INTRODUCTION...

Welcome to this first edition of Praxatelligence!

This is your bi-monthly newsletter into the Business Objects (BO) world where you will find tips and tricks on using your BO solutions; important product updates and training information; the occasional special promotion; relevant
news on BO and forthcoming events and any interesting development in the BO sphere. We hope you find Praxatelligence practical and intelligent enough to keep
you up to date with the latest in the BO world.

In this issue, read what is happening in the Business
Objects world with ownership changes and new product announcements.

The Praxa Business Intelligence team continues to expand with new consultants on board and the appointment of a
new Business Development Manager.

The consulting team continues to increase its knowledge
with additional certifications and exams passed at the BO Enterprise and Crystal Reports levels. This allows us to
bring current knowledge and know-how to benefit our customers and prospects.

There are training opportunities to improve your knowledge of BI and its effective usage so I hope you will read on.

Kind Regards

John Simeon

BI Practice Manager

NEWS...

SAP to ACQUIRE BUSINESS OBJECTS

SAP AG and Business Objects S.A. announced that the companies have reached an agreement that will bring together two of the information technology industry’s leaders, resulting in an unmatched offering for Business Users, enabling timely and accurate decision-making.

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GOOD AS GOLD

Did you know that Praxa is a Gold Certified partner for Business Objects? This means Praxa has to exhibit superior levels of successful implementations, capabilities and certification for Business Objects product & service offerings.

Not every professional services provider can attain Gold status. A Gold Certified Partner is required to meet rigorous requirements for certification and expertise. We have to demonstrate a superior understanding of Business Objects’ tools and technologies as well as mastering and supporting them in real world setting at important customer sites.   Through close engagement with Business Objects, we have in-depth access to a variety of exclusive resources and early product information as well as planning tools and events to keep us up to speed on the latest Business Objects product developments and future direction.  Backed by our dedicated and certified professionals, our customers are assured of getting the best out of these best of breed product solutions from Business Objects.

Praxa is also one of only a handful of Business Objects’ partners in Australia to have dedicated Migration Specialists. To achieve this unique credential, the partner must meet a number of tough technical requirements that ensure they have the knowledge and skills to support customers with their migration project.

So call or email us when you have any Business Objects’ licensing, upgrades, maintenance issues and/or business intelligence development requirements. You are sure to be treated as good as gold.

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CRYSTAL REPORTS 2008

Defy the Laws of Reporting

Business Objects is launching a new kind of reporting solution that will put new power in the hands of business users. Crystal Reports 2008 is a powerful, dynamic, actionable reporting solution that helps end users design, explores, visualises, and delivers reports via the web or embedded in enterprise applications. The editions include Developer, Professional, Standard and Server.

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Watch & Listen To The Leading Web-Based Query-and-Analysis Tool in Action

Did you know that BusinessObjects' Web Intelligence is the leading Web-based query-and-analysis tool? It's designed to provide business insight to a large number of users in an intuitive environment on a scalable platform.

Web Intelligence provides end-user insight through self-service information access, exploration, and interactivity.  

Watch & listen to the demos and find out why the Web Intelligence is so powerful by clicking one of the links below:

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Take Me To The Ad Hoc Demo Now | Back To Top |

Product & Technical Update...

BusinessObjects Edge Premium Launch

Introducing the Premium edition of the Mid-market product line which is now available for mid-sized organisations.
Customers can now receive an end-to-end Business Intelligence product that includes reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, data integration, and performance management in a single solution priced and packaged for small and medium sized organisations.

