Business Objects Asks Intelligent Question
By Madan Sheina
September 2005
Excerpted from ComputerWire
Business Objects SA has launched an update to its flagship BusinessObjects XI platform which comes with a new user interface that makes business intelligence more question-centric rather than data- or report-centric.
The key themes around BusinessObjects XI release 2 revolve around simplicity (for end users), trust (of BI information), standardization (across all BI components) and investment protection.
But the most significant new feature is BusinessObjects Intelligent Question – which Business Objects officials are calling "a groundbreaking structured query interface."
The interface simplifies data access by allowing users to quickly construct business-driven "BI questions" by toggling on elements of structured English language question statements selected from predefined pull-down menus.
For example, users can create a business question like "Which of my customers bought widget X last month?" and then toggle in changes by simply replacing "last month" with "last quarter" or maybe add "top ten" in between "my customers".
Intelligent Question works directly against Business Objects' patented semantic data mapping layer, which exposes BusinessObjects universes (classes of business objects that are equivalent to dimensions and measures) to the Intelligent Question questioning layer.
Intelligent Question plugs into XI's enterprise-capable SOA architecture and is accessed as another BI service alongside others.
James Thomas, director of product marketing at Paris-based Business Objects calls Intelligent Question "a transformative innovation and a radical simplification for accessing BI information."
Thomas said the technology promises to bring BI to more enterprise business users without forcing them to learn yet another ad hoc query interface. "We're catering for the skills of 85% of corporate IT users aren't savvy using query and analysis tools today."
"Its more than just about putting a new pretty interface on reporting or analysis tools. Its designed for users that can't get past query panels."
What Business Objects has done here is to raise the level of abstraction for querying another level – allowing users to ask simple business-focused questions instead of issuing queries against data.
"It'll change the way in which BI questions are asked and answered," Thomas said.
Thomas however insisted that Intelligent Question is more than just a "Tonka Toy" interface for novice users. "We're not giving customers a dumbed down tool…users can get access to a lot of rich information but in a quicker and easier fashion."
"Intelligent Question taps into the same query processing power at the back-end…all we've done is simplify the front-end interface."
Thomas added that users can export the results of the question to tools like Web Intelligence for more advanced analysis and sorting. He added that Web Intelligence has also been enhanced to allow BusinessObjects universes to connect to both relational and OLAP data in a single report.
One benefit of having a free-form, yet highly structured query interface is to guide users into asking BI questions that always return answers. "This is different from other forms of natural language query interfaces where users where users can potentially ask wrong questions or questions that have no answers," Thomas said.
The other main enhancements in XI Release 2 center around data management, specifically to garner more user trust in data which has always been a sticking point for BI tools.
Release 2 bumps up XI's data lineage capabilities to trace data back to source systems. Included is a brand new Metadata Manager tool that unifies and surfaces report metadata from wherever it resides – for example, which universes the data is derived from, what the transformations are, how formulas are created, etc.
Metadata Manager also provides downstream and upstream impact analysis, for example highlighting what reports are impacted whenever there is a change made to its underlying data or related reports.
"Data transparency is something that our users have increasingly been asking for, especially in light of new corporate compliance issues," Thomas said.
XI Release 2 also comes with a new graphical design tool called BusinessObjects Composer that links closely to Data Integrator (Business Objects' data integration tool) to simplify the implementation of ETL processes. Composer provides a single interface for mapping ETL jobs, refining business rules and cataloging project documents and definitions. Since each ETL job created automatically captures all the business processes and technical definitions, it can reused across different projects.
Other features include a new tool for the lifecycle management of BI and automated migration tools.
Business Objects is now pushing the notion of lifecycle management as a way to lower the costs running enterprise BI. This is really an extension of XI's Import Wizard for creating an XML map of the core system repository (users, groups, documents and security definitions, etc). This mapping can then can be distributed across multiple BI implementations or moved from development to test to production environments to aid in BI deployments.
Business Objects has also introduced automated migration tools to help get existing BusinessObjects and Crystal users onto XI. Thomas said that automated tools offer customers of BusinessObjects 5.1.4 and above and Crystal 8 and above product lines a "solid migration path to XI."
He also said that a conversion tool is available for customers that want to gracefully move off the full BusinessObjects client onto Web Intelligence.
Business Objects is hoping the Release 2 upgrade will continue to accelerate the momentum of its XI release which provides platform-level integration across all of BusinessObjects and Crystal end user capabilities. XI has pulled in more than $70m in license revenue in the first half of 2005, making it Business Objects' fastest growing product launch.
