{"id":12182,"date":"2010-12-13T17:26:27","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T16:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=2695"},"modified":"2021-08-17T08:47:35","modified_gmt":"2021-08-17T06:47:35","slug":"first-look-at-the-new-sap-businessobjects-exploration-views-prototype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/first-look-at-the-new-sap-businessobjects-exploration-views-prototype.html","title":{"rendered":"First Look at the New SAP BusinessObjects Exploration Views Prototype"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAP have just announced a new Exploration Views prototype<\/a>, based on the BusinessObjects Explorer platform. It builds on the core strengths of Explorer (easy-to-use interface and fast, in-memory calculations) with more options for business people to customize and share their own views of the data, without requiring help from IT.<\/p>\n

Exploration views is exactly what its name suggests: instead of having just a single view of the data in Explorer as you have in the current product, you can set up several different views at the same time, with user-defined alerts, and the ability to define filters that act on multiple views at the same time.<\/p>\n

\"exploration<\/a><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a quick walk through of some of the basic functionality.<\/p>\n

You first log on to the system, then either open an existing Exploration View or create a new one:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

Each view has several \u201csheets’\u201d, and each sheet can contain several charts or tables of data. To create a new chart, I choose the measures, dimensions, and type of representation.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It immediately shows me the requested data set:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To create an additional chart, I simple repeat the process, dragging the chart icon from the toolbox to the right-hand window (above, below, left, or right of the existing chart), and choosing a different measure, dimension, and representation:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At any time, I can use the \u201cExplore\u201d link in the top right to change any aspect of a chart (data choice, formatting, etc.)<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In addition to charts, I can define a table view of data, or a \u201cfilter control\u201d. I can define a new filter control simply by dragging it to where I would like it to appear in the workspace and choosing a dimension and type:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I can also add personalized alerts by choosing one of the charts, and adding the alert details:\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As I change the values chosen in the \u201cYear\u201d filter at the top, all the charts and alerts change to reflect this:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I can also use the top bar to access and change the global set of filters at any time, which change all the charts on the sheet by default (I can \u201clock\u201d individual views so they don\u2019t change, if necessary).<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Once you have the view, you can hide the toolbox, and freely change the sizes of each pane of the window.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

There are some lovely touches in the prototype \u2013 for example, it\u2019s very easy to select a value (such as \u201cAlberto Ascari\u201d, above), and then simply drag it to create a new window focused on that single value (which can then be easily modified to change to a different view, include a different dimension, etc.):<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

Using these basic building blocks, business people can quickly provide a customized view of the data, then share it with others using the \u201cshare\u201d button in the top right, which allows you to create a \u201cbookmark\u201d URL for your view and send it to others (subject to security settings).<\/p>\n

\"exploration<\/a><\/p>\n

Exploration Views is currently a prototype. SAP is taking a 2.0 approach to innovation, by providing early prototypes that can be downloaded and installed by anybody who is interested. Anybody who has feedback on the ideas and interfaces is encouraged to contact the Innovation Center team<\/a>. Once the feedback has been gathered, SAP will then work out how best to include these features in future versions of the product.<\/p>\n

I view the new Exploration Views prototype as element of the next leap forward in analytics, and it is different from existing approaches in two important ways:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Exploration Views is designed from the ground up to take advantage of the in-memory processing power of Explorer. As in-memory infrastructures become more widespread, there is less need to separate the \u201cdesign\u201d and \u201cconsumption\u201d aspects of the data access. Because each change to the data view is more or less instantaneous, we can give more power to the users to customize and control their own view of the data, without having a separate, complex \u201cdesign\u201d interface.<\/li>\n
  2. Exploration Views are focused on personal customization, and should be considered a complement to existing approaches that provide a shared \u201cdashboard\u201d view of data.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I\u2019ll explore these (important) themes in more detail in a future post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The new Exploration Views Prototype from SAP BusinessObjects makes it easy for business people to set up customized, interactive views of their data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[160,204,213,324,475,476,560,597,733,778,850,911],"class_list":["post-12182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bi","tag-business-intelligence","tag-businessobjects","tag-dashboards","tag-exploration-views","tag-explorer","tag-hana","tag-in-memory-processing","tag-memory-resident","tag-olap","tag-prototype","tag-sap"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/explorationviewscover.jpg?fit=668%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3au","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20583,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12182\/revisions\/20583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}