Xcelsius, Web Application Designer, or SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer: A Detailed Guide to Choosing the Right Tool for Your Dashboarding Needs Dr. Bjarne Berg Comerit

In This Session … You will see three demos of different dashboarding tools Learn how to build Web application designer, Xcelsius® (now called SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards), and SAP NetWeaver® Visual Composer dashboards (three demos) Learn when to pick one dashboarding tool over another Find out the limitations of each tool and what skill sets are needed to be successful

What We’ll Cover … Introduction SAP Web application designer overview Xcelsius overview SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer overview Lessons learned and limitations Wrap-up

The Big Picture … With the merger between SAP and Business Objects, we got access to new “best-of-breed” tools Since there are varying experience levels in the audience, we assume no prior knowledge in either SAP BusinessObjects or SAP BEx tools and will cover all from a high-level standpoint We will take a closer look at each tool in the demo sections Source: SAP

The SAP NetWeaver Legacy Toolset The SAP BI legacy SAP Business Explorer (SAP BEx) tool includes the Web template development environment known as Web Application Designer (WAD) This tool has been used extensively by the SAP BI community for the last 10 years Source: SAP SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer is part of the SAP NetWeaver Composite Environment (SAP NetWeaver CE) and is not affected by the new SAP BusinessObjects tool set

What We’ll Cover … Introduction SAP Web application designer overview Xcelsius overview SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer overview Lessons learned and limitations Wrap-up

Web Application Designer BEx Analyzer/ Query Designer Dashboards and Web Templates Web Application Designer Web application designer is an intuitive tool to build powerful Web applications and to interact with portals and custom templates BW queries can be manipulated in Web application designer for better display OLAP Processor Web Service Charting Engine HTLM Templates InfoProvider

The Web Application Designer Template Web templates are used to simplify navigation, add graphs, and create dashboards Basic dashboards can be developed in a few hours and provide low cost dashboards with total flexibility and native connectivity to SAP NetWeaver BW Web application designer templates can be simple or complex – Think of Web application designer as a complete Web development environment

The Web Application Designer Template — Edits Once a Web template is developed, it is easy to edit it. You can change graphs, and present the data from a query in many ways. We can add navigation items (buttons, listbox, radio buttons) to make the dashboards more interactive.

Web Application Designer Template — Changing Graphs By clicking on a chart item and selecting “Edit” you can use a wizard to modify the graph type. There are almost 100 pre-delivered graph types. Plan on spending a substantial amount of time with your user acceptance team to validate the way you present data

Web Application Designer Template — Controlling Properties Every object can be controlled in-detail in the property pane The available properties depends on the type of object: List box Analysis item Chart item Document Label An item can be displayed with scrolling, headers, and navigation features turned “off/on” in a code-free development environment

Web Application Designer Template — The Use of Queries Once you have built a Web template, it is easy to copy it and change the data provider or query that are being used The developer's favorites, history, and InfoArea are displayed, and the queries are organized by roles as configured in BW Do not develop dashboards on basic queries without performance testing them. You should consider using a naming convention for queries used in Web application designer to avoid people changing them

Step-By-Step Demo of Web Application Designer

Example 1: Building a Web Application Designer Template — Getting Started Step-1: Create a blank template Step-2: Drag an analysis item into the canvas Step-3: Create a data provider called “DP-1” based on a query

Building a Web Application Designer Template — Adding Buttons Step-4: Assign the analysis item to the data provider Step-5: Add a button group. We will add one button for printing in PDF and one for jumping to a detailed Web query Step-6: Use the wizard to create button-1: Export the template to PDF

Building a Web Application Designer Template — Adding Commands to Buttons Step-7: Navigate to the command in the Wizard (we will export the Web template to PDF). Benefit: Using the Wizards, we do not have to write any code Step-8: We link the command to the analysis item. We can change paper size, orientation, headers, or footers, and allow for an export dialog panel to be displayed when the user presses the button. Note: This is the same command we use to export the template to Excel.

