1. WebFOCUS Release 8 Overview
Douglas Slagowitz
Technical Account Manager

2. Agenda Infrastructure/Repository Security Model BI Portal
Tools Consolidation
Tools Update
Soon to be Release features
Migration from 77 release
Topics will be covering include
Infrastructure and repository changes
The BI Portal
The New WF 8 Security Model
Tools Consolidation in WF 8
Tool Updates in WF 8
Soon to be Released New Features
And Migrating from WF 77 to WF 8

3. WebFOCUS 8
New Repository

4. New Repository File-based repository to RDBMS
WebFOCUS 8 - Web/Presentation Tier
Previous Releases - Web/Presentation Tier
Optional
Web Server
Optional
Web Server
Mandatory
Application Server
Mandatory
Application Server
WebFOCUS Client
WebFOCUS 8 Client
BID IA MR RC
BID IA MR RC
BI Portal
UOA
Security
Comparing the WebFOCUS 7.7x (and prior) architecture with the WebFOCUS 8.X architecture, your first glance will notice some immediate changes:
WebFOCUS 8 has added two major features to the product:
The BI Portal
The UOA Security (Universal Object Access) layer
The expansion of the RDBMS Repository to encompass all of WebFOCUS, excluding the legacy Business Intelligence Dashboard.
RDBMS
Repository
RDBMS
Repository
File based
repository
File based
repository

5. New Repository RDBMS Based Repository
Files stored in RDBMS repository includes:
UOA security authorization resources.
Managed Reporting content.
BI Portal & IA content.
ReportCaster content such as schedules, distribution and access lists, configuration files.
Report Library report output.
Customers can leverage:
Standard database backup and logging procedures.
General database network and security access.
Database clusters to provide redundancy, failover and distribute database workload.
WebFOCUS Client
BID IA MR RC
BI Portal
UOA
Security
File based
repository
RDBMS
Repository
In addition to the ReportCaster and ReportLibrary content we’ve always stored in the RDBMS repository, we’re now storing:
The new security model
Managed Reporting Content
BI Portal and InfoAssist content
So why have we moved to a greater user of an RDBMS repository? It provides greater control for logging, auditing, security, load balancing/clustering, backup, disaster recovery… etc.

6. WebFOCUS 8
New Security Model

7. New Security Model
Objective: Provide a robust security model that facilitates SaaS & PaaS, Deep personalization, and simplified administrations
New DBMS-based repository for WebFOCUS, ReportCaster, and Managed Reporting:
New hierarchical object-based repository called Information Builders File System (IBFS)
Frees customers from fixed folders, folder depth, file names
Simplifies administration and system backup over previous version
Key features and benefits of IBFS
Fine-grained control over role definition and permission assignments
Security policies can be applied on any IBFS object including users, groups, folders, reports, portals, report server nodes, etc.
Supports inheritance
Supports Multi-tenancy and group administration
New auditing captures user logon activity and administrative actions
Anyone who has worked with WebFOCUS from the administrative or development side can attest that its unique security model provided some challenges, especially when you needed to provide fine grain controls over user authorizations. Additionally, its group based security model didn’t lend itself to Software as a Service (SaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS) models of deployment. (Software Stack as a Service). Thankfully, the new Universal Object Access model for WebFOCUS security provides both of these.
Instead of having security managed through the file-system (or a combination of file-system and RDBMS repository), WebFOCUS 8’s security is entirely housed in the RDBMS.
And instead of handling objects at the group level, you can now handle objects at various levels. Security policies can be applied on any object at the:
Group
User
Folder
Report
Portal
reporting server node
Another new feature of note is the auditing capabilities that will capture and log user logon and administrative actions (especially important for security compliance requirements like PCI).

8. New Security Model
The new WebFOCUS Client Security Model is an implementation of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), to enforce security across all WebFOCUS Resources. An administrator can create a comprehensive security policy by considering the following:
WHO / WHAT / WHERE
Who will need access to this information?
Use Groups to ease the administration of individual user id’s
Permissions can be applied to a single user id but is not recommended
What kind of access will each user need?
Use Permission Sets to group individual Permissions into abilities that similar users will need
Where does the user require permissions
Where defines the resource that the user requires access to
These three concepts can be put together in different combinations to create rules which, once interpreted, make up a policy for each user.
The new security model uses role based access control to provide broad security authorizations. The administrator can easily add any one-off authorizations, as required, on any object for any user.

