Book Image

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook

Book Image

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook

Overview of this book

Xcelsius 2008 was recently included in SAP’s BusinessObjects 4.0 family, rebranding “Xcelsius Enterprise” as “SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0”. With features like flexible design and what-if scenarios, the powerful dashboarding software allows enterprises to make business decisions at a glance, and this book allows you to go far beyond the basics of these techniques. This cookbook full of practical and applicable recipes will enable you to use the full latest capabilities of Dashboard Design to visually transform your business data. A wide range of recipes will equip you with the knowledge and confidence to perform tasks like configuring charts, creating drill- downs, making component colors dynamic, using alerts in maps, building pop-up screens, setting up What-If scenarios, and many more.The recipes begin by covering best practices for using the Dashboard Design spreadsheet, the data-model, and the connection with the components on the canvas, later moving on to some from-the-trenches tricks for using Excel within Dashboard Design. The book then guides you through the exploration of various data visualization components and dashboard interactivity, as well as offering recipes on using alerts, dashboard connectivity, and making the most of the aesthetics of the dashboard. Finally, the recipes conclude by considering the most important add-ons available for Dashboard Design and enabling you to perform relevant and useful tasks straight away.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook
Credits
Foreword
About the Authors
Acknowledgement
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using Query as a WebService (QaaWS)


Query as aWebService (QaaWS) is a small but powerful tool in the SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise portfolio that allows us to create a query on top of a SAP BusinessObjects Universe and publish its results as a Web Service. This recipe shows you how to create such a QaaWS and how to consume the data in Dashboard Design.

Getting ready

First you need a SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise installation (with server and client components installed). Also, you need a Universe that is connected to an underlying database.

How to do it...

  1. Open Query As A Web Service and log on to your SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise server. You can find this application in the BusinessObjects Enterprise Client Tools folder.

  2. Click the New Query button in the upper left. Here you can enter a name for this web service and a description (not mandatory). Enter a name for your web service and click on the Next button.

  3. In this screen, we select the Universe we want to use. Select a Universe name and...