White Paper

BusinessObjects XI

 Redefining How Information Empowers Users

Author: Darren Cunningham
Contributors: Paul Clark, Davythe Dicochea, MaryLouise Meckler, Jennifer Meegan
Audience: CIO, database administrators, report authors, data warehouse managers, business
intelligence managers

Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users

 Contents

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .iv

BusinessObjects XI: An End-to-End Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

Meet the Needs of All Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Performance Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Performance Management Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Universal Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Report Design and Development Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Embedded Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Query and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Extending Analysis and Interactivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Wider Adoption, Better (and Faster) Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

Taking Advantage of Multidimensional Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

The BusinessObjects XI Business Intelligence Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

The Semantic Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Data Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

From Data Sources to Dashboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users iii
 Executive Summary

A typical working day:

 The HR department wants to track turnover by geography and monitor monthly hiring costs

 Line of business managers want to track daily performance and analyze the efficiency of the
supply chain

 Sales managers want to know which regions are offering the most discounts and how that
affects their quota

 Business partners want to know which products are selling the fastest so they can guarantee
deliveries

 Senior executives want to make sure the charts in their PowerPoint presentations don’t result in
meeting meltdowns because nobody agrees on the data provided

Do any of these situations sound familiar? Can you deliver integrated and reliable information—inside
and outside your organization—in a format that all users can understand? And are you able manage
that from a single management console that allows you to support your performance management,
reporting, and query and analysis end-user requirements?

Introducing BusinessObjects™ XI. With BusinessObjects XI, you can go beyond the limits of
traditional business intelligence (BI) suites. By extending the reach of information to all users in
your organization, BusinessObjects XI redefines the way your organization captures and shares
knowledge. Users get the information they need in a way they understand. And best of all,
information is delivered within their current environment, where they work—accurately and
securely.

BusinessObjects XI allows you to track key business metrics in real time; understand which
actions to take based on timely delivery of trusted data; and manage your operations efficiently
and effectively through better visibility and information transparency.

iv Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users

 BusinessObjects XI: An End-to-End Overview

BusinessObjects XI delivers extreme insight through specialized end-user tools on a single, trusted
business intelligence platform. BusinessObjects XI includes the industry’s best performance
management, reporting, and query and analysis products. These integrated end-user interfaces
are supported by the most reliable, scalable, flexible, and manageable BI platform, and
complemented by unified data integration.

BusinessObjects XI delivers extreme insight on a trusted BI platform.

End users have better business visibility with BusinessObjects XI. They can feel confident that
they are achieving their goals on time, and they can easily align individual and group actions
and decisions to the broader organizational strategy. Thanks to a unified view of enterprise
performance, end users can measure what matters most and monitor individual and operational
goals and metrics through intuitive, interactive, and visual displays of information.

BusinessObjects XI allows the IT department to integrate BI into any infrastructure and embed secure
components into virtually any application. With its adaptive, services-oriented architecture, broad data
access, end-to-end metadata, and centralized, web-based administration—BusinessObjects XI is the
best platform to standardize on for all your BI needs and to embed into your existing applications.

Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users 1

 Meet the Needs of All Users

Different user segments have different information needs. The cornerstone of an organizational
BI strategy must address the requirements for operational reporting, the more interactive
requirements of query and analysis, and the summarized view that performance management
dashboards and scorecards provide.

