automate change management in sap businessobjects

Automate Change ManagementAutomate Change Managementin Your SAP BusinessObjects Environment

Presenters:Murali Pabbisetty, Partner – Saama TechnologiesTony Thorpe, BI Solutions Architect – MincomTim Beaver, Process Architect – ACS, Xerox Company

Agenda

• Saama Universe Management Tool (10 min.)

o Introduction o Product Featureso Use Caseso Roles Mapping

• MINCOM and ACS Case Studies (15 min.)

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• MINCOM and ACS Case Studies (15 min.)

o Universe Merge Process – The Challengeso Merge Process prior to UMTo Merge Process with UMTo Benefits of the UMT

• Demonstration (30 min.)

• Q&A (5 min.)

About Saama

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• Founded 1997• Focused, pure-play BI provider• Services, software & unique, innovative

IP-based solutions• Experienced leadership team and senior

Board of Advisors• Strong strategic partners• Blue-chip client list• Head Quarters – Campbell, CA• Offshore Development – Pune, India

FocusedTrustedExperiencedPassionate

Process

Universe Change Management

Risk Assessment

ComplianceImproved

UMT – Complements Designer and LCM

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Process Enablement

Assessment&

Mitigation

ComplianceImproved Efficiency

Universe (Core Meta data for BOBJ)

EPMEPM DeskIDeskIWebIWebICrystalCrystal

UMT – Complements Designer and LCM

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Universe (Core Meta data for BOBJ)

RichClientRichClient

DeskIDeskIWebIWebICrystalCrystal

Product Features

Bulk

Report Impact Analysis

Compare and

Merge Universes

Universe

Move and

Difference Logs

Zero Foot Print

Totally SDK Based

Flexible Equality and

Move Rules

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Bulk Update

Properties

Switch Universe

Universe &

ReportDocument

UniverseVersionControlDB

Changes Update Comprehensive

CoverageOptimal

Performance

Automated Change ManagementAutomated Change ManagementUniverse and Report ConsolidationUniverse and Report Consolidation

Easy content upgradesEasy content upgradesFaster Adoption of the solutionFaster Adoption of the solution

UMT Business Benefits

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Difference & Change AuditDifference & Change AuditReporting Reporting Impact Impact AuditAudit

Impact Impact AnalysisAnalysisVersion Version ControlControl

Bulk Bulk Update PropertiesUpdate PropertiesParallel Parallel DevelopmentDevelopment Risk

Mitigation

Use Case #1

Accelerating Universe Enhancement Cycles

Challenge: Identifying, validating and moving new enhancements into production can be a timely, disjointed, and costly process.

Benefits: Users have a visual interface through which they can:

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interface through which they can:• Identify the exact set of

changes and related impact • Track and manage changes• Manage version control

Use Case #2

Parallel Universe Development

Challenge: Only one developer can work on a universe at a time.

Benefits: Multiple developers can work in parallel, enabling:

Accelerated development time

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work in parallel, enabling:• Accelerated development time• Improved accuracy (cut-and-

paste is error-prone)• Ability to manage work by

development efforts by specific skills and access levels

Use Case #3

Universe Updates with DB Schema Changes

Challenge: Identifying and extracting physical schema changes is a manual process.

Benefits: Developers can automatically update a universe with db schema changes, enabling the ability to:

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db schema changes, enabling the ability to:

• Identify the exact changes to the physical schema and their impact upon the existing infrastructure

• Log additions, modifications and deletions to the physical schema

• Visually update the universe with the above changes

• Generate use logs and manage version control

Roles – Feature Mapping

Administrator Univ. Designer Report Dev Biz Analyst

Compare & Merge

Move & Diff Logs

Unv & Report Documentation

Version Control

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Version Control

DB Changes Impact

Switch Universe

Bulk Update Properties

Report Impact Analysis

Case Study 1 – Mincom, Australia

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We go to the ends of the earthfor our customers.

Introduction to MincomA Saama UMT Case Study

Introduce the “new” Mincom – Opportunity to talk about what’s changed, and what’s good about the things that have stayed the same

Universe Merge Process – The Challenges

• Mincom’s Universeso Very largeo Must support customizationo Customers can receive between 10-20 universe updates per year

• Mincom’s BO merge processo Unsupported

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o Unsupportedo Needed complete rewrite for BO XIo No visibility of changes – risky

• Reviewed Saama UMTo for internal universe developmento for customer mergingo suitable for both purposes

