correctly size your dashboards to prevent performance problems wednesday , march 20, 2013 4:45 pm...
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Correctly Size Your Dashboards to Prevent Performance Problems Wednesday , March 20, 2013 4:45 pm - 6:00 pm 118. Dr. Bjarne Berg COMERIT. In This Session …. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Correctly Size Your Dashboards to Prevent Performance ProblemsWednesday, March 20, 20134:45 pm - 6:00 pm118
Dr. Bjarne BergCOMERIT
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In This Session …
• We will look at how to size your BI environment, by doing a step-by-step sizing effort of a dashboard project and look a five real-world sizing examples
• Then we will conduct a structured walkthrough of compatible and required software components
• We will end by taking a quick peek at dashboard performance options with in-memory processing from SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator and SAP HANA
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What We’ll Cover …
• Sizing environment for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
• Core components of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects BI
• Compatibility Requirements• In-memory performance options• Wrap-up
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The Sizing Tool — Getting StartedSAP has provided a sizing tool for the BI environments. It is based on Flash and is actually a dashboard itself.
Download it: www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/1055c550-ce45-2f10-22ad-a6050fff97f1
This tool can help you size your SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 environments with a few key assumptions and inputs
Output Area (Sizing Results)
Input Areas (items and users)
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The Sizing Tool — Entering UsersFirst, you have to enter the estimated Active Concurrent Users (ACU) for the following user types:
•Information Consumers
•Business Users
•Expert Users
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The Sizing Tool — Online Help User Definitions
The tool provides online definitions of the user types and guidelines on how to determine Active Concurrent Users (ACU). This is defined as approximate 10% of the active users.
Many dashboard users in large organizations may be classified as Information Consumers. They may not wait five minutes between clicks, but typically do little drilldown and filtering.
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The Sizing Tool — Assumptions• The next step is to make an assumption on the size of dashboards• The sizing tool classifies small dashboards as having 25 rows in the result set, medium having 250, and large dashboards having 2,500 rows
Assumptions: The tool was based on supporting two queries per dashboard and benchmarked for accessing two relational data sources — One with 6 dimensions with 77,000 entries and 400,000 line items, and one with 6 dimensions with 7,000 rows and 40,000 line items
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The Sizing Tool — Output
• The output of the tool is measured in SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS). 100 SAPS is defined as 2,000 fully business processed order line items per hour.
• It is a measure that hardware vendors can use to decide which of their configurations can meet your performance requirements. All hardware vendors are familiar with this measure and this is what you will provide them when requesting a hardware quote.
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The Sizing Tool — Memory Requirements
The sizing tool also provides a sizing estimate for the hardware memory required for each of the tiers.
This is measured in Gigabytes
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The Sizing Tool — Terminology
If you get stuck on the terminology used in SAP sizing and performance benchmarking, there is a link to the SAP benchmark glossary in the tool
There are also performance benchmark and installation guides available on SAP Marketplace for individual software components
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The Sizing Tool — Saving Your Sizing Example
Your BI and dashboard sizing effort can be saved or printed from the tool and you can have many scenarios
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The Sizing Tool — Demo
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Functionality vs. Performance — What Wins?
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Types of Dashboards — Formatted Number BasedSome dashboards may have little navigation and be number- or key performance indicator (KPI)-based, similar to SAP Crystal Reports
KPIs
Static information
Basic graphing
of key numbers
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Types of Dashboards — Graphical Dashboards• Dashboards for the senior
management should be graphically oriented
• Consider using logos and images instead of text for this purpose
• Navigation should be very simple
• For senior managers, the ability to interact with the data (what-if), see performance numbers relative to plan, budgets, and prior years are critical functionalities
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Types of Dashboards — Linked to Web Services• Dashboards are most
useful when shared with others
• Power users can create great departmental dashboards that can be shared inside smaller organizational units
In this dashboard, the data is merged with Google maps and external news feeds. This makes the dashboard much more
interactive and interesting, but can kill any performance.
