The versions of Business Objects

Like me, you probably get a teeny tiny bit confused with the various versions of Business Objects.

So, let's list them :


When I first ran into Business Objects, it was at version 5. That was back in 2003, but version 5 had been around for quite a while by then.

Version             DeskI             WebI
5.0                      Yes (5.0)        Yes (2.7 and 2.8)



Then, some time later, I had my first encounter with version 6


6.0                      Yes (6.0)        Yes (6.0)
It was quite buggy -- a very telling fact that you have version 6, is when you go to Data > New Dataprovider in a blank document and you only have one (non-functional) radio button.

Later on, version 6.5 was introduced -- it was much more stable

6.5                      Yes (6.5)        Yes (6.5)
This version, to me, is still the reason why so many people use BusinessObjects. It's stable -- both the WebI version and the DeskI version are rock-solid.

Then, Business Objects, the French company, bought Crystal Reports. Some time later, they brought out version XI. It was a new WebI and many people were confused, since it didn't include a DeskI of BusinessObjects.

XI                      No         Yes (XI)

Of course, this could not remain for long, and some time later, they brought out version XI R2

XIR2                      Yes(XI R2)         Yes (XI R2)

In fact, from this time forward, we started talking about Desktop Intelligence.
XI R2 was a bit limited -- linking dataproviders didn't work, ranking didn't work yet.. so, no surprise, soon thereafter we had XI R3

Version                  DeskI                 WebI               Rich Client
XIR3                      Yes(XI R3)         Yes (XI R3)    Yes (XI R3)

It still included a DeskI version, but from this point onwards, new features were included in WebI and not in DeskI. Point and fact : Tracking. WebI came with a feature that allowed you to see if a piece of data had changed since last refresh. So, anything in red had descended, anything green had increased and anything with a line across it had vanished.

XIR4                      No         Yes(XI R4)

And now, since December 2010, we have BI4 as Business Objects XI R4 is referred to. It no longer includes Desktop Intelligence although there is a plug-in that exists, to allow DeskI XI R3 reports to be published onto Webi XI R4.

Cheers

Peter

The two most recent items (Business Objects)

This is going to be an easy one. Just a tip.

Let's assume, you want to know information for the two most recent pieces of data. Issue is, how do you get those most recent ones.

First, you need a measure -- based on a date.

Year([your_date]) this will get you the year, which is more than unique enough.
+Monthnumberinyear([your_date])/12

to the year, we add 1/12 of our month.

+daynumberinmonth([your_date])/31

and to that, we add 1/31 of the day.

The thing is, we don't want

15/March/2012

to be bigger than

1/April/2012

if we divide, we end up with numbers that stay in proportion.

An alternative, and probably an even better way to do this, is to multiply:

(Year([your_date])*10000) +    'that gives us 20120000
(Monthnumberinyear([your_date]) * 100)+   ' that gives us 201212
daynumberinmonth([your_date])  ' that should make 20121224

Interesting, it keeps the date readable. Which is always useful.



So, now we have our measure to base our ranking on -- now it's easy to get the two most recent ones isn't it.

Cheers.

Peter