Regarding VBA and best practices: I’m sure that many people here are in a situation in which they are supporting a legacy environment that was not built according to current best practices. That doesn’t change the fact that the application is necessary for their business and therefore requires ongoing support. If a customer of SAP is using DeskI with VBA to support a necessary business activity, then they will have a decision to make: either stay on an unsupported platform, rebuild the application in WebI/Crystal, or rebuild it in a non-SAP tool. If it has to be rebuilt anyway, then it is only reasonable to consider using a non-SAP tool. That may drive (and likely has driven) customers away from SAP.
While it may be possible to use other SAP tools to achieve the same result that is delivered today in a legacy DeskI/VBA application, it may be more costly to move to a supported SAP solution that a non-SAP solution. A customer of SAP who has been considering another BI tool may get enough of a nudge when they find that they will have to incur additional development costs just to keep their old systems on a supported tool.
There are lots of functionality gaps in the BOE stack that historically has required the use of VBA. Many of those gaps have been closed with recent versions, but some remain. As an example, we have a fairly complex VBA script that was built years ago to filter a report by group, save the reports for each group as Excel and PDF, then send an email with a summary. Using a publication, we’re 90% there, but we will not be able to get to 100% without some form of custom programming.
you may want to give launchwerks a call… www.launchworks.com. They do custom development for BOBJ 4.x. for the record, I’m not affiliated in any way with launchworks. I’m simply providing a possible alternative to custom deski apps.
I agree, there most definetly still is scenarios where only VBA can/should be used (even with the latest HF’s & SP versions). SAP is slowly closing functionality gaps between Deski & Webi, but unfortunetly they’ll never be able to close the VBA functionality gap (which IMO can lose alot of points for making the jump to 4.0 and/or Webi)…
Wait, did you really say LEGACY!!?? Crystal, which is by far the LEGACY desktop tool from the early 90s should not be considered legacy ? Are you Kidding?!
SAP got rid of the BEST tool for Business Intelligence when they got rid of Desktop Intelligence. Or should I call it what made Business Objects the tool of choice. The application was called Business Objects, Webi was its IE interface. That’s right the tool that was sold and used to out perform, out devlelop and overtake the BI world.
The only worthy competitors that were out or coming out during the time when Business Objects were Microstrategy and Cognos. Oracle and its <BLACH> OBIEE solution wasn’t around.
Crystal was and is old news that’s why when I said ‘worthy’ competitors. Crystal wasn’t even close to being a worthy competitor. Its only break was being given out for FREE. Now SAP is charging for it, unbelievable you might say.
SAP has to live with their BOTCH UP on that one. It shouldn’t be surprising that many small and medium companies are going away. Soon I think that SSIS and, but hopefully not, OBIEE will take over the larger companies.
Then you can say that Business Objects was the legacy tool.
Keep in ind though, that is was the company BusinessObjects who made the call to retire DESKI, way before the acquisition by SAP.
And it is ironic to see that SAP is now re-inventing a Full Client Application, named “SAP Visual Intelligence” (kinda Tableau like) as a power tool for analysts, who were not satisfied with (web based) SAP BusObjects Explorer.
It will be interesting to see if and how the whole iCloud stuff might change things again.
I remember way back when; Business Objects purchased Crystal to obtain their end of the market. They originally were going to get rid of Crystal; but had a significant amount of inquiries and concerns that BO was going to do just that. It was then or at right( I mean right) before the acquisition by SAP that Crystal was said to stay.
The job market says something as well. I am getting offers for contracts where Business Objects is a ‘good to have’; only because of the company moving off of it.
I hope the other posts are not correct about SSIS and OBIEE.
As far as SAP ‘Visual Intelligence’. It will be interesting to see it and how it resembles any older tool
Well, BusinessObjects is BIG with native SAP customers, so if you got skills with BusinessObjects integrating with SAP BW for example (SSO, OLAP based universes, performance tuning, Webi against SAP BEx queries via BICS, etc.) you are an IT guy so to speak ;-9.
Well, I think the whole BI4 is build primarily with SAP BW customers in mind…unfortunate to the backend agnostic customers.
The BEx Analyzer is a very user-unfriendly and very cumbersome tool. It looks like a tool from the main frame era, ha. SAP knows that. That’s why they bought BusinessObjects and that’s why they are pushing their BW customers to move to BI4. So as Andreas has stated, having the SAP integration skillset is in hot demand right now. And will continue to be hot.
Crystal Report is a very powerful reporting tool. But it is mostly used for departmental reporting or localized reporting. Crystal Report is not good for true enterprise reporting without using the universe. The local connection object is a change management nightmare…been there, done that. The introduction of web-based Crystal for Enterprise makes me very suspicious of SAP’s intention.
BO Explorer is a fancy tool that can attract management very quickly. But it runs out of steam as quickly when people start using it. That’s why SAP is updating it to Visual Intelligence. Visual Intelligence appears to be a very good analytic tool. I have done the usability test on it last year. I just hope that it is not cumbersome to configure and to set up like the BO Explorer…especially on BW data.
