BusinessObjects 6.

End-to-end BI with BusinessObjects™ 6.5 combines the industry-leading web query and analysis products
BusinessObjects 6.5:
with powerful performance management, analytic applications, and data integration. It
features best-of-breed technologies that are tightly integrated to deliver a complete end-
Industry’s best ad hoc to-end, enterprise-class BI solution.
web query, and
analysis BusinessObjects 6.5 delivers:

Integrated Improved ease of use for ad hoc query and analysis

performance Superior enterprise deployment options
management with Integrated performance management for the enterprise
dashboards and Expanded analytic applications coverage with Finance Intelligence
scorecards Increased data integration productivity and performance
Front-end integration with Crystal Enterprise 10
A complete suite of
analytic applications
Improved Ease of Use for Ad Hoc Query and Analysis
Enterprise-class data
Enhanced on-report analysis
integration
WebIntelligence 6.5 continues to enhance the ability for information consumers to
perform simple analysis quickly. WebIntelligence today provides end-users with
Front-end integration
powerful on-report analysis. With a simple mouse click over a table or chart, users can
with Crystal
sort or filter on columns and rows so they see only the data most relevant to them. They
Enterprise 10
can also add or remove columns on a report or even add common calculations such as
sum, count, average, percent, maximum, and minimum. This helps relieve report
developers from having to create multiple iterations of a single report to meet all user
needs, and insulates novice users from having to use sophisticated authoring
environments to perform common analytical tasks.

The new WebIntelligence 6.5 on-report analysis

capabilities allow users to:
Modify table format and fonts
Pivot rows and columns in a cross-tabular
report
Turn tables to charts and vice versa
Set a column as section

More powerful ad hoc query and analysis

WebIntelligence 6.5 dramatically improves ad hoc analysis with:
Exception highlighting, also known as alerters, allows users to set visual
indicators in their reports for out-of-range business conditions (e.g. sales
quantity < 20,000).
The ability to support the creation of reports that access data from multiple
sources: a user, who receives four related documents today, will be able to get a
single document with reports built from different data sources. This helps
having fewer documents to create, manage, and navigate. Additionally, this
will add more flexibility to data presentation.

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What’s New in BusinessObjects 6.5

WebIntelligence HTML report panel improvements

New features make thin client report authoring and querying even easier. Some of the enhancements include:
Intelligent caching that stores documents on the middle tier server to improve viewing times in
subsequent use by the same or other users.
Enhanced control over query filters including “and/or” nested query filters. This gives report creators
an easy-to-use and powerful workflow for responding to more complex business questions.
Complete keyboard navigation through the HTML report panel’s functions for maximum usability and
government compliance.

BusinessObjects full client enhancements

The web-enabled BusinessObjects Windows client provides integrated query and analysis for the desktop. To
maintain the high level of user satisfaction, the 6.5 version of this tool introduces support for new chart types,
such as horizontal bar charts. As well, it benefits significantly from the new semantic layer enhancements and
open standards support that will provide more flexible offline report building and faster report delivery.