9. New Security Model UOA - Resources
Universal Object Access (UOA)
Enforces security across WebFOCUS 8 Client resources.
A resource is defined as any object for which security rules can be applied.
Resources include:
Folders, Subfolders
Reports, Items
Users, Groups, Subgroups
ReportCaster schedules, distribution and access lists
Reporting Server content
Web content
Now I said “any object”… What is an Object?
An Object is any Resource, defined as any folder, sub-folder, report, item, user, group, subgroup, schedule, distribution or access list, reporting server content, web content.

10. New Security Model Built-in Domain Templates
There are built in templates to get you started, upon which you can easily build any custom roles your organizations might need.
WebFOCUS creates the required groups, resources, and security policy

11. WebFOCUS 8
New BI Portal

12. New BI Portal All new in WebFOCUS 8 Successor to BI Dashboard (BID)
Interactive drag and drop
Same familiar ribbon as InfoAssist
Can build a portal without knowledge of web design
The BI Portal, which we showed you at the last Orlando/Siemens Energy WebFOCUS User Forum is new to WebFOCUS 8
It is the successor to the Business Intelligence Dashboard (BID) and allows for greater and easier control of the display layer of WebFOCUS.
Any authorized user can modify their own BI Portal view, using interactive drag and drop functionality and the familiar ribbon based controls (made popular in the Windows Office products) to create an individualized Portal view. This is different from the Group Views of the Dashboard, that all members of the group had. Those could be personalized a bit, but not to this extent. An authorized user in the BI portal can create several portals for the various aspects of their job, customizing it as the see fit (or a single, portal that has tabs for each aspect). There is no training required to do this. If you can use Word or Outlook or Excel, you can build a BI Portal.

13. New BI Portal
This is the main BI Portal view, without any customization.
Notice the tree structure on the left.
The content folders grant you access to your Managed Reporting reports.
You can assign Favorites for quick access.
Mobile Favorites for the reports you’ve enabled for mobile access
The new Recent Items folder is a favorite of mine. I use it extensively in Outlook and I can definitely see users taking advantage of this feature too.
The last folder is the Portals folder, in which the user will see all of their created portals.

14. New BI Portal iGoogle Like User Experience
The BI Portal provides an iGoogle like user experience, allowing the user to add any content necessary (be it reports or external – internet content).
This provides for a central point of access for BI as well as better user adoptability by providing for those personalized objects (Facebook, Twitter, weather, etc.)

15. New BI Portal PowerPoint Like Ease of Customization
I can’t stress enough how easy this is to customize. If you remember from the demonstration at the last user forum, the BI Portal has the same ease of use as Microsoft Office.
Again, personalization creates greater adoptability.

16. New BI Portal Stylesheet Inheritance
The BI Portal can also use stylesheet inheritance to speed up the process of personalization.
Allowing you to extend the styling to all objects in your portal.
Helpful when you’re trying to brand a BI Portal to the colors of a particular company or division, etc.

17. WebFOCUS 8
Tools Consolidation

18. Tools Consolidation
All JAVA applet tools replaced with Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology
Eliminates the need to have a JVM on each end user machine
Legacy tools have been retired and consolidated into InfoAssist and InfoAssist Basic, a subset of InfoAssist.
Legacy Tools include
Power Painter Full InfoAssist with Document Composer
Advanced Graph Assistant InfoAssist Charting Engine
Report Assistant and Graph Assistant InfoAssist Basic
With WebFOCUS 8, we’ve retired the older, JAVA applet tools with newer technology.
No more JVM required on each end user machine!
PowerPainter’s functionality is now provided in the Full InfoAsssit with Document Composer
Advanced Graph Assist is now provided in the InfoAssist Charting Engine
The ReportAssist and GraphAssist applets have been replaced by InfoAssist Basic.

