Business Intelligence on iSeries suggestions

[Former Member]

Sorry if this is already out here but I guess I'm not forming my queries very well today. Does anyone have any suggestions for Business Intelligence on the iSeries? Our SAP rep has suggested BOBJ Edge but I don't see any iSeries versions of that (Windows and Linux only). Has anyone used any of the BOBJ packages on the iSeries or something like Edge with connectors to the ERP system on the iSeries. I saw a few BW on iSeries threads. Is that the hot setup in iSeries world? What are the differences between BOBJ Edge and BW on iSeries?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Rick,

From what I heard...

As BOBJ products are not based on NetWeaver ABAP or JAVA, I am not surprised if you cannot find any iSeries version for it.

BOBJ is a powerful tool of integrating data from various sources (info insides and outsides of SAP), meanwhile SAP BW (based on ABAP stack) works very well with SAP ERP and other SAP products. So the question is where is the data source?

BOBJ is also strong on the presentation layer, and will be choice of the front-end tool.

Best regards,

Victor

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Victor,

The real question is "how do I get decent reporting out of my ERP system?" Our SAP rep, who does not give me great confidence, sold BOBJ Edge Professional to the powers that be. We are not really an SQL Server shop; we are a DB2/400 shop. This does not look like a good decision to me.

I am curious what others in my situation have chosen to do. Hire a full-time SQL server person? Hire an SQL server consultant and learn enough from them to take it over? The heck with BOBJ backend and switch the license to BW?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Rick,

I would collect info on "what kinds of reports are most needed for the business" (particular WM orders, costing info, HCM data, etc) and "what frontend reporting formats are expected/accepted", then discuss the options with BOBJ/BW consultants. Note that BW and BOBJ are not mutually exclusive with each other - you could have ERP->BW->BOBJ, in which BW provides predefined data transfer structure from ERP to BW, datacubes, queries, etc and BOBJ provides nice frontend tool for better data presentation. Meanwhile as infocubes/data are not physically in BOBJ side, the database maintenance work is not as demanding as ERP or BW.

Sorry that I am not an expert on BW or BOBJ...

Best regards,

Victor

[RSchmerbauch]

My understanding is that in most cases the heavy lifting is still done by BW, then Bobj takes it from there for the gui and spreadsheet functions that SAP Business Explorer was doing.

Another option for reporting with an i DB is IBM DB2 WebQuery. There is an SAP adapter for it available from the 3rd party company IBS.