BO XI R3 universe : Interacting with external data using web services

[Former Member]

Hi,

We are currently using BO XI R3 platform product to build Universes and report templates.

We are looking for a way to make our universes interacting with web services based data.

How can we do this ?

Our goal is to be capable of providing Universes which are plugged on web services based data providers.

We know that BO has presented a solution called Data Feed (in march 2007) which allows to interact with external data sources, but is this solution compatible with the current BO XI R3 version ?

Where can I find a complete documentation which deals with this problem ?

Thanks

Yvan

[ted_ueda · Accepted solution]

Data Federator XI 3.0 - newest version supports exposing Web Services via Universes.

More info here:

[http://www.businessobjects.com/product/catalog/data_federator/]

Sincerely,

Ted Ueda

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your quick answer,

But, does BO supply an evaluation version of the Data Federator XI 3.0 ?

If yes, where Can I download it ?

I searched some available links for downloading, but I found none.

Regards

Yvan

Edited by: Yvan Bacon on Sep 19, 2008 11:57 AM

[amrsalem1983 · Accepted solution]

i think if you have an access to the ESD website

https://businessobjects.subscribenet.com

you can download it from there

and you can download the excel sheet contents all the trial keys for the business objects produts XI 3.0

good luck

Amr

[ted_ueda · Accepted solution]

Best would be to speak with your SAP Business Objects sales rep.

Sincerely,

Ted Ueda

[Former Member]

Hi Yvan,

I have not heard of Data Feed so I ask anyone else who is familiar with that product to respond on it.

There is no native Universe driver that specifically supports web services. However, you might consider these options:

1. Find a good ODBC or JDBC driver that you can install on your BOE server which supports web services. Then you can create a Universe connection using the generic ODBC or JDBC connection. You might consider looking at one of the DataDirect XML drivers. I believe these will support web services as many XML drivers will support web services. I have not tried this though so I recommend testing with a trial version first.

Most XML drivers I have tried are quite limited so you should expect to have to parse the data into a suitable format inside your web service before returning the recordset.

2. You could join web service data and universe data in Crystal Reports on the client side and host this report on the BOE Server. This is suitable for smaller queries but for large reports there could be performance issues. There are ways to generate more efficient queries though use of sub-reports to run one query after another with parameters to limit the results. Your reports can then be hosted on the enterprise server and these would then be available to anybody with a web browser.

3. You could also use Xcelius to report on your Universe through Query as a Web Service and to report on your Web Service through a web services component. Unfortunately you cannot combine both web services in one web service so your join between the two sources will have to be done on the client side. You can host your Xcelisus dashboards on the enterprise server though and these too would be available to anybody with a web browser.

Best of luck with your project.

Pat