19. Tools Consolidation Graph Tool Consolidation
InfoAssist replaces all Graph tools, which include:
HTML GA in WF
Dev GA in DevStudio
AGA in WF and DevStudio
SQL Report Wizard
Single option for Graph
Application Studio
BI Portal
We’ve replaced all of the graph tools with a single interface. InfoAssist.
InfoAssist is now the graph development engine in ALL of WebFOCUS, whether you are building your graph in Developer’s Studio or from the BI Portal.
Graph and Chart mean the same thing… and when Application Studio is released, we’ll consolidate on the term Chart.

20. Tools Consolidation Graph Tool Consolidation
Can InfoAssist do everything legacy tools could?
HTML GA and DevStudio GA
100% functionality covered in InfoAssist
Exception: Legacy syntax that is no longer supported in InfoAssist:
Example: Applet-based graphs
Advanced Graph Assistant
85% functionality covered in InfoAssist
Remaining 15% are specialized properties to be completed in a phased implementation of Release
List of specialized properties (AGA GAP list) will be provided along with Rel migration documentation
So can InfoAssist do everything that the older tools could???
The initial release of WebFOCUS 8 will have nearly all of the graph capabilities that the legacy applets provided. There’s 15% of the functionality from the Advanced Graph Assist that is due to be included in Release or (The first GA or Generally Available release).
An example, specialized properties for a waterfall chart might not be included right away.

21. WebFOCUS 8
Tools Update

22. Tools Update Chart Engine
Chart Engine Features
Custom tooltips for Server-Side charts
Automatic Color Styling of Chart Risers
Repeated shading
Gradient Coloring
InfoAssist Chart Features
InfoAssist Advanced Dialogs
Gradient Editor
Chart Size and AutoFit
Ability to Save images (GRAPH HOLD)
Additional Chart output formats
HTML5
Rel 8 InfoAssist User’s Manual can be found on
In WebFOCUS Version 8,
New Functionality can be broken down into 2 categories:
Chart Engine Features and InfoAssist Chart Features.
charting options have been expanded to include more advanced properties, as well as a new output format (HTML5) that allows you to render a chart in the browser using a built-in JavaScript engine.

23. Tools Update Custom tooltips for Server-Side charts
Ability to customize text that appears in the tooltip
Previously only available in applet-based graphs
Syntax: setUserToolTip();
Example: setUserToolTip("Our [SL] for [GL] [R] is $[YV]");
Macros are defined in WF Graphics manual, page 1062
Previously only available in Applet Based Graphs..
We have desupported applet based graphs in WF 8, so we’ve added support for it in Server Side Graphs.
SL = Serious Label
GL = Group Label
R = New Line
YV = Y axis Value
Our (Unit Sales) for Croissant is ($630,054)

24. Tools Update Automatic Color Styling of Chart Risers
Repeated shading
Automatically shade successive groups of risers by lightening or darkening the colors
Syntax:
setColorMode(4);
setSeriesLooping(n);
setAutoColorLerpFactor(n);
Example:
-*Color mode set to repeat
setSeriesLooping(2);
-*How many series will be repeated
setAutoColorLerpFactor(1);
-*Specify whether to lighten or
darken the successive groups.
Valid range is from -1 to 1, where -1 means darken and 1 means lighten. Value of 0 will not shade at all.
Automatic Color Styling.
When a pie chart that has colors, it because hard to define enough colors that look good together.
So we’ve added automatic coloring to use shading dynamically, allowing you to use few colors that work well together.

25. Tools Update Automatic Color Styling of Chart Risers
Gradient Coloring
Automatically create a gradient effect between the colors for the first and last risers by defining a starting color and ending color
Syntax:
setColorMode(5);
setAutoColorGradientStartColor(new Color(RGB));
setAutoColorGradientEndColor(new Color(RGB));
Example:
-*Color mode set to gradient
setAutoColorGradientStartColor(new Color(48,94,213));
-*Define Starting color
setAutoColorGradientEndColor(new Color(237,195,27));
-*Define Ending color
Gradient Coloring, which is similar to gradient coloring.
Instead of shading, you provide a start color and an end color.
The Graph engine will dynamically use color variants between the two colors.

