BI runtime portal and federated approach

[Former Member]

what should be considered when deciding whether to use a BI runtime portal as an enterprise wide portal?

i know the sap best practice is to use the federated approach with consumer and producer portals but are there licensing issues to opening a BI portal to non-BI users? or is it just hardware and user volume factors associated with hosting an enterprise wide portal on a bi instance java engine?

there is nothing, that i can see, lacking functionality wise in the BI runtime portal to prevent it connecting to other SAP systems or even external systems.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

There are multiple factors that can drive using the Federated Portal. The first of these is there is a technical restriction that a BI runtime Portal can only connect to 1 backend BI system. There is a 1-to-1 limitation here and it is programatically restricted. Therefore, if you have multiple 2004s BI systems, you have to use a federated portal approach. In addition, think about this similarly to using multiproviders. Most people realize the value of only reporting on multiproviders, as they provide an abstraction layer for change. You can change your data model without having to redo queries. The federated portal provides this abstraction layer. You can make changes to the underlying Portal Runtimes. Also, your user management may provide reasons to use the federated portal, for example if you have ESS and a different set of users for that runtime.

In terms of connectivity, the Portal can connect to multiple non-SAP systems, so there are quite a bit of options. I laid out the major drivers here for the federated portal. See teh BI FAQ for more details.