FLASHPOINT---January 4,
2002
Copyright 2002. The Data
Warehousing Institute. All rights reserved.
By Cindi Howson
Independent Consultant
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SUMMARY: Business Objects, a market leader for reporting and
analysis against relational ERPs and data warehouses, improves its Web-based
access to OLAP sources. Business Objects has provided access from its full
desktop client to OLAP vendors Essbase, Microsoft, SAP BW, and IBM DB2 OLAP
Server for several years now. However, the full client access did not leverage
the full power of Business Objects or the OLAP tools. The next thin-client,
WebIntelligence (WEBI), is due to be released in Q1 2002 and dramatically
improves the functionality and performance of access to OLAP sources.
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* COMPANY BACKGROUND
Business Objects first
entered the Business Analytics market with its patented semantic layer in 1990.
At the time, it was the first product on the market to shield users from the
complexities of SQL, joins, and technical field names. Over the years, it has
increased its functionality, adding desktop OLAP functionality in 1996 and Web
access in 1997. Its two most note-worthy acquisitions have been AnswerSets in
1998, providing set-based analysis for marketing applications, and OLAP@Work in
2000, providing advanced access and analysis to MS Analysis Services and OLE DB
for OLAP. The OLAP@Work acquisition has brought many of the OLAP enhancements
in this latest release.
In July 2001, the company
launched Business Objects Application Foundation. While some vendors such as
Cognos and Hyperion are creating specific analytic applications, Business
Objects provides a development tool and set of templates to allow customers to
rapidly build their own analytic applications. All use the underlying Business
Objects reporting and analysis technology.
Business Objects revenues
remain strong. Total revenues for the first three quarters (September 30, 2001)
were $298 million, a 23 percent increase for the same period in FY 2000. Their
licensing revenues increased a modest 3 percent for Q3 2001 versus Q3 2000.
Even though this is a modest gain in licensing fees, it's dramatic compared to
Cognos' 18 percent decline in licensing revenues and Brio's decline of 33 percent
for the same time period.
Illustrating the increased
demand for e-business intelligence, the company's extranet revenues increased
76 percent versus prior year. Given the growth in this area, it's not
surprising that the company's first priority was to improve OLAP access in the
thin client. With the OLAP@Work acquisition, full client access to SAP BW and
Microsoft Analysis Services has improved but the full client Essbase and DB2
OLAP access have remained unchanged.
* THE QUEST FOR ONE BI
TOOL
Normally, if a company has
both relational and OLAP data sources, the customer also has at least two
business analytics tools. For example, a company might use Hyperion Analyzer to
access Hyperion Essbase, a multidimensional database, and Business Objects to access
an Oracle 8 relational data warehouse. Users must learn two completely separate
tools.
As companies strive to
empower users and business partners with access to any data, anywhere, having
one business intelligence tool can reduce the learning curve and allow more
time for analysis. With the latest release of WebIntelligence, Business Objects
has taken one step closer to providing customers with one standard business
intelligence tool.
OLAP users currently have
three choices for accessing multidimensional data with Business Objects:
- Full client Business
Objects
- WebIntelligence (WEBI)
browser access and InfoView (Business Object's Web portal)
- Spreadsheet access via
BusinessQuery MD, for MS Analysis Services clients only
* FULL CLIENT---SOME
LIMITATIONS
Business Objects has
provided full client access to the Essbase multidimensional database since late
1996, and with the acquisition of OLAP@Work in April 2000, made improvements to
MS OLAP access and SAP BW access. OLAP@Work also brought its ODBO support,
providing access to WhiteLight as another OLAP data source.
With the full client access,
the approach is to provide OLAP users with a simple panel to view, filter,
drill, rank, and sort data stored in the OLAP server. Historically, all OLAP
sources displayed a basic grid of the data and did multiple data fetches when
users drilled down on a cell. However late last year, Business Objects changed
the work flow for MS Analysis Service and BW Connect only. These full client
users now only see the meta data or cube structures; the access panel displays
no data, similar to the traditional Business Objects query panel. Therefore,
Essbase and DB2 OLAP users can drill in the grid, but MS Analysis Services, SAP
BW and White Light users cannot. In this respect, Business Objects
underutilizes the analytic power of certain OLAP data sources.
Once users are done
selecting data from the OLAP database, users then create formatted reports and
charts. The data is essentially pulled back to the desktop and stored in the
traditional micro cube that Business Objects uses for relational data. If the
user has done a sufficient level of filtering and drilling (for Essbase and DB2
OLAP) in the access panel, then only a limited amount of data is brought down
to the client. However, because the Essbase/DB2 OLAP access panel is
unformatted---i.e., there are no graphs or cross tabs---some users may bring
back too much data, as color-coding and graphs on the client encourages more
analysis on the client. Similarly, MS Analysis Services, SAP BW, and White
Light users who cannot drill in the access panel may try to re-create the drill
functionality on the client and bring back too much data. Brio's desktop and
Web clients work in a similar fashion.