Performance Management Reporting Query and Analysis

• Graphical dashboard design
• Metric trees, analytic templates,
and other graphical display
options
• User and role-based dashboard
Authoring Requirements security
• Access to third-party content
within dashboards
• Offline design environment
• Banded report layout
• Pixel-perfect formatting
• Open developer standards
• Web-based query creation
• Rich semantic layer to mask
database complexity
• Centralized business definitions
and security
• Minimal IT involvement

Role: IT/business analyst, executive, Role: Developer, designer, IT analyst Role: Ad hoc business analyst
line of business manager

• Personalized dashboard and • Web-based client • Web-based client

scorecard interface
• Ability to easily connect goals to
strategy
• Link to root-cause reporting and
analysis
Consumption Requirements • Automated, rules-based alerting
• Embedded business best
practice
• Interactive navigation and search
• Highly-formatted information
• Ability to receive reports via any
application (email, Outlook,
within other software packages)
• Flexible prompting, filtering, and
guided analysis
• Flexible ad hoc interactivity
• Ability to ask spontaneous, and
iterative questions
• Access to historical data for
trending
• Offline analysis option

Information relied upon to drive Information relied upon to run and Information relied upon to
enterprise performance through manage the enterprise. understand how the enterprise is
alignment and visibility. performing.

Dashboard Manager Web Intelligence

BusinessObjects XI Crystal Reports
Performance Manager OLAP Intelligence
End-User Products BusinessObjects Enterprise
Analytic Solutions Desktop Intelligence

As BI becomes more strategic and enterprise in scope, more and more organizations are providing
graphical dashboards and scorecards that consolidate and deliver actionable information critical
to enterprise performance. These include advanced visual components that can be easily
personalized and linked to analytical or operational reports. This ensures that key metrics always
map to underlying measures, and individual goals map to organizational strategy.

Additionally, many BI end users require either highly-formatted reports that answer known and
predefined questions, or interactive reports that allow them to ask spontaneous and iterative
questions. For example, while many users will only need to receive reports, others will need
sophisticated query and analysis capabilities, and some will need both.

These requirements will not only influence how you deliver BI to your different user communities,
they will also influence the information infrastructure that must be in place to support them. With
specific requirements for performance management, production reporting, and ad hoc query and
analysis, your organization needs optimized end-user interfaces for each specification in order to
maximize both IT and end-user productivity.

2 Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users

 Performance Management

In many organizations, BI initiatives have grown organically

Performance management
dashboards and scorecards help
users track and analyze key
metrics and goals via graphical
information displays that are
driven by powerful underlying
analytic engines.
based on tactical and departmental demands. Over time, BI
has gone from a nice-to-have, to a mission-critical application
used to sharpen organizational focus on key metrics and
transform information into a competitive weapon. In order to
make BI strategic, you must move towards a single
standardized platform that delivers a consolidated view of the
business (i.e., one truth). The next step is to introduce
dashboards and scorecards to enhance visibility into
organizational strategy, align actions with that strategy, and
allow your users to track KPIs, assign goals, and collaborate
and share knowledge. BusinessObjects XI delivers these
capabilities through integrated performance management
solutions powered by sophisticated analytic engines.

The performance management dashboards and scorecards in BusinessObjects XI make it possible

for individuals at all levels of the organization to take corrective action sooner and feel confident
that their decisions are based on trusted information. Users, depending on their roles, can also
access underlying reporting and query and analysis capabilities to perform root cause analysis.

Dashboard Manager XI allows

you to manage by exception by
providing users with personalized
views of key metrics and alerts.

BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager XI delivers metrics, alerting, and management capabilities

that help organizations monitor and understand their most critical activities. Analytic content can
be displayed in personalized and secure visual displays that allow users to easily track metrics
over time and identify trends, anomalies, and exceptions.

Dashboard Manager allows you to roll out personalized dashboards that may contain analytics,
metrics, alerts, and reports in order to present a consolidated view of the business without the
need for programming. Dashboard Manager also includes a catalogue of analytic templates and a
code-free, graphical design environment over the web. These features help to accelerate
deployment so users can begin to monitor their priorities a lot sooner.

Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users 3

 BusinessObjects Performance Manager XI helps organizations communicate strategy and manage
group decisions through scorecards and collaborative features. Performance Manager can add
significant capabilities to your dashboard environment. It is certified by the Balance Scorecard
Collaborative and lets you map strategies with cause-and-effect outcomes for a balanced view,
cascade goals throughout the enterprise, and assign accountability for goals achieved.
Performance Manager also lets groups of users have threaded discussions about metrics, and will
even recommend next steps based on goal status. And because Performence Manager allows you
to capture and share best practices when correct actions are taken, the entire organization can
learn what appropriate actions to take in order to improve performance.

Performance Management Applications

BusinessObjects XI delivers focused applications known as analytic solutions designed to meet
specific business requirements. Prepackaged insight and analysis allow users to take immediate
action to address key business issues. Built on the trusted BusinessObjects Enterprise business
intelligence platform, these applications provide built-in best practices, the ability to link analytics
to internal processes, and the flexibility to extend your analytic deployment to fit your unique
requirements.

The BusinessObjects XI includes applications focused on customer profiling and campaign

management, store assortment optimization, sales and marketing effectiveness, trade promotion
spend, vendor performance, brand assortment optimization, and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
With BusinessObjects XI, your organization will benefit from subject matter expertise that is
applied across all analytics and enterprise coverage of your organization’s key functional areas.

BusinessObjects XI delivers
prepackaged analytics and built-in
best practices that help business
users address key organizational
issues and take immediate action.

4 Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users

 Reporting

An operational or enterprise reporting solution is ideal in situations

Reporting (or enterprise
reporting) is the process of
accessing, formatting, and
delivering data as
information inside and
outside the organization. It
serves as the foundation of a
broader BI strategy by
reliably and securely
providing the most-requested
pieces of information via the
web or embedded in
enterprise applications.
500 independent software vendors, and is embedded in leading software from Microsoft, SAP,
Borland, BEA, Oracle/PeopleSoft, and IBM.
where questions are predefined and the structure of each answer is
fairly well known in advance. In this case, the majority of users are
information consumers who want snapshots of business activity.
Developers and designers create reports that answer the most
regularly-asked questions and distribute them to hundreds or
thousands of users. Some examples of these reports include account
statements, invoices, regulatory reports, inventory run rates, and
standard internal reports. This information is ideal for sharing securely
with customers, partners, and suppliers outside the organization.
Universal Integration
Crystal Reports® XI delivers powerful authoring, extensive
distribution, and flexible integration. With billions of Crystal reports
(.rpt files) used in Fortune 1000 companies worldwide, it is the most
proven reporting tool on the market. Crystal Reports helps you
rapidly create flexible, feature-rich reports and integrate them into
web and Windows applications. It allows you to access and format
data, and embed reporting into Java, .NET, and COM applications
using a comprehensive set of software developer kits (SDKs). In fact,
Crystal Reports is already the de facto reporting standard with over

When delivered within the BusinessObjects Enterprise XI business intelligence platform, you can
publish Crystal reports to the web, view them in portals and applications, and manage and
deploy them using a standardized information infrastructure. With BusinessObjects Enterprise XI,
organizations can deploy Crystal Reports on Windows, UNIX, and Linux platforms.

The highly-productive
Crystal Reports XI
design environment
gives you control and
flexibility over how data
is presented and
formatted.

Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users 5

 Report Design and Development Innovation
With Crystal Reports, designers can get the information they need from personal and enterprise
data sources. They have control and flexibility over how data is presented and formatted. And
they can quickly turn it into dynamic information without tedious, time-intensive hand coding.

