Good-Bye DESKI and Good-Bye SAP BO

general discussion
241

We could, but it would be nice to not have to maintain a de-supported client installation just to fill a hole created by the supplier.

We bought BO back on v5 because of this feature, so it would be nice if they could acknowledge people still use it, and build it into the Rich Client in BI4.

norty303 :uk: (BOB member since 2003-03-19)

242

Anorak,

Really? I’ve never had an issue with this if I made sure the “Automatic refresh before use” was unchecked on the Universe object…

jwaterbury :us: (BOB member since 2007-09-21)

243

I wished I was paid, but alas!! No, just a satisfied user, that is all.

Mitra Moini (BOB member since 2002-09-01)

244

This is my experience when using Webi Rich Client. See: https://bobj-board.org/t/170947

anorak :uk: (BOB member since 2002-09-13)

245

You can save as TXT from XI 3.1 SP4…ish

Nick Daniels :uk: (BOB member since 2002-08-15)

246

Honestly SAP is seemingly trying to exit the BI market, based on the decisions being made around BO; All of the decisions are bad ones making the tool set much much more difficult to work with, I havent seen any functionality increases only removal of flexibility.

My guess is there will be an exodus away from what was once a very nice tool to work with.

jchandlerAxis (BOB member since 2012-02-29)

247

What about the DataTrack feature of Webi?
The better mapping a data provider to different universe function in Webi?
The OLAP hierarchy support in Webi?
The better MERGE Dimensions functionality in Webi?
How about the new charts in Webi (including Heat maps)?

I loved Deski, but to say that SAP is exiting the BI market is pure Nonsense. BI Mobile is all the rage at SAP, and on top of that HANA.

Andreas :de: (BOB member since 2002-06-20)

248

I don’t believe SAP is leaving the BI market either. I might be wrong but having been a user of the Business Objects tool for more than 15 years, I think I know where the current frustration lies.

Originally, Business Objects was portrayed a user’s tool where business users could get in and create their adhoc reports, slicing and dicing the data any which way they wanted without relying on IT all the time. If they wanted to have a highly formatted report, however, they would turn to IT and let them know, down to the millimeter, how they wanted their reports to be designed.

With the current changes in Business Objects, since the purchase of Crystal Reports especially, the tool just does not feel as intuitive as it once was for the business users. Don’t get me wrong. There have been many improvements to it but they seem to be geared more for the technical people than those who just want to look at their data quickly and don’t care about highly formatted reports, which was the biggest selling point of Business Objects to most companies.

Take into consideration Excel. I know it is a bad example but as a tool it is very simple to use and in all its iterations its core functionality really has not changed. Yes, Microsoft has changed its look and feel of the tool bars and such but it is still the easiest tool out there for the business users to understand. They don’t have to be retrained every time a new version comes out unless they want to learn what is new in it. That is why you will not be able to take that away from users.

Therefore, I believe that SAP is just gearing the tool more as a developer’s tool than a user’s tool and that is where the frustrations are coming out.

Just my thoughts,

Mitra Moini (BOB member since 2002-09-01)

249

From chatting to a long-time SAP BW guy, he’s convinced SAP have bought BO to improve their BI offering (and partly to respond to IBM’s move for Cognos). He’s said that while Bex QA serves a purpose, the end-user reporting from BW has never been great.

He also thought that the Rapid Marts/Data Services solution would grow, partly to trump the Cognos cubes/canned reporting capabilities by evolving the RapidMarts solution into a full dimensional data warehouse with precanned universes and sit it side by side with OLAP reporting from BW.

The main concern we both had is the neglect of smaller customers. Obviously my other concern is that while there are plenty of new features, to push on and not bring over useful existing features from Deski is a bit short-sighted.

250

Some of these have been addressed in BI4.0, so I’ll address each of these individually.

Webi has Page mode, which allow Print Preview, and more. You can see how it will look printed, and work on it at the same time. This is much better than Print Preview. 8)

Webi 4.0 has many print option. 8)

This seems to work fine in 4.0. 8)

This is still missing in 4.0.

It doesn’t prompt. It simply keeps the filter, and you can easily delete it if you don’t want it. 8)

This is still true in Webi 4.0. But this is a very minor issue.