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These are dashboard objects that you need to consider carefully before employing
Dashboard Objects That Can Cause Slow Performance
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Excel Performance Considerations — What to Avoid
• The logic you build into your Excel spreadsheet is also compiled into the Flash file when you export it
• Since some “daisy-chain” functions are very time consuming, you should be careful not to add too many conditions in the data Lookup functions and conditioning that should be avoided include:
Lookups Mid strings (MID) Right and left strings (RIGHT/LEFT) Horizontal Lookups (HLOOKUP) Vertical Lookups (VLOOKUP)
Condition General conditioning (IF) Count if a condition is true (COUNTIF) Sum if a condition is true (SUMIF)
Complex logic and nested logic create large SWF files and take a long time to open. Try to keep as much of the calculations and logic in the query instead of the spreadsheet.
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The Sizing Tool — Companion Guide• With the BI sizing tool, there is also
a sizing companion guide written by Jason DeMelo
• This document explains how each tool was benchmarked and the assumptions made when building the sizing tool
• You can download it from:• http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-33126
Involve your basis team in the sizing effort and also make sure that the assumptions you made are realistic from a functional standpoint
(i.e., how complex and intensive are your dashboards)
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PC Hardware Requirements for Client Side: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 From a PC client perspective you need:Memory Minimum of 2.0GB memory
(really want more in practice) I recommend 4.0GB (or more if you can afford it)Processor Minimum of 2.0 GHz core (more cores the better)Disk Space Min of 3.5GB free space if you only install English Min of 7.5GB free space if you install all languages Screen Size Recommended resolution size is
Make sure you build dashboards on a standardized screen resolution and size so that everyone sees the same images
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Real-World ExamplesTool Area
Manufacturing Company
AirlinePharma
distributorPaper
companyRetailer
SAP BW BW Version 7.3 7.3 7.0 Enpk 1 7.3 7.0 Enpk 1Named Users (#) 192 503 168 109 309Concurrent Users (#) 7-8 30-35 26 11-14 22Simultaneous Requests (#) 5-10 4-10 4-20 3-8 5-15Named Users (#) - - - 63 46Concurrent Users (#) - - - 7 6-8Simultaneous Requests (#) - - - 2-3 7-10Named Users (#) 45 84 - ~30 1604Concurrent Users (#) 6 22 - 7 60-70Simultaneous Requests (#) 4-5 5-15 - 2-3 18-40Server Memory 16 GB 16 GB 8 GB 8 GB 32 GBServer Disk 100 GB 95 GB 120 GB 70 GB 230GBPC Memory (standard) 4 GB 2 GB 2 GB 4 GB 4 GB
PC CPUs (standard)2.33 GHz
(dual core)2.0 GHz
2.0 GHz (dual core)
2.3 GHz (dual core)
2.3 GHz (dual/quad core)
Portal version WebSphere SAP SAP SAP SharePointServer Operating System AIX Win 2008 Win 2008 Win 2008 Win 2008Flash version 11 11 10 11 11Database Version SQL express SQL express SQL express SQL SQL
9 8 8 7 9
Dashboards
Analysis
WebI
Hardware
Performance overall (1-10) *Subjective
Other
These are real examples from companies that have been using SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 for at least 6 months
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What We’ll Cover …
• Sizing environment for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
• Core components of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects BI
• Compatibility Requirements• In-memory performance options• Wrap-up
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The Different Tiers in SAP BusinessObjects BI
• First we have the application tier. This includes the Web Application Services, such as the Central Management Console (CMC) and the BI Launch Pad. SAP recommends adding a Web application server for each 500
ACUs and that at least 5GB heap memory is assigned and 900 threads are configured
• Next is the intelligence, or management tier, which includes the dashboard cache service, File Repository Service (FRS), and CMS Only the first File Repository input and output service pair
(FRS) to register in the CMS is the active pair. If you add more FRSs, these are assumed to be passive backups for fault tolerance and failures.