Step-9: Save the Web template Step-11: Try the new PDF button Building a Web Application Designer Template — Testing the Functionality Step-9: Save the Web template Step-10: Click “Run” Step-11: Try the new PDF button Step-12: Since we set this up in step 8, the user sees a dialog panel and can control their own layout

The Result If you have an idea on how a BI Web site should work, you can probably do this in Web application designer In the next example, we will use a button to jump to a detailed query

Example 2: Adding a Jump-to from Web Template to Web Query Step-1: We use the second button from the previous example and call it “start analysis” Step-2: We use the command Wizard and select the “transfer state” option. This transfers the navigational status between the Web items Step-3: Select the item we want to “jump-to”

Testing the Functionality Step-4: We have linked the Web template to the internal link, the data provider and the analysis item – the work is all done! Step-5: We save the template, and run it to test the new functionality

The Result Step-6: We can jump between templates and queries to see details Key concept: Web template for management and easy navigation, Web queries for other users

Summary — Web Application Development (WAD) BENEFIT: Web application designer can be used to create powerful, custom cockpits and dashboards with custom features. You are not confined to standard SAP functionality DRAWBACK: Requires more technical skills to develop good dashboards

What We’ll Cover … Introduction SAP Web application designer overview Xcelsius overview SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer overview Lessons learned and limitations Wrap-up

Xcelsius Dashboards can be built using Xcelsius (now called SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards) Xcelsius was launched in March 2010, and is the flagship product for data visualization and dashboards Web application designer is not enhanced further beyond SAP NetWeaver 7.1.

Adding Interactivity in Xcelsius To make dashboards useful for more than one person, you should plan to offer navigation and interactivity instead of static images and graphs

Adding Interactivity in Xcelsius (cont.)

Xcelsius — The Basics and Options

Xcelsius — Some SAP SDN Examples Source: Chintan Doshi, SAP sdn, 2010

Xcelsius — Some SAP SDN Examples (cont.) Source: SAP

What We’ll Cover … Introduction SAP Web application designer overview Xcelsius overview SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer overview Lessons learned and limitations Wrap-up

SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer Is a Tool to Visualize the Data SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer is a browser-based modeling and design tool for rapid application development in a code-free development environment

There Are Two “Versions” of SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer 7.0 is for SAP BI development, 7.2 is for the Composite Environment (CE). There are different SDN forums and blogs for each – This can be confusing! SAP and VC:"With the new version of SAP NetWeaver CE 7.2, you are able to design and develop your "own practices" as business rule-based, SOA-enabled, composite business processes & applications with the Eclipse-based SAP Developer Studio" - SAP AG, 2010 (sap.com) 32

Our Target Dashboard We will build a dashboard based on two queries called country and customer view, and present this with tables and graphs as well as navigational links between them (passing variables between the queries)

SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer — Building a Complete Dashboard

SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer 7.0 and Xcelsius SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer 7.01 (or 7.02) SP5 or higher allows you to use existing Xcelsius UI controls and use them inside SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer You can also use any Flex component made by Adobe Flex Builder (Flex 2 SDK) You can download flash objects and “how-to” on http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/16871 35

External Web Services External Web services such as email, stock quotes, news services, and weather maps can also be integrated into your SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer cockpit

External Data Providers — Web Services Each Web service may require different input, so you have to spend some time trying out what works for your site and how to format it

What We’ll Cover … Introduction SAP Web application designer overview Xcelsius overview SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer overview Lessons learned and limitations Wrap-up

SAP BusinessObjects Integration Options — BICS Connector! Notice that DF Facade and SAP BusinessObjects Data Federator are separate products that are currently licensed separately from the SAP NetWeaver BW licenses DF Facade Source: SAP AG, Dec, 2010 WebI = SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, BWA = SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator

What Tool to Select All SAP tools have strength and weaknesses This is a subjective summary of each of the major dashboard tools

What We’ll Cover … Introduction SAP Web application designer overview Xcelsius overview SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer overview Lessons learned and limitations Wrap-up

Resources Xcelsius® sample dashboards www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/xcelsius-samples SAP BusinessObjects Community and blogs www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc Evan Delodder and Ray Li, Creating Dashboards with Xcelsius: Practical Guide (SAP PRESS, 1st Edition, 2010). Carsten Bönnen and Mario Herger, SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer (SAP PRESS, 1st edition, 2006). How to Integrate Visual Composer Applications and BEx Web templates www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/ad182ac7-0a01-0010-4fb8-8a4d217b19c1?QuickLink=index&overridelayout=true

7 Key Points to Take Home There is more than one tool for dashboarding, plan accordingly RAD is always the preferred development methodology Xcelsius (now called SAP BusinessObjects Dashboard) will be the most common dashboarding tool for most companies (90% probability) Ad-hoc analysis (SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence) is a great ad-hoc tool with some graphical capabilities It is not a dashboarding tool Web application designer is a good tool for IT developers, but does not have as many Web 2.0 features as Xcelsius, nor is the dashboards as interactive and flexible SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer is an option for simple dashboards Spend about 25-30% of the project on designing and User Acceptance Testing (users don't know what they want until they see it)

Your Turn! How to contact me: Dr. Berg Bberg@ComeritInc.com

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