Mincom is a global EAM software supplier with particular market strength in the Mining, Public Infrastructure, Government and Defence industries. As part of the flagship EAM product – Ellipse, Mincom bundle Business Objects as the reporting and BI tool. Mincom ships approx 300 Web Intelligence reports and 28 universes as part of the reporting solution and these universes must cover the four major areas of the Ellipse solution (Asses and Work Mgt, Purchasing, HR and Finance) and as such are large complex universes. We needed a way to allow customers to make modifications to the universes as part of customisation and yet allow them to accept new releases of the universes from Mincom and still preserve their modifications, hence we needed a merge process. As part of the initial deployment using BO 6.1 and 6.5 Mincom wrote a merge script that manipulated the universe repository tables directly via SQL statements, not only was this unsupported by BO, but due to the changes in the XI platform it would no longer work as the repository tables no longer existed. We faced the prospect of writing a tool from scratch using the Designer SDK which would have been a very large undertaking and instead we reviewed Saama’s UMT. We found the UMT to be exactly what we needed and we are able to use it as part of our internal development processes as well as our Customer Merge process. Not only does the UMT perform the merge on our large complex universes accurately, the GUI enables our customers to have much greater visibility of the changes as well as the ability to either automerge or selectively merge changes and be clear in what has changes and hence what testing is required.

Merge Process: Prior to UMT

• Time consumingo Need to create separate

merge repositories• Black-box

No visibility of what will be changed

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o No visibility of what will be changedo High-risko Lack of trusto Massive report regression testing effort

The old Mincom merge process was time consuming for customers, they needed to create separate merge repositories. Running the merge was a batch process with no user interface and no visibility of the changes made.

Merge Process With UMT

• Simple processo Just open the UMT tool, pointo to the old and new universeso Run the compare process

• Graphical User Interfaceo Use the GUI to identify and review the differences

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o Use the GUI to identify and review the differenceso Choose to selectively merge or AutoMerge the changes

• Users now have trust in the merge process and can massively reduce the regression testing effort

The Saama UMT provides a simple process but more importantly provides full visibility of the changes of every object and individual property that has changes, been added or deleted from a universe. Users now have confidence in the merge process and can reduce the time and cost of regression testing.

Benefits of the UMT

• Simple quick processo Large time savings (several hours)for customers when receiving updated universes from Mincomo Savings realized with every universe update

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update• Visibility provides risk mitigation

o The detailed graphical visibility increases clarity, reduces risko Large time savings in regression testing as a result

• What could take few months now reduced to 2-3 days

There is a large time saving just in the simplicity of the UMT process compared to the old repository-based merge process. The biggest cost benefit is in the visibility of changes enabling the customer to more selectively regression test reports instead of doing a blanket retest of all reports linked to a universe.

Case Study 2 – ACS, Xerox

ACS Environment Overview

• One large vendor-provided

Split locally into 9 linked, customized Universes

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• One large vendor-provided Universe

• ~4800 objects• ~800 tables• ~1,120 conditions• ~200+ reports

Challenges - Universe Updates

• Universe (Metadata)• Version control of Universes is manual, error prone• No means to compare versions• Confusion and delays due to

multiple environments and multiple universe versions


multiple universe versions• No simple means of

determining effects of object changes

• Compliance • Cannot readily identify changes to universes or reports • Major difficulty to rollback to previous versions of

universe and reports• Tracking is manual

Challenges – Report Development

• Reporting• No documentation of reports linked to universe objects• Manually created and maintained reference materials• No means of searching for specific calculations or objects

• Integrated Data Dictionary


• Not easily created or maintained• Lacks linkage• Needed for developers and in

preparation for client “self-service”

Return on Investment

Universe Updates• Estimated savings of $17, 280 per year

Troubleshooting and Analysis – Reporting• Estimated $57,600 per year productivity gain

Monthly Scheduled Report Releases


Monthly Scheduled Report Releases• 7 new reports/30 report

modifications per release• 10% estimated productivity increase• Yearly productivity gains $149, 760

Total estimated Annual productivity gains: $224,640

UMT Evaluation Model

• Evaluation Period: 10 Days - From the point of Install

• Evaluation Key: Non-perpetual 10 days key – expires after 10 days

• Installation: Remote install to the client providing the application (.exe) file

• Demo: On installation – running 5 use cases with detail featuredemonstration

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• Support: Complete Support/ Maintenance model for evaluation for directprospect

• New Release: No new release/ Build or software upgrade will be providedduring the evaluation. Once the evaluation is completed a complete packageof UMT kit will be provided with access to new build/ support will beprovided.

• Please contact [email protected] to procure the evaluation copy.

Thank You

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Murali PabbisettyPartnerSaama Technologies, [email protected]

automate change management in sap businessobjects

Documents

o universe merge

india saamaconfidential

australia saamaconfidential

large o

universe update visibility

universe withdb schema

umto merge process

mincoma saama umt case