• Lastly, we have the processing tier. This include the Adaptive Job Service and the Processing Services for the various BI tools. Each BI tool has different memory and processor requirements
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The SAP BusinessObjects BI ScalabilitySAP BusinessObjects BI is highly scalable
If you have a high number of users, you can split the application, processing, and intelligence layers on separate hardware servers
You can also horizontally partition the processing and intelligence layers on several servers
Tier Components for Processing
Tier Components for Intelligence
If you split the Web application components on multiple servers, make sure you also deploy a hardware load balancer
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Dashboard Performance — Some Recommendations • You can scale the number of instances based on the Active
Concurrent Users (ACUs), and SAP has made some recommendations: The CMS can handle up to 500 ACUs per instance and you can
currently scale this to eight instances (will be increased in next release). You can add more CMSs if you see over 80% utilization of the CPUs.
The dashboard cache can handle up to 400 ACUs per instance and you can add as many instances as you want (no limitations), but you are unlikely to need more than one
The dashboard processing is normally one per machine with no limitations (the server automatically spawns and manages child processes). If you need more, add more instances.
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More Key Factors That Determine Dashboard Performance • Concurrent number of users during peak load times of system• Logical design of dashboards
Simple, complex, and incredibly complex Number of records retrieved by the dashboards
• Network capacity• Database speed of source data
• Number of instance This is used for spreading
service loads on multiple nodes • Number of CPUs and available memory of each server
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What We’ll Cover …
• Sizing environment for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
• Core components of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects BI
• Compatibility Requirements• In-memory performance options• Wrap-up
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The Components of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 The complete components of the BI landscape consist of a variety of software
Each of these components have their own requirements
We will now look at each of these
components and their respective size and
version requirements
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Compatibility Operating Systems: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Server Side• All server components only support 64-bit operating systems.
The mobile server is currently only supported on Windows operating systems.
• For others, the following versions are supported:
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Oracle/Sun
AIX 5.3 Power - TL
9SP3
AIX 6 .1 Power -
TL5
AIX 7.1 Power -
TL1SP1
Server 2003/2003
R2 and 2008 R2
x64 - SP2
Server 2008 R2 x64 - SP1
Solaris 10 SPARC -
Suse SLES 10 x86_64 -
SP2*
Suse SLES 11 x86_64 -
*
Red Hat EL 5 x86_64 - Update 2*
Red Hat EL 6 x86_64 - Update 2*
Business Intelligence platformAnalysis, edition for OLAP
Explorer
Web Intelligence
Crystal Reports- Enterprise
Crystal Reports 2011 (*3)
Dashboards (Xcelsius)
Mobile Server (*4)
64-bit BI Server
Products
IBM Microsoft Linux
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Compatibility: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and Database Servers• Microsoft SQL Server Express 2008 is included with SAP
BusinessObjects BI 4.0, but you may also use databases fromSAP, Oracle, Sybase, IBM, and MySQL
• The database is used for storing CMS and the audit repository
Using the SQL Server database that comes bundled with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 may save you a lot of money
VendorMySQL
AB
DatabaseIBM DB2
Workgroup Edition
IBM DB2 HANA MaxDBSybase Adaptive
Server EnterpriseSybase SQL Anywhere
SQL Server
ExpressMySQL
Version11g -R1 and R2
10g -R2
9.79.7; 9.5 and 9.1
SP 3&4 7.715.7; 15.5
and 1512.0.1 2012
2008 SP2/3 & R2
2005 SP3/SP4
