BO interview questions and answers 5

SCHEDULING/PUBLISHING RELATED 48. How do you publish BO report? There are 2 ways of publishing BO reports on website 1) User who has publishing rights for a document can publish that document for other users. 2) Documents can be published via a scheduler for Business Object known as BCA or Broadcast Agent. 49. What is BCA? BROADCAST AGENT provides scheduled or batch processing of BUSINESSOBJECTS and WEBINTELLIGENCE documents. All the end user has to do is send a document to BROADCAST AGENT using BUSINESSOBJECTS or WEBINTELLIGENCE, and specify scheduling and distribution information. No understanding of the server configuration is required. BROADCAST AGENT lets users not only automate simple actions such as refreshing and printing documents, but control processing with conditions which trigger distribution when predefined events occur. Users can choose to publish documents to the repository, on a web server or on the server file system. Users with access to the repository can view documents that BROADCAST AGENT has processed in BUSINESSOBJECTS or WEBINTELLIGENCE. BROADCAST AGENT supports HTML publishing on the web, on channels and on your intranet or extranet. 50. What is WebI or Web Intelligence? WebIntelligence is a decision support solution designed to meet critical query, reporting and analysis needs over the World Wide Web and has features very similar to Business Objects. Like Business Objects, with WebIntelligence, you can access the data in your corporate databases or data warehouses from within your office, home, or around the world, using your corporate intranet, extranet, or the World Wide Web. How do you share the information? You can quickly and easily share the documents you have created with other users in your company, either by sending them directly to selected individuals or groups, or by publishing them as corporate documents. When you distribute documents in these different ways, you use the BUSINESSOBJECTS repository. The repository stores the documents you send so that other users can retrieve and view them. It also stores information about the documents it stores, such as name of sender, date and time, and also which users in the company have the right to retrieve and view a document. What about security? The repository is set up and administered by the BUSINESSOBJECTS supervisor. All of the rights you have as a user are granted by your BUSINESSOBJECTS supervisor using BUSINESSOBJECTS SUPERVISOR. The supervisor defines: The parts of the BUSINESSOBJECTS interface you can access. Your supervisor can restrict

the availability of BUSINESSOBJECTS functionality, such as access to certain menu commands. Your database connections The universes you can access for creating and editing queries Q. What are the different tools in Business Objects 5.1? (AG technologies) Whats new in BusinessObjects 5.1? Although not a major release over BUSINESSOBJECTS 5.0, BUSINESSOBJECTS 5.1 has some important new features. Save as PDF Add hyperlinks to reports Zero Administration BusinessObjects BUSINESSOBJECTS 5.1 can be installed in two ways: from INFOVIEW via an Internet browser from the product CD Q. Explain the Reporting features in Business Objects reporting tool? (AG Technologies) What data sources are available? BUSINESSOBJECTS let you access data from a wide range of sources. You can access data from Relational databases (RDBMS), such as ORACLE, Microsoft SQL Server, Informix and IBM DB2. Multidimensional (OLAP) databases, such as Microsoft OLAP Services, Hyperion Essbase, and ORACLE Express. Text files and spreadsheets Packaged applications such as SAP Virtually any data source using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) procedures. How do you access data sources? BUSINESSOBJECTS lets you access your data through a graphical user interface. You need no technical knowledge of the underlying data structures to get the information you want. What you do need, however, is knowledge of your business. To access a data source with BUSINESSOBJECTS, you build a data provider. The types of data providers supported in BUSINESSOBJECTS depends on whether you install BUSINESSOBJECTS from the installation CD or install BUSINESSOBJECTS via an Internet browser. Which are the different types of data providers? Queries on Universes Stored Procedures Free-hand SQL Personal Data files VBA Procedures OLAP Servers

 SAP Can all BusinessObjects users build data providers? You can build data providers only if you have purchased the REPORTER module of BUSINESSOBJECTS. Can you combine data from different sources in one report? Absolutely. With BUSINESSOBJECTS, you can build powerful reports with data from corporate databases which you can access using queries on universes, freehand SQL, etc., and data from your own spreadsheets, text files etc. Which data providers can you combine in one report? You can combine data from any BUSINESSOBJECTS-supported data provider with data from any other BUSINESSOBJECTS-supported data provider in a single report. For example, in a report that displays data from a query on a universe, you can build a new query on a different universe. You can also use a different type of data provider: a stored procedure, a free-hand SQL script, a personal data file, or an OLAP server. Linking Data Providers Linking data providers enables data from different sources to be computed in the same table, crosstab, or chart in a report. What situations require you to link data providers? BUSINESSOBJECTS automatically links data providers with a common dimension. Two dimensions in separate data providers are common when they belong to the same universe and have the same name. BUSINESSOBJECTS prompts you to link data providers if there is no common dimension between the data providers. Tip: If you simply want to add columns of data to a report, use the Edit Data Provider command on the Data menu instead of building a new query. This method lets you add result objects to the initial query; BUSINESSOBJECTS automatically inserts the new columns of data in the report or creates a new report. Purging and Deleting Data Providers Whats the difference between purging and deleting a data provider? Purging means emptying a data provider of its results, whereas deleting means getting rid of the data provider for good - an action which cannot be undone. So, why purge or delete a data provider? Purging reduces the size of a document, so is useful when you want to send the document to other users, or save it on a diskette, for example. You should only delete a data provider, however, if you are certain that you and other users no longer need it. Tip: You can populate a purged data provider by selecting the Refresh Data command on the Data menu. Note that this command refreshes all the data providers in the active document. Building a More Powerful Query The procedures described in the following sections enable you to build a more powerful query by controlling the data that your queries retrieve. You can: Define scope of analysis, which means that you retrieve data that you will later use for analysis in the report. Limit the query results to data that satisfies conditions. Sort data, for example alphabetically. Retrieve a specified number of rows of data. Eliminate duplicate rows of data from the query result.