Semantic layer improvements

Business Objects patented semantic layer, which empowers business users with ad hoc access to corporate data
without help from IT, has been improved in BusinessObjects 6.5. There are several enhancements to the way
BusinessObjects 6.5 query technique generates SQL and support native data sources. Some of these features are
targeted at improving performance while others allow for the creation of more complex SQL. Some of the
improvements include:
Derived tables for server-side processing: derived tables provide users
with the ability to compute advanced calculations (e.g., ranking and ratio
computations) on the database server as opposed to locally in a report.
They also leverage the database server power and create a nested SQL
statement in BusinessObjects Designer where the calculation is defined.
Derived tables can also be used for providing free-hand SQL or stored
procedure capabilities to the universe designer.
Dynamic generation of derived tables: to let universe designers control
SQL generation and the dynamic creation of derived tables,
BusinessObjects 6.5 introduces a new notion called table weight
boundary in Designer.
Manual control of table weight: by default, table weight is based on row count and designers have the
option to change this manually to help improve query performance. A new optional universe parameter
can now be added to activate this feature. Designers can also set the value of the table weight boundary
to generate derived tables. For example, if table weight is greater than the table weight boundary then
the table name and its associated WHERE clause will be pushed into the FROM clause of the query.
Index awareness for faster performance: index awareness available in the BusinessObjects 6.5 Windows
client optimizes the SQL generated when prompted with a list of values (LOV). The LOV is indexed and
instead of using the base lookup table for the LOV, the SQL uses the value of the index behind the
scenes and optimizes the SQL by reducing the number of tables and joins required in the SQL statement.
Support for full outer joins and support for ANSI92 SQL syntax allows the query filters to be either in
the WHERE clause or in the FROM clause. These 2 syntaxes are both correct, but return different result
sets.
Improved SQL generation for list of values: the SQL generated for the LOV can use either the GROUP
BY or DISTINCT clause, depending on what is optimal for the database. In particular for Teradata, the
GROUP BY clause significantly improves database performance.
Advanced user-defined objects: BusinessObjects full client supports the notion of user-defined objects
that allow users to define their own query objects in addition to the objects exposed in universes. Many
controls currently exist in the user-defined objects dialog box, which prevent power users from entering
advanced syntax. With the BusinessObjects 6.5 full client, power users will be able to create user-defined
objects using the new CASE function that will translate to an IF THEN ELSE statement at the database
level.

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What’s New in BusinessObjects 6.5

Support for Teradata macros: Teradata macros return a result set that can be used in a report. With the
6.5 release of BusinessObjects full client, users will be able to create a data provider based on a macro
through the Stored Procedure dialog box.

Superior Enterprise Deployment Options

BusinessObjects 6.5 delivers increased scalability, improved performance, and reduced administration and
maintenance, while helping organizations leverage their existing infrastructure components. This all leads to
lower system total cost of ownership.

Scalability and performance

With the goals of enhancing both scalability (the number of users supported on a system) and performance (the
amount of time for an action to be completed) there are many improvements in BusinessObjects 6.5. At a high
level, BusinessObjects 6.5 optimizes the grouping of processes by user onto a given node within a cluster. This
optimization reduces the overall number of steps required for processing a task from start to finish, makes fewer
system calls between components, and reduces network traffic. As deployments grow in size, performance is
always a critical factor, as more and more users’ process documents on the BI system. BusinessObjects 6.5
provides enhancements that will result in optimized server processing, leading to better scalability and
performance.

Platform development and administration enhancements

Customers and partners can use the BusinessObjects 6.5 platform development enhancements to further
integrate the Business Objects technology into internal systems and build custom solutions.
The Administration SDK includes document and universe resources management that enable
resource administration over the web.
To allow for more flexible, often distributed system administration, BusinessObjects 6.5 introduces a
new Web Supervisor, which allows IT to manage users via a browser.

Platform deployment enhancements

A number of enhancements have been brought into BusinessObjects 6.5 in order to help customers deploy in a
multi-lingual environment as well as leveraging their existing hardware assets. They include:
Expanded multi-lingual deployments support to include
double-byte languages
Direct Unicode data access
Support for multiple instance deployments on a single
UNIX server for greater use of the hardware assets that
organizations already have in-house
An enhanced BusinessObjects Auditor that provides end-
to-end impact analysis and system monitoring with Data
Integrator.

Open standards and integration

Users in the BusinessObjects 6.5 repository can be
automatically synchronized with single sign-on (SSO)
security systems. This is accomplished by mapping SSO
users to groups and profiles in the BusinessObjects 6.5 repository. Authentication with SSO systems
enables the use of SSO profiles and roles. This helps streamline user management as user creation and
deletion can now be done in one place. The SSO supported with this release is Netegrity SiteMinder.
With the BusinessObjects 6.5 BI clients (whether the BusinessObjects full client or WebIntelligence),
users are able to export report rendering (data and report structure) to XML for a more complete report
exchange. This will make it easier to integrate with other applications that can use XML as an input
mechanism.