2008 5.1
AIX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
Oracle IBM SAP Microsoft
Oracle DB SQL Server
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Compatibility: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and Application Servers
Sizing the application server is based on SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS) instead of CPU and Memory
Note: WebSphere use IBM Java SDK for all operating systems and v6 is not supported for Analysis, OLAP edition
AIX Linux Solaris Windows
Application Server Version Java Version IBM Java Sun JDK Sun JDK Sun JDK
Tomcat 6.0.20 and 7.0 Java 6
JBoss App. Server 5.0 and 5.1 Java 5 / Java 6
Java 5
JRockit 5.0
Java 6
JRockit 6.0
Java 6
JRockit 6.0
6.1.0.7* Java 5*
7.0.0.11 Java 6*
SAP NW CE 7.2 SP3 SAP JVM 1.6
SAP NW JAS 7.3 SAP JVM 1.6
10.3WebLogic
10.3.3, 10.3.4*, 10.3.5*, 10.3.6
WebSphere
Supported Java Application Servers
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• The application server handles the logic of BI 4.x and can run on a variety of hardware
• The supported Java application servers include:
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Hardware: Server-Side Requirements
• From a server sizing perspective you need: Minimum CPU
4 x 2.0 GHz Core CPU Minimum Memory of Server
Min of 8.0GB memory – 16GB recommended (but more based on number of users)
Minimum Disk Space If you only install English: 11GB Windows,
13GB AIX/Solaris, and 14GB for Linux If you install all languages: 14GB Windows,
15GB AIX/Solaris, and 16GB for Linux
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Compatibility: BI 4.0 and Web Portals• The Web Portal supported by SAP
BusinessObjects BI 4.0 is extensive and covers all major portal servers and their latest versions
Note: Microsoft’s SharePoint portal product only runs on the Windows operating system
Sever Version2010200776.1.56.17.37.010.3.4*10.3.210.310
* as part of 10.3.2
MS SharePoint (.NET 3.5)
IBM Websphere
SAP NW Enterprise Portal
Oracle WebLogic
Supported Web Portal Servers AIX Linux Solaris Windows
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Compatibility: BI 4.0 and Clients• Most Windows operating systems are supported by
SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x at the client side• All desktop components of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x
are 32-bit
Mac OS X is currently not supported except for the SAP Crystal Reports Viewer
Mac
Mac OS XWindows XP Prof. (SP3)
Windows Vista (SP2)
Windows 7 (SP1)
Server 2003 & 2003 R2 (SP2)
Server 2008 (SP2) & 2008 R2
(SP1)Dashboards (Xcelsius)
Web Intelligence Rich Client
Crystal Reports for Enterprise
Crystal Reports 2011
Crystal Reports Viewer 2011
Crystal Presentation Design
BI Client Tools – Client Components
Live Office
32-bit BI Desktop Products
ServersDesktop
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Compatibility: BI 4.0 and Web Browsers• There are various browser and Java requirements for
SAP BusinessObjects BI depending on the type of operating system you are using
• The Safari browser 5.1 is supported only by the Mac OS X operating system.• Internet Explorer 8/9 standards mode is currently not supported by BI Launch Pad. • For Firefox usage, you need the Extended Support Release (ESR).
Mac
Mac OS XWindows
XP Windows
VistaWindows
7Server 2003 &
2003 R2Server 2008
(SP2) & 2008 R2
Safari 5.1 (Apple 1.6)
Firefox 10* (JRE 1.6)
Internet Explorer 7 (JRE 1.5/1.6 for WebI)
Internet Explorer 8* (JRE 1.6)
Internet Explorer 9* (JRE 1.6)
Supported Browsers and Java Versions
Desktop Servers
PS: On server side, IIS is supported as Integration option in MS SharePoint V6 for Server 2003V7 for Server 2008V7.5 for Server 2008 R2
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Other Software Requirements
• To run the system correctly, there are several components needed on the client side
• While SAP BusinessObjects Explorer requires at least Flash player 10.1, there has been some issues with large Flash files in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
• For example, Flash v10.1 seems to be stuck in “initializing” phase when files are over 2 MB. This seems to be less of an issue for smaller files and we have seen no significant issues in version 11.