26. Tools Update InfoAssist Advanced Dialogs
More Chart styling capabilities
Legend
Grid Line
Axes
Frame & Background
Data Labels
Gauge
Style
Available in the ribbon and
Right-click menus via “More
Options…”
In order to provide all of the functionality in Advanced Graph Assist (Chart Editor),
New Chart styling capabilities have been added to InfoAssist (Ribbons and Right-Click menus):
Legends
Grid Lines
Axes
Frame and Background
Data Labels
Gauge
Style

27. Tools Update InfoAssist Advanced Dialogs
Gradient Editor
Gradient Fill
Swatches update as changes are made
When you select Gradient Fill additional parameters dynamically appear allowing you to set the colors and transparencies for your gradient styling.
Note the swatches next to the Color Pattern Radio Buttons.
Those swatches will dynamically change as you make changes.

28. Tools Update InfoAssist Advanced Dialogs
Gradient Editor
VOILA! Gradient 3D Bar Chart!
Transparency and gradient coloring

29. Tools Update HTML5 Strategic Goal: Offer unified charting experience:
Single engine generates: HTML5, Flash, JPEG, PNG
The exact same chart experience in all output formats: Active Technologies, HTML5, Flex, PDF
The same set of properties and UI across all IBI products
A high level of visual sophistication:
Gradients
Animations
Works in all browsers including mobile
Easily expandable and customizable:
New charts
Chart varianrts
As I mentioned earlier, we now have a new Chart output type, HTML5!
Upgrading WebFOCUS to use HTML5 allowed us to unify our charting capabilities into a single engine.
The user experience, whether you are outputting to HTML5, Flash, JPEG, PNG will be the same as the UI is now the same.
HTML5 charts are also mobile ready! No additional work necessary to deploy them to a mobile device.
HTML5 charts are rendered by your browser’s built-in JavaScript engine to deliver the latest capabilities in charting.
Intro/Grow Animations – Bars growing from the axis. Or pie charts filling in clock-wise.
Interactivity (Zooming or Panning)
High Quality Vector Output
Shadow and bevel effects
Alpha-channel and Gradient effects. (alpha channel = transparency).

30. Tools Update HTML5 HTML5 in InfoAssist ON GRAPH PCHOLD FORMAT JSCHART
More HTML5-specific properties exposed in Rel 8002
Not all browsers are created equal!
Works best in modern browsers that have HTML5 standard support
Compatible with IE7/8, but limited support for gradient effects
The Format JSCHART command outputs your chart to HTML5.
You should also note that older browsers have some limited support for HTML5 as well.

31. Tools Update InfoAssist: Interactive Multi-Page Documents
InfoAssist now provides interactive multi-page documents
Notice the document scroll on the lower left. Multiple document pages tied to the same parameter controls

32. Tools Update InfoAssist: Customized User Options
Styling Options: If your output type is Active Report then the Active Report Options become available, one of which is menu options .
Active Rpt
If you’re outputting to the Active Report format, all of the functionality of the Active Report becomes available to you within IA. You don’t have to run the report to access it.
Also, you can now define, at the report level, what capabilities of the Active Report you want to make available to the end-user!

33. Tools Update Developer Studio – Cancel Running Request
Can now cancel requests
Works with multiple WebFOCUS server environments
You can now CANCEL YOUR OWN REQUESTS in Developer’s Studio… and it even works in environments that have multiple WebFOCUS Reporting Servers

34. Tools Update Developer Studio - Populate a Control with Procedure Names
WebFOCUS 8 now allows you to use procedure names in parameter controls. Giving you greater flexibility to deliver more and different content from the same document launch page
Copyright 2011, Information Builders. Slide 34
Information Builders

35. Tools Update Developer Studio - Promote Report to Document
You can now promote a report you’ve developed in the Report Painter to a Document in the Document Composer!
Copyright 2011, Information Builders. Slide 35
Information Builders

36. Tools Update Developer Studio Define Function
You can now create reusable DEFINE functions!
This will allow you to save any DEFINE functions for use in other Reports/Programs!
And if the function changes, you don’t have to change it in every report!
The User Defined Function is now available when you develop your reports!
Copyright 2011, Information Builders. Slide 36
Information Builders

37. Tools Update Update Assist: Web Forms for Mobile Devices
How many people came to our Summit User Forum this year?
Did you fill out the online survey on the iPads provided?
That was our new WebFOCUS Web Forms for Mobile Devices in action.
Using Update Assist you can easily build mobile web forms that can update your tables in real time!

