Classic FTW!
De Nederlandse BI Podcast – episode 1
Cool, the first episode of our new De Nederlandse BI Podcast (The Dutch BI Podcast, ideas for abetter name are welcome) is now available on Podbean. Besides myself we have @konijnenburg, @pieter_hendrikx, @hyronimous and @wouter_g in this virtual round table.
Check it here or use the Podcast player below to listen. You can subscribe in iTunes through this link.
By the way for the international visitors: The language you hear is Dutch, so good luck!
SAP HANA Studio for Mac
Who would have thought. A full featured native Mac version of a SAP development tool. Well, it’s here now. Check this page for the download of SAP HANA Studio Developer Edition (version 1.00.56) for Mac OS X.
Please please please let this be the first of a whole range of MacSAP apps! Having to fire up Parallels every time I want to use SAP GUI or one of the BusinessObjects tools is soooo annoying. SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio would be a nice candidate to be ported next.
https://twitter.com/schmerdy/status/350099669398978562
Free Data Export add-on for SAP Dashboards
I want to share a nice little add-on for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards that is created by SAP BI consultant Ivo Moor and I just found out about. It is called the Data Export add-on and it lets you export data from a spreadsheet cell range to the clipboard, a MS Excel spreadsheet or both.
The add-on itself is a button-like component, which appearance is fully customizable just like we are used from the standard components in SAP Dashboards. You can also bind the default file name for the export file to a cell in the spreadsheet (and thus make it variable with an Excel formula).
Best of all is that you can use this component for free. Check this site to download the add-on and for more information on obtaining a free license key.
SAP Design Studio and Conditions
I got an email this week from a SAP BI developer about an issue with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio. He is trying to filter a set of data in Top N categories, for example to get the 10 regions with the highest sales numbers (Top 10).
Unfortunately, in Design Studio we can only create filters on characteristics/dimensions (Vendor, Customer, Region) and not on key figures/measures (Sales numbers). In BEx Analyzer and SAP BusinessObjects Analysis the Conditions options does in fact provide this exact functionality, see the screenshot below.
These Conditions can be defined in BEx Analyzer and Analysis, but can also be pre-defined in the BEx Query Designer. Luckily there is a way to use these pre-defined conditions in Design Studio and even change their condition value!
First we’ll have to go to BEx Query Designer and create a Condition in the query. Choose a key figure and an operator.
Personal Intelligence: BI on yourself
This post was initially published on the Interdobs blog.
In the world of Business Intelligence (BI) we try to figure out what the state of an organization is and how we can make it work smarter. We can measure its business pocesses, transform this data into information and take appropriate actions. To support this we can use a toolset like the SAP BI portfolio, which provides a platform where information can be collected and combined (the data warehouse) and a reporting environment in which this information can be displayed with for example analysis reports and dashboards.
Until a few years ago this kind of technology was only available for (large) companies. But, nowadays we do business intelligence-like things in our own home. Let’s call this Home Intelligence. For example there are a lot of applications available in which you can upload your bank transactions. The app wil arrange the income and expenses into different categories (groceries, mortgage costs, telephone charges). It is quite easy to manage your finances and find out where some money might be leaking. Another example is the Smart Meter, which can track your home’s energy consumption in detail. The effect of turning the heater up or down will be directly visible now.
