crystal Reports 10 Users, you will need to install the .NET components from the Crystal Reports Installation CD. For Crystal XI, you should install the developer edition onto the InfoBurst Server.

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Office Software
InfoBurst is often used to create and distribute Excel documents and can optionally customize Excel workbooks before distribution. For BusinessObjects 5.x, a local Excel instance is required. For BusinessObjects 6.x and Desktop Intelligence installing a local Excel instance is optional but is required if you wish to customize the workbook.

Microsoft Office Excel InfoBurst supports the following versions of Excel: Excel 2000 Excel XP Excel 2003

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Compatibility Issues
InfoBurst can be installed alongside most other server software with the exception of BusinessObjects Manager BOMgr for the reasons explained later in this section. Configurable Installation options The InfoBurst Service IBSERVER can be configured to operate on an alternate port number than the default 7620. The InfoBurst Service WEBISERVER can be configured to operate on an alternate port number than the default 7621 (see WebI Support section for more details on this) The InfoBurst website will automatically install under the IIS root folder whichever drive that may be on, and can be configured to operate on an alternate port number than the default 80. In this way, it should be able to co-exist with other web applications. During software installation, you can choose to install InfoBurst on a drive or path that differs from the default C:\Program Files\InfoSol\InfoBurst by selecting Custom Install. You can choose to install the InfoBurst Website on a different server to InfoBurst BusinessObjects Manager BOMgr BusinessObjects Customers may be running Broadcast Agent (BCA) and this relies on another program, BusinessObjects Manager (BOMgr) to establish and control a pool of full-client instances, seen as busobj.exe from the task manager. This is also true of Web Intelligence (WebI Server) when it is used to manage full-client documents. When BOMgr starts up, it can be configured to start up a number of these instances, and will dynamically control the number of these instances between a minimum and a maximum number depending on the workload. It is NOT RECOMMENDED to install and operate InfoBurst on the same server as BOMgr for the following reasons: 1. InfoBurst dynamically creates instances of busobj.exe in order to process and refresh BusinessObjects documents. BOMgr is known to detect these instances, and does not differentiate these from its own pool of instances. It may latch on to these detected instances and use them for its own clients, and also destroy them. This conflicts with InfoBurst, and will cause bursts to abort with a variety of error messages. 2. Using InfoBurst with BusinessObjects 6.n full-client software may require Component Services DCOM (Distributed COM) configuration settings to be changed on the InfoBurst server in order for InfoBurst to have permission to launch busobj.exe. These sometimes conflict with the same configuration settings that are required for WebI to manage full-client documents. Please note that the above conflict is only relevant where BusinessObjects is being used to access full-client documents. If WebI Server is installed to access WID documents, then InfoBurst will operate on the same server with no issues.

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Security Issues
Website Security InfoBurst includes its own security to control who accesses the website and what access rights they have. A User of InfoBurst is typically an Administrator who has full access rights, a Power User who has specific rights to control document cataloging and burst creation etc, or a normal User who is able to view reports. BusinessObjects / Execution Security InfoBurst (IBSERVER and IBRUN) create instances of the full BusinessObjects client software through the API that ships with the product. The Windows User that is used to start the process is controlled by the Service Login As property of the InfoBurst Cataloging and Scheduling service. The default for this is set to Local Administrator. It is recommended that you review and change this User to a specific domain User for the following reasons: If you wish to generate distributed documents and store them on the Network, then you need to choose a User who has rights to create sub-folders and create files on the Network. This User must also have local administrator rights to the InfoBurst server. Note: Access to specific Network shares is supported within InfoBurst by the inclusion of the network login USER and PASSWORD form input fields associated with a specific distribution. If you wish InfoBurst to be associated with a specific Windows User for security / event logging purposes, then you should setup a named User (INFOBURST?) who is a local administrator on the InfoBurst server and also has the necessary rights to access the Network if required. In addition, for users of BusinessObjects 6, it may be necessary to review and modify the settings for DCOM (BusinessObjects Application) in order to grant the necessary privileges to allow InfoBurst to spawn an instance of BusinessObjects full-client through the API. BusinessObjects Document access security Each User setup within InfoBurst is associated with its own User profile. In here, each User can specify its own BusinessObjects Login Name and Password that is used when a document is cataloged or refreshed. In addition, a specific BusinessObjects login name and password can be used when a report burst is executed.

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Software Licensing
InfoBurst requires a separate license for each server on which it is deployed. A License Management tool is provided and available from the program menu to install a license file provided by InfoSol. Demo / Evaluation If no license is installed, the software will operate for a period of 30 days to enable Customer evaluation. This evaluation period will only be extended upon special request.

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Hardware Recommendations
Experience has shown that InfoBurst performance benefits from three things: 1. A suitably fast CPU to manage the processor-hungry requirements of BusinessObjects document refreshes 2. An adequate amount of system memory to overcome the need for memory swapping 3. A fast connection to the database accessing the InfoBurst repository, the BusinessObjects repository, and the data providers used during document refresh. Accessing data across a slow WAN network connection is notably slower than accessing data on a database server that is situated close to the InfoBurst server. This is a recommended hardware set up, and one that we use in our test environment. Intel Xeon (dual processor) CPU 3.00GHz 2.00 GB of RAM (say) 30 GB hard disk (disk space requirements depend on where you store your InfoBurst repository, whether you generate Web Server reports and the frequency with which you run the InfoBurst housekeeping utility. Typically, the InfoBurst repository will not exceed 1GB) Alternately, you can operate effectively using Intel Pentium 4 2.00GHz 1.00 GB of RAM We do not recommend running InfoBurst on anything less than Pentium 4 (e.g. Intel Celeron) and anything with less than 1.00 GB of RAM. Multi_Server InfoBurst deployment This is the recommended solution for Customers who are running the maximum number of BusinessObjects instances on a single server at certain times in their production cycle. Adding a second InfoBurst server (and assuming there are sufficient BusinessObjects licenses) you are able to double the throughput by sharing burst execution across the two servers.

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System Diagrams
Catalog Management

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InfoBurst Technical Overview

Burst Management, Schedule Management, Runtime Environment

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Document Distribution (Delivery Mechanism)

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InfoBurst Technical Overview

Document Distribution (Report Format, Email Notification, Burst Options)

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Report Bursting

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