This architecture can give
the appearance of slow performance, unless users can re-learn where best to
drill and/or to use Business Objects as a reporting tool with only limited
analysis.
Customers used to accessing
Essbase with Analyzer or accessing MS Analysis Services with ProClarity or even
Excel 2000 may find this access-then-report-then-analyze approach unacceptable.
Otherwise, the approach is less problematic for users who really are looking
for Business Objects to do report scheduling, formatting, or simple calculations.
One benefit to this approach
is that notebook users can take the results of their analysis with them in an
offline report; they do not need remote access to the OLAP server. It also
works well for scheduling very large fixed reports.
* WEBI---ROBUST OLAP
ACCESS
WEBI WebIntelligence was
first launched in 1997 and InfoView in 2000. InfoView is Business Objects
portal solution that allows customers to access reports in one central location
from a browser. WebIntelligence is the company's thin-client solution for
providing interactive analysis and report creation via a browser.
Users have been able to
access and refresh OLAP reports in InfoView since 2000, however, initially
these reports had to have been created from the full client. Earlier this year,
Business Objects enabled report creation and drill down capability from within
Web Intelligence.
The latest version expands
the functionality, allowing users to mix tables and charts and drill within
each. Unlike the full-client, WEBI users drill within nicely formatted
cross-tabs and charts and directly against the OLAP server, minimizing network
traffic and improving performance, as WEBI leverages the power of the OLAP
server. WEBI also includes a powerful feature called nested rankings that
allows a user to select, for example, sales of the top 5 products to its top 10
customers. The original access panel has been significantly improved and looks
more like the traditional Business Objects screen, making it easier to navigate
and select dimensions and measures. The WEBI version also adds some useful
selection options, such as lowest level members. Users can swap dimensions via
drag and drop.
Business Objects has also
tightened the integration between Essbase and Business Objects. For example,
Essbase introduced true attribute analysis in version 6 in 2000. Attributes
provide additional information about base members, for example, the color or
size of a product. In some Essbase front ends, the attribute dimensions look
like any other dimensions, making the number of dimensions appear overwhelming
to a casual user. Business Objects color-codes dimension types to differentiate
between attributes (green diamond) and base dimensions (blue squares). This
color-coding is similar for relational Business Objects universes and Essbase
cubes. This kind of consistency will reduce the learning curve for users who
need to access data from different data sources. As MS Analysis Services
creates virtual dimensions that are not easily identifiable as attributes, this
same consistency is not available.
The WebIntelligence drill
through, another new functionality, is fantastic. Business Objects provides a
feature in Designer that allows an administrator to link common objects from a
relational universe to those in the OLAP outline. For example, if Product were
in the Essbase outline as well as in the relational universe, one would use
Designer to link these two objects. If a user is analyzing summary sales in the
Essbase cube and would like to see detailed sales orders for a particular
product, time, and geography, WebIntelligence will present the user with a list
of pre-formatted reports. The report already knows which information the user
was viewing in Essbase and passes these as conditions into the SQL statement.
This is a far superior approach than some other solutions that just present the
user with an unformatted "dump" of all the details from the
underlying relational table.
Two main limitations within
WebIntelligence are the inability to create custom calculations and write-back.
For this functionality, there is Business Query MD, which only supports MS
Analysis Services.
* SPREADSHEET ACCESS
LIMITED TO MS ANALYSIS SERVICES
Business Query MD is a
spreadsheet add-in with a host of features that hopefully Business Objects will
provide for other OLAP sources. Business Query MD is the re-branded product
from the OLAP@Work acquisition. OLAP@Work focused exclusively on access to MS
OLAP and provides superior functionality to Microsoft's own Excel 2000 Pivot
Table Service (PTS). It has a number of strong features including pre-built
market basket and what-if analysis. It also allows one to mix charts and tables
on the same page and drill within each, which Excel 2000 PTS does not.
* CONCLUSION
The latest version of WebIntelligence
offers some significant improvements for OLAP access via a browser. For
companies looking to standardize on one Web-based BI tool to access a myriad of
data sources, WebIntelligence is a compelling front end with greater breadth of
data sources, functionality, and thinner client architecture than its
competitors.
The full client product is
not as strong in terms of graphical, interactive analysis against the OLAP data
sources, in which case, companies with single OLAP data sources may still be
better off with optimized tools such as Hyperion Analyzer (for accessing
Essbase or DB2 OLAP) or ProClarity (for accessing MS Analysis Services). SAP BW
Explorer is a weaker front end so Business Objects full or thin client will be
a welcome addition to an SAP BW implementation. For OLAP users, who truly need
reporting (and less analysis), Business Objects full and thin clients are
excellent solutions.
Cindi Howson is an
independent consultant and has worked with Business Objects software since
1994. She can be reached at cindihowson@askcindi.com.
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