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Crystal Reports

CRYSTAL REPORTS® is an intuitive reporting solution that helps you create flexible, feature-rich, and dependable reports – tightly integrating them into both thick and thin client applications. Crystal Reports provides you with:

• Powerful report designer: Report authors benefit from a complete set of layout and design controls to create highly formatted, interactive, and professional looking reports. Use the standalone designer or the design tool integrated within Visual Studio without leaving the development environment.
• Flexible application development: Developers can leverage cross-platform support for both Java and .NET. HTML is generated directly by Crystal Reports, allowing developers to focus on application business logic, rather than tedious, time-intensive hand coding. Separation of application development and report design tasks allow developers to focus on application development, while the report authors can focus on report design.
• Report management and delivery: Reports are previewed in HTML and published to the web for easy and controlled sharing – allowing for better business decisions at all levels of the organisation. Reports can also be exported and repurposed in the most popular formats like PDF, Excel, and RTF. IT can centralise the management of operational reporting while distributing the report authoring function to the lines of business.

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SERVICE PACKS :

Did you know that service packs are available for download? These single installation packages for updating Business Objects products are intended as maintenance-type updates for a wide audience and are designed to provide complete product updates with no custom option. Hot fixes up to a certain cut-off date are integrated into a Service Pack thus allowing Service Packs to be installed as a single unit – offering you greater system stability.

Download Now: Crystal Reports XI Service Pack 4 |

Download Now: Crystal Reports XI Service Pack 3 |

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SUBREPORTS (CRYSTAL REPORTS) :

A subreport is a report within a report. The typical uses for subreports are:

1. To combine unrelated reports into a single report

For example, you may want to create a single report that presents:

• Sales grouped by sales representative
• Sales grouped by item
  

While both reports deal with sales data, there is no real linear relationship between the reports. Subreports can be used to combine unrelated reports like this example into a single report. While the reports could be based on the same data set, they do not have to be. They could each be based on entirely different data sets.

2. Coordinate data that cannot otherwise be linked

Linking tables is rarely a problem. However, there are some circumstances in which you cannot coordinate data from different tables because the data does not meet the linking criteria.

3. To present different views of the same data within a single report

For example, you may want to show summary values at the top of a report and details at the bottom.

Method 1: creating the summary report as the primary report and the details report as the subreport. -> place the subreport in the Report Footer section

Method 2: creating the details report as the primary report and the summary report as the subreport -> place the subreport in the Report Header section

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CUSTOM FUNCTIONS (CRYSTAL REPORTS) :

Custom functions are business logic that is created to perform routine tasks in formulas and it provides a way to share and reuse formula logic. For example, suppose you are designing a series of reports from a database that stores department information with three-letter code names, but you want the actual department names to appear in your reports. Creating a formula to transform the data would work, but you would have to copy the formula logic from report to report until you had completed the series. It is much easier if you extract the logic that does the data transformation and save it as a custom function. You can add that custom function to each report without having to re-enter the text. Custom functions are designed for use across multiple reports and because of this a custom function cannot contain any database field.

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DATA SYNCHRONISATION
(WEB INTELLIGENCE) :

Web Intelligence allows synchronising data – merging data from multiple data sources into a single block in a document. For example, in your organisation you may use one data source for product line sales and you use another data source for customer details. Now, you want to present product line sales results and information on customer age groups in the same report. To do this, you create a single document that includes data retrieved by two queries with each query from a different data source and merge them on common dimensions. Merging dimensions is the process of creating a link between two queries based on an object with common values so that in effect the objects become one.

There are a number of rules to remember when merging dimensions from multiple queries:

• You can only link on dimension objects. For example, Store name and Store.
• The dimension objects do not have to have the same names.
• The dimension objects must have a common data format. For example, if one object is character-based and the other numeric you cannot link the objects.
• Although the actual values do not have to be the same, all data held in a data provider is case-sensitive, and therefore any common values must be in the same case.
• The format of the values must be the same. For example, FY04 and 2004 would be seen as two separate values. Extra spaces in some values can also mean that the objects cannot be merged.
• Any number of queries can be linked by common dimension objects.
• Any number of dimension objects can be linked between two queries.
• A measure object can be synchronised successfully only to the lowest level of detail that is common between two different data sources. For example, a query with Year can be linked with another query with Year and Month. The synchronised block is only able to display data at Year level, however.

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Crystal Reports XI
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Dashboard and Visualisation
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Data Managers
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Query and Analysis
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