Crystal Reports XI lets report designers benefit from broader data access, enhancements to the
design environment, and many new features focused on maximizing productivity. Updated XML,
JDBC, DB2, and Microsoft Exchange drivers mean that you are always working with open standards
and benefiting from the latest back-end innovation. Crystal Reports also allows organizations to
leverage their existing investment in the patented Business Objects semantic layer by making the
universe a native data source. This means that report designers can author and distribute highly-
formatted reports based on metadata formerly only available to Business Objects client tools such
as BusinessObjects Web Intelligence™ and BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence.™

The updated rich text format (RTF) exporting features in the Crystal Reports design environment
make it possible for you to modify reports in any standard word processing application. It’s even
easier to create summary or organizational reports with improved hierarchical grouping, while
new automatic chart generation—based on self-selected variables—helps take the guess work out
of creating charts. With these enhancements, report designers can be as productive as possible.
And a new workbench authoring environment helps designers keep projects organized. Designers
can easily preview reports as they are designed and before they are published to the web, with
one simple step. They can also build in new dynamic cascading prompts that allow report
recipients to easily pinpoint the information they need, when they need it.

Embedded Reporting
Crystal Reports XI continues to innovate in the area that it pioneered—embedded reporting.
Thanks to the support for open standards and extensible SDKs, Crystal Reports can fit seamlessly
into virtually any IT infrastructure. With Crystal Reports, report developers save time on testing
because they can now search for broken links, formula errors, and any existing dependency
issues. This means easier report maintenance. The addition of dynamic cascading prompts also
benefits developers because they can create and distribute a single report for personalization by
multiple users. With Crystal Reports Explorer, elements of end-user interactivity can also be
added to reports that are viewed over the web. And we’ve expanded the Crystal Reports
exporting capabilities within the open SDKs, and added new Java reporting components to
provide even better performance and flexibility.

Crystal Reports XI allows you to

build dynamic cascading prompts
for easier report authoring,
distribution, and consumption.

6 Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users

 Query and Analysis

Query and analysis capabilities empower users to autonomously answer questions as they arise.
This ad hoc query capability is ideal for data analysts and other business users who need self-
service information access with moderate-to-high amounts of interactivity. With tools designed
primarily for enterprise reporting, the scope of information delivery and interactivity is typically
based around the scope of data contained within a given report. Query and analysis solutions
expand the scope of analysis and interactivity to the entire data management system. This can
potentially include terabytes of data stored in a centralized data warehouse, data marts, or
multidimensional OLAP cubes.

BusinessObjects XI query and analysis tools enable users to

identify trends and find root causes in data from relational
Query and analysis tools and OLAP data sources. A range of users—from experienced
allow users to answer their analysts to mainstream business users—can easily create
own questions by creating queries and perform calculations without understanding
complex database schemas or SQL. Because these clients share
queries and—iteratively and the single, trusted BusinessObjects Enterprise BI platform,
spontaneously—interacting users can share and even have threaded discussions about this
information with others across the organization, and beyond.
with business information.
Extending Analysis and Interactivity
BusinessObjects Web Intelligence XI enables users to easily create ad hoc queries through a zero-
client, web-based interface. The robust semantic layer lets users drag and drop objects that mask
underlying data complexity by presenting information in business terms. Web Intelligence relies
upon a powerful SQL generation engine that provides a multidimensional perspective of data on
the fly, so users can edit and author reports—as well as slice, dice, and drill into data—to gain
deeper insights. Secure, self-service information access means that powerful querying and
integrated analysis capabilities are available to more than your organization’s traditional power
users or data analysts. With Web Intelligence, ad hoc query creators can define nested query filters
and view the SQL generated behind the scenes.

A Windows-style interface and menu options allow Web Intelligence XI to extend the reach of
interactivity and analysis capabilities to more users. This interactive interface makes it easy to
quickly format and edit. Users can right-click on a report and do simple things like sorting and
filtering, as well as resizing columns, rows, and charts. And deeper analysis is only a click away.
Users can create variables, edit formulas,
create new reports, tables, and charts as well
as change the graphical display of content.
Best of all, you can enable and disable these
features with security commands, allowing
IT to retain control of user rights and
information access.

Web Intelligence XI extends the reach

of interactivity through on-report
analysis and extreme ease of use.

Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users 7

 Wider Adoption, Better (and Faster) Decisions
Web Intelligence XI is built on the BusinessObjects Enterprise BI platform. As a result, both end
users and IT benefit from extreme scalability, fault tolerance and fail over, load balancing, and
mature caching capabilities. Users of both Web Intelligence and Desktop Intelligence documents
can take advantage of the ability to save historical instances of a document, and threaded
discussions between document authors and information consumers. Web Intelligence XI also
gives users increased trust in their data by exposing the metadata upon which the report is based.
On–screen options allow users to look at the information in their reports and understand its
lineage—object definitions (e.g., profit), applied filters and formulas, and production details about
the query and the report. Increased trust means wider end-user adoption. Increased data
transparency and integrity means better
and faster decisions.

Taking Advantage of Multidimensional Data

In order to standardize on a single, trusted BI platform, users must be able to access and interact
directly with both relational and multidimensional data sources. And if your organization has
invested in multidimensional OLAP servers, you probably have a group of users who need to
perform powerful ad hoc analysis. BusinessObjects OLAP Intelligence™ XI is a powerful and easy-
to-use query and analysis tool for today’s leading OLAP servers. It uniquely satisfies the OLAP
analysis requirements of power users as well as traditional business users and management.

Power users can perform speed-of-thought ad hoc OLAP analysis that allows them to
interactively slice and dice, drill, rank, sort, and filter on data, create calculations, and more.
Business users and management can interact with OLAP workbooks over the web using highly
intuitive, summarized graphical views of business activity, guided navigation, and
straightforward data exploration. OLAP Intelligence is integrated with BusinessObjects Enterprise,
providing OLAP drill-through to relational detail and shared security and administration. This
tight platform integration and the ability of OLAP Intelligence to deliver both ad hoc and
managed OLAP analysis make BI standardization possible and ensures that you are getting the
most out of your database investments.

OLAP Intelligence XI
delivers best-of-breed ad
hoc and managed analysis
for today’s leading
multidimensional OLAP
servers.

8 Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users

 The BusinessObjects XI
Business Intelligence Platform

BusinessObjects Enterprise XI is an adaptive, services-based BI platform that supports the

performance management, reporting, and query and analysis end-user interfaces of the
BusinessObjects XI suite. It is a componentized architecture designed for extreme extensibility,
scalability, reliability, fault-tolerance, and 24/7 availability.

BusinessObjects Enterprise allows IT to securely manage and control all users in a BI deployment.
It delivers industry-standard support for security entitlement databases, portal integration
frameworks, and Java and .NET platforms. As the use of BI grows inside and outside your
organization, BusinessObjects Enterprise scales to meet the specific information and interactivity
needs of all users. Multi-server support, fault-tolerance, and intelligent load balancing ensure you
can extend information to all users when and how they need it. This BI platform also delivers
multi-level caching, cross-platform support, and comprehensive system administration,
management, and security.

BusinessObjects Enterprise consists of separate, yet interconnected, tiers optimized for specific
tasks. These tiers include the end-user interaction layer, developer services, platform services, and
data services. End users create, edit, and interact with specialized tools. System administrators
manage and monitor the system through the central management console, central configuration
manager, import wizard, publishing wizard, business views designer, and universe designer.

BI Tools & Content User Interaction Tier

Crystal Reports
Portal & Web Dashboards & Rich Client Microsoft
Web Intelligence Applications Scorecards Applications Office
OLAP Intelligence
Web & Application Services
Desktop Intelligence
Microsoft

Excel .net
J2EE SDK .NET SDK Web Services
Powerpoint BusinessObjects Enterprise XI is
Word Platform Services a reliable and proven BI platform
Adobe Acrobat
that allows you to deliver extreme
Programs Scheduling Publishing Repository Storage Caching &
insight throughout your
Security
& Alerting & Distribution & Retrieval Failover organization.
Hyperlinks
???
Management Tools Business Rules Performance
Auditing Collaboration Question Engine Management
& Metrics Management Engines
Management
Tools
Migration & Data Services
Importing

Metadata Design ODBC, XML &

Metadata OLAP Servers ERP/CRM Data Integration
Native Drivers

BusinessObjects Enterprise also lets you deliver secure, up-to-date business intelligence
information within Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint
presentations. With Live Office, you no longer waste valuable time cutting and pasting formatted
content from one environment to another. And the ability to confidently and securely present
up-to-the-minute information helps you avoid presentation time bombs.