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What’s New in BusinessObjects 6.5

Integrated Performance Management for the Enterprise

BusinessObjects 6.5 makes it even easier to deploy personalized dashboards and scorecards. In the area of
performance management, the focus is on innovation, flexibility, and integration. Enhanced visualization for
strategy maps, geographical maps, and metric trees are now possible. Advanced metric features such as
publishing, collaboration and manual entry are provided as well as alerting based on the status of a goal.
BusinessObjects 6.5 performance management products are now more easily accessible through the InfoView BI
portal interface while also providing standards-based ways to easily integrate with corporate portals.

Visualization features in Dashboard Manager and Performance Manager

Geographical maps that display metric status in
regions and allow multi-level drill down
Web-based strategy maps that allow users to drill
from strategy to detailed analyses
Metric trees that ease exploration and understanding,
allow for the definition of flexible navigation paths.
Dashboard text or HTML can also be added onto
dashboards allowing for more insight.

New personalization options in Dashboard Manager

Semantic layer-driven analytics allow users to build
interactive metric trends, speedometers, and traffic light analytics using existing Business Objects universes.
Another option is a personalized report-based dashboard that sources prescheduled and refreshed reports from
a user’s inbox. Each approach allows users to leverage row level security for personalization.

Advanced metric and goal functionality

Manual entry allows dashboard and scorecard users to define metric values as well as develop metrics
quickly with wizard-driven workflows
New goal monitoring methods allow users to define success as only staying within a goal threshold
Goals on sliced metrics can now be assigned to any user (for example, revenue goals by product)
Metric publishing allows users to collaborate through discussion threads around metrics and metric
slices as well as view historical comments

Set Analysis enhancements

Set Analysis allows organizations to define segments (or sets) and track the movement between these segments
over time. This analytic engine has been improved to allow help text tool tips to improve ease of use, an
increased repository maximum field length, partial roll back and refresh of dynamic sets, default Y/N
conditions to customer preferred settings, and a dynamic way to convert subjects.

Expanded Analytics Applications Coverage with Finance Intelligence

Finance Intelligence, a new application within BusinessObjects Analytics, includes six analytic modules:
Performance Analytics, Cost Analytics, Expense Cycle Analytics, Revenue Cycle Analytics, Accounts Receivable
Analytics, and Accounts Payable Analytics. Finance Intelligence helps organizations avoid multiple
spreadsheets and reports by providing centralized and
accurate financial data to business users in a way they
understand. Finance Intelligence helps organizations perform
financial analysis across all business operations. It also can
assist with compliance and auditing initiatives by providing
prepackaged analytics for cash outflows, supplier-customer
relationships, and approval trends. Users can even set up
rules and alerts to highlight financial problems and use a
dashboard to control information flow across finance teams.

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What’s New in BusinessObjects 6.5

Increased Data Integration Productivity and Performance

A key component of BusinessObjects 6.5, Data Integrator enables organizations to integrate data from multiple
systems to create and load high-performance data marts, data warehouses, and operational data stores. Data
Integrator 6.5 helps organizations achieve information accountability by delivering improved data quality,
continued BI integration and enterprise-class extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) performance.

Improved data quality

Embedded name and address cleansing
through Firstlogic integration
Data validation with interactive debugging
Impact analysis in the design environment

Continued BI integration
Rapid data mart development for Crystal
Reports customers
End-to-end auditing across the ETL and BI
environment
Metadata analysis improvements

Enterprise-class performance
Grid computing support for maximum
throughput and fault tolerance
Enhanced parallel performance and aggregation
Native integration with Oracle Changed Data Capture

