We have some users with a lot of experience working with Excel and they want to know the possibility to work with BO through excel instead of using BO directly. More or less the idea is that they use to review and manipulate data using excel and they dont want to change to BO. I’m a little afraid about this because I know very few things about BQ and Im not sure what is possible or not
I guess that BQ doesn’t offer all the functionality that BO gives, I mean, there is not drill down, VB prompts, slice and dice panel, etc. You cannot have the same kind of report for BO and BQ. You cannot use BQ as a really tool to navigate and analyze data . Or you can?
Any help, comment or clarification will be much appreciated
Business Quers is just the Query part of it. It will get you your data, but that’s where it stops. It does a great job of giving you access to your data, but everything else is up to Excel.
We have a few Business Query v5 users but I have recommended dropping it and going with Webi v6. My users have been impressed with the Save to Excel feature and combining that will Webi drilling makes it even better.
Yes I agree, but it is not exactly the same. I mean you have access to the universes, etc, but not all functionality is available (like hierarchies, for instance) and BQ doesn’t show the data in the same way as BO, where it is grouped automatically. In excel you get all the rows,
My concern is that the users will expect to see the same behavior from both app, or use the same queries for both, and that’s impossible
Another note is that BQ is full-client only. We had a conversion of a purely ad hoc database for 2,000+ users whose primary access was an Excel add-in from the long defunct Q+E product. We’re a ZABO shop, and deploying full-client just for BQ simply wasn’t an option. We’ve compensated by emphasizing that the main reason they’ve been using Excel all along is that Q+E had no (little) analysis and reporting capability. Spend the effort to learn BusObj, and you’ll find the majority of your needs met without Excel. Where Excel is still needed (the now minority of times), there are reasonable work arounds (cut and paste, export text files, and so forth), not to mention the “save as Excel” functionality when we go to E6.
That is the current plan, but the “date” associated with that event was roughtly 2007-2008 time frame. But the intention - at least as I last saw it proposed - was to phase out the full client and be completely web-based in 3-4 years.
That’s a long time out, frankly. And if Marketing determines that (a) there is still a market to sell a client package and (b) there is an interest in staying in that market then my expectation is that they will continue to provide the product. Their research for today probably tells them that 3 tiered solutions are going to be the answer.
The problem is, with time frames that are that far out nobody is really sure of the question.
3 tiered products. Webi currently is a 3 tier product, but in four years it may look nothing like what we have today.
Have your sales rep give you a copy of the “Product Roadmap” presentation, if they can get the newer one. Not the one currently on the web site, but the more detailed version that we saw at the local user group meeting in New York. That way you get something from BusinessObjects instead of random musings from forum members. 8)
The one on the web site is it. The have not published a new one for the public. Talk to your sales rep. Much of what you are hearing out there is conjecture. What’s in the roadmap is what they are currently planning on doing.
Another thing about BusQuery that is driving me nuts right now.
There is no way to determine what objects are being used. The query files are kept wherever the user designates. Unless those files are in a known location, you have to rely on your users to tell you what they’re using.
(BOB member since 2002-08-29)
(BOB member since 2002-06-25)
(BOB member since 2002-07-17)
and that means… more or less 4Q 2005, right? and are you sure about that?
(BOB member since 2002-08-29)
are you saying that?? 