The BusinessObjects Enterprise XI BI platform includes a core set of shared services used across
the product line. Commonly referred to as a services-oriented architecture, this platform has many
advantages including flexibility, scalability with failover and fault tolerance, and extensibility, so
you can add new services without requiring a release of the entire platform. Innovative features,
such as discussion threads, allow for collaborative decision making. Integrated scheduling and
distribution make it easy to deliver information based on events, business calendars, or intervals.

Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users 9

 For IT management and administration, the platform provides a central repository for all content
and user profiles, access to security entitlement databases for user, role, and document security,
metrics management and performance management applications, and portal and dashboard
integration components. BusinessObjects Enterprise also includes other key features such as
robust scheduling and auditing and the ability to save and store historical instances of documents
and reports for financial reporting and compliance purposes.

BusinessObjects Enterprise also provides SDKs for enterprise application developers to build
application and portal integrations on top of the platform. We recognize the need for
comprehensive support of different development environments, so BusinessObjects Enterprise XI
provides .NET, Java, COM, and Web Services SDKs. Integration kits for SAP, PeopleSoft, Baan,
and Siebel deliver custom portal integration, powerful data drivers, and tight integration with
application security. And portal integration kits for IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, SAP, and
Microsoft SharePoint Portal Services help deliver insight in virtually any enterprise information
portal environment.

The Semantic Layer

A core part of the BusinessObjects Enterprise XI platform, the semantic layer is a business
representation of corporate data that helps end users access data autonomously using common
business terms. BusinessObjects Enterprise XI supports Business Objects universes and Business
Views and includes a graphical design interface for each part of the metadata layer.

The patented Business Objects semantic layer is the foundation for empowering end-user query
and analysis. It simplifies the complexity of business data by using common business terms,
rather than data language, to access, manipulate, and organize information. These business terms
are stored as objects in a Business Objects universe. Web Intelligence uses the universe to simplify
the user creation process required for simple to complex end-user query and analysis. All
universe objects and connections are stored and secured in the Central Management Console and
require a BusinessObjects Enterprise user login for access to the universe designer interface.

With BusinessObjects XI, Crystal Reports designers can also author universe-based reports.
Upon presenting a query panel for graphical query generation, Crystal Reports designers can
access universes as a data source, create queries graphically through the query panel interface,
and generate rich SQL that can be highly formatted and delivered throughout the organization.

Business Views simplify the report creation experience and interaction by abstracting the
complexity of data for Crystal Reports developers. Business Views also help separate the data
connections, data access, business elements, and the overall business definition giving report
designers granular rights access control. Business Views not only simplify data access for Crystal
Reports designers and developers, they also provide detailed view-time security.

Each universe is a
partial representation of
a database and is
delivered to users in
business language.

10 Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users

 Data Integration

To ensure that BI users are always working with accurate and trustworthy information,
BusinessObjects XI includes tightly integrated, industrial-strength data integration technology.
Designed to deliver extreme productivity and scalability, BusinessObjects Data Integrator XI
simplifies and accelerates data extraction, transformation, and loading to and from packaged
applications, real-time message queues, mainframe systems, and relational databases.
Prepackaged data warehouse solutions for enterprise applications such as SAP, PeopleSoft,
Siebel, and Oracle help accelerate BI project deployment and reduce total cost of ownership.

