This was an SAP session at the ASUG BusinessObjects User Conference by SAP’s Ian Mayor. The room was standing-room only, like many of the sessions at this conference.
Figure 1: Source: SAP
An example in Figure 1 to insert multiple queries you need to use Excel formulas like HLOOKUP, VLOOKUP for XCelsius
He said this was easy to do in Design Studio where you can change the query on the fly
However it is easy to manage layout, formatting, and make it “look pretty” including font size, colors – XCelsius
Style sheets and scripting make things more complex in Design Studio
There are not as many components in Design Studio than XCelsius
Figure 2: Source: SAP
Figure 2 explains some key differences but even better is the figure in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Source: SAP
Figure 3 shows the data pipeline
When accessing data through the universe it is like Web Intelligence as it uses micro cubes as a data source, whereas if using the BEx query it uses the Query as a data source
Figure 4: Source: SAP
There was a slide that “style sheets are your friends”.
Create a standard style sheet file, standard, type title, if design standards change, change master file
There is no CSS editor, there are lots of good editors for free on the web (he showed enjoycss.com)
He suggested learning developer tools in browser
Figure 5: Source: SAP
The message for Figure 5 was “don’t fear scripting”.
The CTRL-SPACE wizard helps.
Figure 6: Source: SAP
Figure 6 shows how Design Studio scripting can be simpler than an XCelsius formula using Lookups
CSS tips (shown through a demo):
Use enjoycss.com
In Chrome, when testing CSS, disable cache in developer tools so you can see the CSS refreshed
Figure 7: Source: SAP
There was a brief discussion on this with a suggestion to leverage the SDK. To learn more I recommend attending SAP TechEd && d-code session EA 211 SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio SDK with former SCN member of the month Michael Howles
Question & Answer
Q: Why drop XCelsius, a product that has been around 12 years?
A: Encountered architectural issues with Flash and Excel model
Online Resources:
BI Tutorials: http://sap.com/learnbi
Online Documentation: http://help.sap.com/boad
Related:
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