38. WebFOCUS 8 Soon to be released
So What’s coming soon that isn’t in WebFOCUS 8 yet???

39. Soon to be Released WebFOCUS & Social Media
Access data directly from Facebook via native Facebook Adapter
Analyze textual information, frequency of usage, thread history, etc. via Word Analyzer Adapter
Provide sentiment scoring via Web Services
Visualize results
Automate process via Data Migrator ETL
Feed can come from standard data sources as well
Social Media Adapters!
Who saw Gerry’s opening presentation at Summit?
Did you see how he used our Twitter Adapter to see that Wal-Mart customers were complaining about the quality of the meat at the Wal-Mart Super Centers?
It turns out we weren’t the only ones looking, because within a month, Wal-mart came to the same conclusion and started a media blitz touting their meats in commercials and print ads.
Businesses spend millions of dollars on aftermarket surveys from third-party companies; however this only provides after-the-fact insight that can be somewhat outdated.
No more waiting for the numbers to determine how a program is doing… Simply listen to the masses in real time.

40. Soon to be Released WebFOCUS Social Media Adapters
How does it work?
We use an ETL process (DataMigrator) to access the social media adapter of choice (in this example) Facebook. The ETL process enriches the data with sentiment analysis and word analysis, before storing the results in a database for querying.
Who knows what Sentiment Analysis is?
Sentiment Analysis is aims to determine the attitude of a speaker or a writer with respect to some topic. So in this case, the service will look at the words used in the Facebook post to determine the positivity or negativity of the post.
With Sentiment and Word Analytics, you can:
■■Join Facebook content to other data to enrich the result set
■■Build reports, charts, dashboards, and documents that aggregate the resulting data
■■Accumulate data over time – via extract, transform, and load capabilities – in a data warehouse for trending and analytics
■■Send the data to a sentiment analytics web service (priced separately) to score user sentiment
■■Count the frequency of common words and terms used in posts

41. Soon to be released Social Media Application: Word Analytics
Some examples of Social Media Reports:
How many mentions per day, plotted in the top left.
What words were posted most frequently in posts in the top right.
Sentiment Scores (Positive sentiment vs. negative sentiment) in the bottom left.
Pie chart in the bottom right. How many fans do we have vs. the competition?

42. Soon to be Released Application Studio IDE
Also coming soon is the APPLICATION STUDIO Integrated Developer Environment (IDE)… providing that much more user friendly (ribbon based) interface for developers!
No more digging through menus to find the control/setting you’re looking for… as the ribbon is more logically designed and context driven.

43. Soon to be Released Dynamic Preview for Any Form Factor
The Dynamic Preview for the Form Factor allows for simultaneous development on 3 platforms: Phone, Tablet and Browser.
Develop once, deliver thrice!

44. Soon to be Released Native Applications Built with Cross Compilers (iOS, Android)
Cross Compilers allow you only have to develop once to deliver reports that will work perfectly in both iOS and Android Devices
The code you develop is mobile aware and will detect what type of device the user is accessing the application from and present the correct version of the application.

45. Migration from WebFOCUS 7.7x
Now you might be asking yourself, with WebFOCUS 8 having so many changes and improvements, how do I get there???

46. Migration Migration Utilities
Migration utilities will be available to migrate security rules and content from previous releases. These include:
Internal and external Managed Reporting repositories
ReportCaster content
Report Library content
BI Dashboard content
With the exception of BI Dashboard content which will continue to reside on the file system, all migrated content will be stored in the WebFOCUS 8 RDBMS repository.
Well, IB is providing several utilities to migrate your existing WebFOCUS 7.7 environments into the WebFOCUS 8.0 RDBMS Repository.
It is important to note that if you have custom security exits, etc. That cannot be automatically migrated, and I highly recommend that you contact your local TAM and IB Business Development Manager to talk about migration options.

47. Migration Sample User-Role migration
In 7x, this user had a role of MR Administrator with ReportCaster privileges.
After migrating to Release 8, this user has been assigned to a User Default Role (UDR) that matches Release 7x.
Each existing role (even custom roles) in your existing Managed Reporting has an equivalent User Default Role (UDR)

48. Questions !