Data Integrator extracts data from source systems and transforms it into a BI-ready format.
Once the transformations are complete, the data is loaded into a target database or application,
and accessed by your end users for reporting, querying, and analysis. Data Integrator is the next
generation of extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) technology. It provides real-time and
batch data movement capabilities and native interfaces to the metadata of packaged enterprise
resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain
management (SCM) applications. Data Integrator also provides a highly-productive single
environment for all of your data integration needs. It incorporates data previewing and
profiling capabilities, and easily integrates with market-leading data cleansing tools.

Data Integrator XI enables

organizations to easily explore,
transform, and move data
anywhere at any frequency.

For your IT department, this means that the right data is easily available to users without the
need for custom coding. This results in dramatically accelerated development times, reduced
maintenance costs, and a greater ROI from your existing packaged applications. Data Integrator
also provides native interfaces to enterprise application integration (EAI) tools and extensive
support for other sources such as relational databases, mainframe and legacy systems, and
technologies such as web services and parallel performance architecture.

Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users 11

 Data Integrator provides extensive business metadata imports from ERP and CRM systems.

It can read data dictionaries, import live metadata (including custom tables and other objects),
and graphically represent this data organized by business process. This lets you easily create data
marts and warehouses from transactional data. Data Integrator also extracts data stored in
proprietary formats, such as hierarchies, and provides prebuilt, reusable transforms in a single,
cohesive environment—regardless of source and target. What’s more, the built-in Data Integrator
real-time engine can pass alerts to end-user management dashboards and intelligently broker data
between the ETL process and the end-user interfaces of BusinessObjects XI.

From Data Sources to Dashboards

Because Data Integrator unites data integration with BusinessObjects Enterprise XI, meaning end
users can rely more on the information they access and analyze in their reports. Data Integrator
lets you automatically create the Business Objects universe within its ETL design interface, so you
save significant development time and get the most out of the work already done in the data
warehouse or ETL process. Data Integrator also enables ETL developers to perform net updates
that will pass data lineage, mapping, and other technical metadata to the semantic layer so
underlying source changes do not require you to recreate universes, associated documents,
and reports.

Data Integrator delivers impact analysis reports that allow developers to follow the data lineage
from the ETL process right through to Crystal Reports and Web Intelligence documents. End-to-
end metadata analysis and the ability to automatically create and update BI metadata help to
insulate downstream users and reports from source changes and data reorganization, resulting in
significant productivity gains and enhanced data credibility. Built-in data validation and auditing
features help ensure that developers are always working with credible data.

12 Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users

 Conclusion

BusinessObjects XI delivers information that works the way you do and empowers individuals at
every level of the organization to make better decisions. Now you can turn massive data volumes
into both a company asset and a competitive weapon. Thanks to BusinessObjects XI, organizations
around the world can increase their insight, agility, and enterprise performance.

 With the industry’s best reporting solution, the HR director receives detailed daily
information that allows him to monitor hiring costs and track turnover by geography
 Sales managers can perform discount analysis over time by using market-leading query and
analysis technology to see which regions are discounting the most and understand how that
affects the bottom line
 Line of business managers are able to monitor sophisticated dashboards that allow them to
track their KPIs, understand production cycles, and manage seasonal change based on better
control over all parts of the supply chain
 The IT department can deliver secure, trustworthy, integrated, and accurate data inside and
outside the organization
 With the help of BusinessObjects XI, your organization achieves compliance and the
CFO is happy
 The CEO receives a weekly PowerPoint via the corporate portal showing the financial data
that she securely accesses and refreshes in real time

BusinessObjects XI redefines the way information empowers users and delivers extreme insight
through a single, trusted business intelligence platform. With BusinessObjects XI, you can become
a high-performance organization.

Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users 13

14 Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users
Business Objects • BusinessObjects XI: Redefining How Information Empowers Users 15
 Printed in the United States – September 2005 (Author: D. Cunningham, Cntributors: P. Clark, D. Dichochea, M. Meckler, J. Meegan) - WP2092-D

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