Yes, unfortunately this seems to be a common theme reported by a number of posters including myself. Whether this is due to a strategic intention by SAP to concentrate on SAP BW or not, it does appear to be happening.
I’m afraid to say after 14 years with Bus Obs, i’m going to have to add my voice to all those others.
getting rid of a tool such as DeskI is a mistake.
The flexibility it gives you for analysis is outstanding, and cannot be replicated by any other tool. WebI is slow, cumbersome, and lacks critical functionality for analysis such as Slice and Dice. Crystal Reports isn’t an analysis tool at all - just a reporting tool for those who like to build reams of pretty reports that can be used again and again. Even the Dashboards are basic compared to competitors.
Surely they would want BusObs to be a powerful offering of quick in depth analysis (DeskI) with powerful, drillable Dashboards (Excelcius), also available online (Mobile).
Webi is the past, not the future. Nobody wants to log onto corporate land over a web browser to do stuff, they want Apps on their Ipad.
My only answer is to “Upgrade” our Bus Obs installation with an additional component - Bus Obs 5 full client, then see what happens.
I can only assume - I hve no idea what SAP are really thinking - that Bus Obs is moving away from being an analysis tool to a data management tool. They seem to be more worried about copying the other big vendors than listening to their user base. :?
I have seen version 1.0 of this and versus the competition IMHO SAP have an awful long way to go. Hopefully the tool will be built on further.
Again I detect that there is too much focus on the big ticket “SAP” end of the market with this tool as there is with everything else at the moment (e.g. the HANA customers and those that require integration with the rest of the SAP stack) and a lack of focus on the actual intuitiveness of the tool and it’s actual visualisation capabilities.
Considering between XI3 and 4 they dropped SSAS support for Explorer, and the MDX being generated out of IDT when using Webi is unusable I think the “SAP Tools for SAP Data” is valid and the trend for the future. Sad to say, but after 15 years, I think it’s time to find a new favorite tool set.
Over arching factor was lack of engagement from SAP but also lack of clarity around product roadmap specifically around visualisation of data and it’s lack of offering in BI4.
Shame as we have 7 years of effort and knowledge on the platform and I do think BI4 is a great step forward but the organisation has chosen Microstrategy as our new enterprise platform. Will still be using and maintaining what we have but no more new developments on BI4.
All who have used DESKI know of its importance and contribution to the BI world.
Trying to find a work around on things such as grouping is something I ran into using Webi.
Playing around with DESKI its amazing how far I came with developing some unbelievable and useful reports. I have to wonder why they don’t include this in the next version. Maybe that is why I am told that although to try not to develop reports in DESKI(we’re in 3.x) we will not be moving to 4
Oh and we(thank god) are not entertaining using Crystal.
Not sure what that means as far as having a BI tool but after reading these posts; maybe thinking I am not alone out there on what DESKI is and can do for our industry.
So far, for the ones who created DESKI; again it is amazing to use and quick to develop reports
I did some work at a top 3 investment bank recently and one of the reporting architects authored some mind-blowing reports for mass consumption. Their distribution engine is a well-oiled machine too and gets their Deski documents around quite nicely.
As with others here, to my mind the Deski report building environment is streets ahead of the Webi report building environment. However, we have to keep the Deski environment running (at least for the time being) because all our statutory reports are built on Deski and our software provider probably won’t bother to migrate them to Webi with the statutory reporting changes happening over the next 2-3 years. I’m guessing that the new reports will be written in Webi as part of that change as they are so radically different to the current suite.
All I can say, is thank goodness - ad hoc reporting in Webi (apart from the simplest of queries) seems to take 10 times longer - and is virtually impossible if I need to group variables as I usually do (I’ve been known to group the same variable 4 different ways in a report to satisfy different outcome scenarios).
At least we have no plans to migrate to BI4! We were 3 years late migrating to BOXI alone…
I heard it at SBOUC that SAP is releasing another Service Pack for 3.1. And as I have said before, BI4 is more for SAP ERP customers. So It is perfectly fine if you are not upgrading.
So far all of my contracts have been with companies running ERP systems. They all had\have BO running either 6.5 or XI R3 and everything is running fine without SAP BO support.
From what I understand they have no plans to migrate away from DESKI.
(BOB member since 2002-08-29)
Unfortunately 
(BOB member since 2002-06-20)
SAP knows that. That’s why they bought BusinessObjects and that’s why they are pushing their BW customers to move to BI4. So as Andreas has stated, having the SAP integration skillset is in hot demand right now. And will continue to be hot.
(BOB member since 2002-09-13)
(BOB member since 2012-06-26)
(BOB member since 2003-08-28)
for the ones who created DESKI; again it is amazing to use and quick to develop reports
(BOB member since 2004-11-10)