Front-End Integration for BusinessObjects 6.5 and Crystal Version 10

BusinessObjects 6.5 provides a set of components that unify the report creation, application development, and
overall user experience for BusinessObjects 6.5 and Crystal Version 10 customers.
Common user experience: portal and dashboard integration components provide users with corporate
information for customers with both BusinessObjects and Crystal deployments to help make end users
more productive. This allows for single sign on and integrated search. Additionally, new web services
and report linking features make it easier for application developers to build powerful, integrated
business intelligence solutions.
Extended reporting power: data access and management is enhanced by extending the patented Business
Objects semantic layer to users of Crystal Reports®. Crystal Reports designers can create complex,
highly-formatted reports from their existing BusinessObjects implementations. And Crystal Enterprise
customers can build data marts from Crystal Reports scheduled instances so that customers can easily
move from operational to analytic reporting.
Enabling BI standardization: the integration
components provide new options so
customers can extend their current and
future investments in Business Objects
products while introducing new options that
lower TCO and enhance usability. For
example, by deploying report linking,
report developers can link related
information between reports for a guided
end-user navigation experience from all core
reports. All integration components are
available for registered and licensed
customers at no additional costs.

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 What’s New in BusinessObjects 6.5

BusinessObjects 6.5 Crystal integration overview

Unified BI portal and dashboard: With a simple
configuration setup, customers can view Business
Objects and Crystal Enterprise content within the
InfoView portal and Dashboard Manager. They can
also benefit from a single sign on and search across all
content for a seamless and more productive end-user
viewing experience.
Crystal Reports universe interface: The Crystal
Reports Universe interface combines the market-
leading report writer from Crystal with the powerful
and patented semantic layer from Business Objects.
Crystal Reports 10 users have a new data source to use for building richly-formatted, sophisticated
reports. When these reports are published to Crystal Enterprise, the information infrastructure that
handles broad-scale report distribution, scheduling, and management, they become a key component of
an enterprise reporting solution.
Unified web services: The single web services API is designed to access both Business Objects and
Crystal deployments. It allows developers to build XML-based web or desktop applications and portal
integration, and provide platform access for custom application development. Developers can access
content and build interactive web services-based interfaces once to improve productivity and deliver
more powerful, integrated applications.
Data Mart Accelerator for Crystal Reports: With Data Integrator 6.5, Business Objects has taken an
important step in extending the power of the Business Objects product suite to Crystal Reports users.
Many of these customers have chosen Crystal Enterprise to manage a wealth of historical knowledge
within regularly scheduled Crystal Reports that are currently serving as data repositories. Data
Integrator 6.5 and Data Mart Accelerator unlock the potential of this data for trending and analysis by
allowing organizations to rapidly build a data mart from their Crystal Reports documents. This helps
organizations obtain one view of their operations and analyze them to maximize enterprise
performance.
Contextual report linking: Based on an open programming interface, end users can seamlessly move
from virtually any report, including WebIntelligence, Crystal Reports, BusinessObjects, and Crystal
Analysis while remaining in context to the original report. This lets developers create guided
navigation paths from one report to another and provide an intuitive user experience.

Conclusion
BusinessObjects 6.5 is the industry’s leading suite of integrated business intelligence products that enables
organizations to track, understand, and manage enterprise performance. It provides customers with data
integration, web query and analysis, reporting, a complete line of analytic applications, and performance
management capabilities. BusinessObjects 6.5 delivers improved ease of use for ad hoc query and analysis,
superior enterprise deployment options, integrated performance management for the enterprise, expanded
analytic applications coverage, increased data integration productivity and performance, and front-end
integration with Crystal Enterprise 10. For further information on BusinessObjects 6.5, or any of our consulting
or education offerings, please visit our website at www.businessobjects.com.
www.businessobjects.com

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Business Objects owns the following U.S. patents, which may cover products that are offered and sold by Business
Objects: 5,555,403, 6,247,008 B1, 6,578,027 B2, 6,490,593 and 6,289,352. Business Objects, the Business Objects
logo, Crystal Reports, and Crystal Enterprise are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects SA or its
affiliated companies in the United States and other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks
of their respective owners. Product specifications and program conditions are subject to change without notice.
Copyright © 2004 Business Objects. All rights reserved.

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