Webi or BW 7.0?

[Former Member]

Hello,

After I have read the roadmap and many of the forum threads, it still not clear to me, Should I recommend new projects to develop their queries with WAD 7.0 or should they use WEBI? Should we start to migrate our old WAD 3.x reports to WEBI? I know that when PIONEER will be released there will be a migration tool from BEX queries but what will be the future for the WEBI reports which connected through Universe from the BW? After building a universe and connected the Bex Query to the universe i noticed we have to build the report again in WEBI. I'm sure it wont be the case with Pioneer.

Please Advice,

David

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

hi David,

Web Application Designer is a tool to create BI applications.

Web Intelligence is an adhoc reporting tool - so I am a little bit surprised because those tools don't fit the same user experience.

Pioneer is an OLAP client.

perhaps you can explain what kind of workflow and user experience you looking for and we can then go from there.

Ingo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ingo,

With WAD u2013 Web Application Designer we design the WEB report we made with the Query Designer. According to the Roadmap the replacement of WAD is Xcelsius, but with Xcelsius you can't do slice and dice, drill down and other things you can do with WAD reportsu2026 Xcelsius is a dashboard tool.

WEBI is the only tool I know to make WEB reports for analysis. In the roadmap it is under the category of Ad-hoc Query& reporting u2013 reminds me the BW query designer, you can design a query and when you run it in WEB format it is a ad-hoc report u2013 you can design the format of this ad-hoc report and save it as a template for all the ad-hoc reports using the WAD.

So there is no real replacement for the WAD. I found WEBI more like replacement for the WAD because I build it above Bex Query, Which already has the logic of the report. In the WEBI I only need to drag & drop the relevant characteristics and design the report.

David

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

Hi David,

Web Intelligence is an adhoc tool and you can't really fully compare it with a tool like the WAD. When you look at the roadmap there is Web Intelligence for AdHoc, BEx / Pioneer for the OLAP style reporting.

lets leave the WAD out for now and look only at the user experience for now. What type of reporting do you try to offer to the end users ? Is it more like a BEx Analyzer style reporting ?

Ingo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ingo,

You can also cant compare WAD which has the functionality of drag&drop, slice and dice, RRI.. With Xcelsius which has only filter and what if.

Yes, I'm looking for a tool like a BEx Analyzer style reporting.

Thanks,

David

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

Hi David,

in case you looking for the OLAP style reporting then the Pioneer project would be the right choice.

Ingo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

so for now we should continue working with the Bex+WAD knowing that in a copule of years we will have to do another upgrade to the reports....

Will the pioneer also cover the WEB reports for detail analysis? (Drill down,slice and dice,RRI,...)?

What will be the future way to use WEBI? Will it also be based on a Bex Query through universe? and if not, will it be possible to migrate these reports to work above the new future connection?

Thanks,

David

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

Hi David,

take a look at the roadmap here on SDN for the integration roadmap

ingo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ingo,

After reading the roadmap againu2026

Will pioneer have the ability to combine several Bex queries (or may be in the future it will be pioneer queries) into one Web report? Will it be possible to add to this WEB report graph,list box, checkboxu2026 ?

Thanks,

David

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

Hi David,

that level of detail is not available right now. There is a detailed FAQ available on the roadmap but the level of detail you looking for is not available right now.

Ingo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I've finally found an answer:

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/business-objects-for-sap-faq

"What is SAPu2019s and Business Objects future offering for Dashboards?

Xcelsius will continue to be the tool of choice for the creation of Single, standalone dashboards and as the visual content creation tool for the desktop or portal page. For the creation of Composite dashboards that combine multiple BI content types, Xcelsius should be used in conjunction with Business Objects (BOBJ) Dashboard Builder - for non-SAP Netweaver customers or customers that have deployed the InfoView portal - ; or with SAP Composition Environment (Web Page Composer, Visual Composer) for those customers that have deployed the NetWeaver platform.

Some of the enhancements planned for Xcelsius future releases include:

- Enhancements to encompass functionality from BEx Web Application Designer, in particular data binding functionality with SAP NW BI.

- Integration with Pioneer. It will be possible to build Xcelsius dashboards seamlessly on Pioneer analyses.

- Improved data access to directly use BEx queries and query views with BI Consumer services just like the NetWeaver BI BEx tools do in NW BI 7.0.

Xcelsius is available now as a premium offering to SAP NW BI. Connectivity works through "query as a service", based on the Business Objects Universe. Beyond NW release 7.0 EhP1 only very limited enhancements to BEx Web Application Designer are planned. BEx WAD will remain in the NW offering as a base solution. SAP and Business Objects will provide a service-based offering to move from SAP NW BI to the Business Objects premium offering "

So the replacement of WAD will be the Xcelsius which will be improved to work directely against pioneer as WAD is today and will be enhanced with data binding functionality.

David

[former_member191838]

Hi David,

XCE is definitely the right choice if you want to build visualizations or a presentation layer on top of your BI data but it's not going to be used to build analytical apps with heavy analysis functionality (pivoting, slicing & dicing, complex filters, complex hierarchy support). You can do that with WAD and it will be the task of Pioneer to pick up that specific WAD use case.

Pioneer can be used as an ad-hoc OLAP analysis client but what is a lot more important for many SAP customers it can also be used to build/design OLAP workspaces. Those workspaces can be compared to highly interactive BEx WAD templates. Actually you will be able to embed BEx WAD 7.0 templates into a Pioneer workspace as an additional alternative. Over time Pioneer itself will be equipped with a WAD-like Design SDK to build OLAP apps.

I cannot give you more details now but look out for announcements and Pioneer presentations at Sapphire and later in the year TechEd.

Best,

Eric

Director, Pioneer PM

SAP

Edited by: Eric Schemer on Apr 29, 2009 4:28 PM