Wednesday, May 31, 2017

SAP Convergence Strategy - Data Connectivity

The April 20, 2017, SAPinsider Q&A on the SAP BI Convergence Strategy has provided a nearly endless supply of blogging material, but this will be my last post on the subject. If you want to read the full transcript, go to the APOS On-Demand Webinars page:


So far, I've focused on the place of individual SAP products within the SAP convergence strategy (the merger of Lumira and Design Studio, what's new in SAP Web Intelligence, BOC), on the newest platform developments (what's new in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 SP4), and on the convergence strategy itself.

Now let's look at a topic that was a little less defined, but ever-present nonetheless: data connectivity.

As convergence reduces the SAP BI toolset, the need for greater connectivity grows, and the pressure is on to supply that connectivity. One of the registrants for the Q&A commented:

Will there be more emphasis on adding new features in the BI reporting/analysis toolset to support non-SAP databases? We see lots of new features and capabilities to better report off of SAP HANA and BW data, but not much related to Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, etc.

Another guest asked about row and cell limitations in Design Studio:

Design Studio has a row and cell limitation. We were hoping this limitation was removed with the convergence of DS and Lumira.

SAP's David Stocker replied:

In BEx and SAP HANA datasources, you can define what the limits are in the backend. For universes, we still have the same hard limit as in 1.6. We've not changed anything in that corner for 2.0. We do plan to revisit this in the future, now that we have the new velocity infrastructure.

Another guest asked about OLAP connectivity:

Hi Team, When would SSAS OLAP based universes or direct non-SAP OLAP connections be supported?

Merlijn Ekkel replied:

We already support various non-SAP OLAP datasources. Please check our Product Availability Matrix 

Another guest asked about BOC connectivity:

Our company is planning to move more to cloud rather than using on-premise, so my detail question is, how is SAP BusinessObjects BI Cloud able to access data on our company (within firewall)? Example, I have Crystal Report access Oracle database in my company, if I want to move that Crystal Report to SAP BusinessObjects BI Cloud, is it possible?

Henry Kam noted:

SAP BusinessObjects Cloud is able to access data within the firewall by utilizing the BOC Cloud Agent to import data into BOC… It is not currently possible to move Crystal Reports to SAP BusinessObjects Cloud.

Another guest:

When will Lumira support SSAS?

Merlijn:

Today we have no direct road map plans to support SSAS (or other OLAP datasources). Today the best option would be the APOS Data Gateway that solves the gap.

We thank Merlijn for his acknowledgement of how the APOS Data Gateway is leading the way with enhanced data connectivity for SAP BusinessObjects. Check out the available connectivity options:
What's on your data connectivity wish list?

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