This feature is now available in 4.0. 8)

Still true. I wish they would fix this.

Still true. Documents must be exported one at a time.

Still true. I, too, miss this feature. But the more I work with contexts, the less I miss this feature. It is very useful for beginners.

I’ve never seen this behaviour. In 4.0, the LOV doesn’t populate until you refresh it.

Still true. I prefer using boolean variables. It’s easier to edit them as variables.

Still true. Still frustrating.

I’m not sure what this means. I am able to create filters on measures.

You can do this in 4.0. 8)

Still missing. But this is a feature that I never used. I prefer to do it in the universe. That way, I can do it once, rather than always doing it at the document level, over and over again. 8)

This is still true. I had to test this, as I’ve never tried this before.

Still true. You can use the RelativeDate() function to accomplish the same thing.

Personal DPs can be marked as non-refreshable, but not universe DPs.

This is fixed in 4.0. 8)

Webi 4.0 has made some improvements, as you can see, to some of the missing functionality. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the new interface is kludgy and hard to work in. It has has some new bugs, and missing features from Webi 3.1. For example, you can no longer a single query from the query panel. And Data Tracking doesn’t work unless you set Alternate Row Shading to 1 (This is scheduled to be fixed in SP04).

MichaelWelter :vatican_city: (BOB member since 2002-08-08)

251

One of the biggest issues we face is NOT being able to schedule a WebI document to a printer. Up to now this was OK as we still had DESKI and we could schedule to printer with that. However, with the demise of DeskI and this functionality not available even in v4 is frustrating at best.

Mitra Moini (BOB member since 2002-09-01)

252

That’s interesting, Mitra. I’ve never used that functionality, so I haven’t missed it. Of course, Webi should have that capability. Crystal Reports does. Deski does. You would think that would be a no-brainer for Webi. You should submit that on the SAP Idea Place.

MichaelWelter :vatican_city: (BOB member since 2002-08-08)

253

Michael,

Many thanks for taking the time to go through these issues; I really appreciate it.

anorak :uk: (BOB member since 2002-09-13)

254

<Excuse my bitterness
As it comes natural SAP acquired business objects with SAP Ecosystem and its inhabitants in mind. For the SAP Customer WEBI and Xcelsius Vs Bex is a big leap forward in report presentation.
The lion’s share of SAP’s customers were aware but were not keen users of Business Objects prior SAP era thus they don’t have a point of reference. Of course they complain about immature products hitting the market and functionality that should be there from day 1- still missing grouping Variables- rather than waiting 4 year to no avail (but thank God we now have ribbon style toolbars).
For the non SAP customers the future is grim and i don’t see it getting any better, meanwhile more versatile vendors are already filling the gap.
Excuse my bitterness/>

jkanaks :greece: (BOB member since 2005-06-08)

255

I’d rather have killed off the items on anorak’s list than got the ribbon style toolbars.

256

One big one:

:arrow_forward: VBA

joepeters :us: (BOB member since 2002-08-29)

257

Michael,

We did submit this on behalf of our clients but to no avail! :hb:

Mitra Moini (BOB member since 2002-09-01)

258

Mitra, can you post a link to that idea in this thread? Perhaps we can get more votes for it.

MichaelWelter :vatican_city: (BOB member since 2002-08-08)

259

Okay, now you opened up the can. As far as I am concerned the new look and feel of Microsoft Excel and Word(but not as bad) is 2010 version.
Honestly, they are getting away from the point of a developer use or power user and concentrating on the Simple-Minded folks who only want to type and print. No fuss no muss - no where to go except to a Microsoft Class to find out what they did or how they did it to get what you wanted to do. And used to do easily in 97-2003 version !

ColumbiaIT (BOB member since 2011-06-15)

260

Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, you could say that about cars as well. What with automatic transmissions, cars that park themselves, tell you if there is something behind, slow down if you are getting too close to the car ahead of you, decide what to do on snow and ice, and give you directions to where you want to go! Can’t you then argue that everything today is made for “simple-minded” folks and isn’t that the point? To allow everybody a chance to do what they want to do on their own?

Mitra Moini (BOB member since 2002-09-01)