Windows Mac OS
Microsoft Office 2010
Microsoft Office 2007 SP2
Microsoft Office 2003 SP3
Adobe Reader 10.0
Adobe Reader 9.3.x / 9.4.x
Adobe Reader 9.0
Adobe Flash Player 11
Adobe Flash Player 10
Software and Version
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Product Connection BW 7.30 SPS 03+
BW 7.02 SPS 02+
BW 7.01 SPS 08+
BW 7.01 SPS 06+
DashboardsWeb IntelligenceCrystal Reports for EnterpriseDashboards BICS (NW BI Java)Analysis, edition for OLAP BICSDashboardsWeb IntelligenceCrystal Reports EnterpriseExplorerWeb IntelligenceLive Offi ceBEx Web Applications Integrated with BI 4Explorer BWA / HANACrystal Reports for Enterprise D2DCrystal Reports 2011 Directly to BW
BICS (transient universe)
OLAP Universe (MDX)
Multi source universe(SQL)
Compatibility — Connections to SAP NetWeaver BW• There are many ways to connect the BI tools to an underlying
SAP NetWeaver BW system• With SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0, the following BW versions
are supported
Dashboards can also be built on BW systems on SAP HANA through a relational universe if you have applied SAP HANA service pack 3 or 4
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What We’ll Cover …
• Sizing environment for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
• Core components of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects BI
• Compatibility Requirements• In-memory performance options• Wrap-up
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Why In-Memory Processing? Focus
Improvement20131990
216 Addressable Memory
4875x97.5MB/$
0.02MB/$
Memory
7796x389.32MIPS/$
0.05MIPS/$
CPU
Technology
722MBPS
5MBPS
Disk Data Transfer
144x
1000 x100Gbps
100Mbps
Network Speed
264 248x
Source: 1990 numbers SAP AG, 2013 numbers, Dr. Berg
Disk speed is growing slower than all other hardware components, while the need for speed is increasing
Source: BI Survey of 534 BI professionals, InformationWeek,
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In-Memory Processing — SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator (BWA)• BWA is a tool that has
been available for almost six years and is being used by hundreds of companies
• It can load data in-memory from SAP and non-SAP sources and you can build dashboards on the data using standard BEx queries and BICS connections (as covered earlier)
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An Example of an SAP HANA System We Installed Recently• The long-term idea with SAP HANA is to replace the databases under
SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP ERP with in-memory processing databases, instead of traditional relational databases
• This means much faster query response time and a smaller database
SAP HANA is an appliance that can be implemented fast, is cost effective, and can super-charge the data delivery and calculations in your dashboards!
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Looking Inside SAP HANA — In-Memory Computing Engine
BusinessObjects Data ServicesWe can also move the whole database that has the source data for your dashboards to the in-memory platform of SAP HANA. This makes the system much faster! (SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards can consume data from SAP HANA right now)
Vs.
Disk Storage
Data Volumes
Log
Volumes
Metadata Manager
Authorization
Manager
Transaction
Manager
Relational Engine
-Row Store-Column Store
Load Controller
SQL Script
Calculation
Engine
Replication Server
SQL Parser
MDX
Session Manager
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What We’ll Cover …
• Sizing environment for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
• Core components of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects BI
• Compatibility Requirements• In-memory performance options• Wrap-up
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High-Volume User Management and Access Control • Plan for a gradual rollout to a limited number of users• Keep the numbers comparable if possible
This will allow you to predict system loads and performance issues by stipulations from real performance data I.e., roll out to 50 users each week
• Simplified versions of high-impact dashboards may be created for casual users E.g., a dashboard with only one query and summarized data
with limited navigation and passing of variables• Create a hardware contingency plan and budget accordingly
Only in rare cases should you use a big-bang approach. Since user patterns are hard to predict,
this may cause significant performance issues.
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Where to Find More Information
• SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Sizing Estimator www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/1055c550-
ce45-2f10-22ad-a6050fff97f1• Evan Delodder and Ray Li, Creating Dashboards with Xcelsius:
Practical Guide (SAP PRESS, 1st Edition; 2010). • David Lai and Xavier Hacking, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
4.0 Cookbook (Packt Publishing, 2011). • Dashboard and Presentation Designer (Xcelsius) forum on SDN
http://forums.sdn.sap.com/forum.jspa?forumID=302• SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.x tutorials on SDN
www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/dashboards-elearning
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7 Key Points to Take Home
• Use the SAP Sizing tool for initial sizing estimates• Size your system based on concurrent users and SAPS• Use realistic data volumes, users, and dashboard complexity in
your assumptions• Use the SAP system guides on the SAP Service Marketplace, but
plan to operate your system at maximum 70% load for “spare capacity”
• Keep the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 environment on a separate stack from SAP NetWeaver BW
• Make sure the PCs have enough memory • Examine the “standard” PC of the users and developers; pay
attention to connectivity, screen size, and resolutions, CPUs, and all software release versions to assure compatibility
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Your Turn!
How to contact me:Dr. Bjarne Berg
Please remember to complete your session evaluation
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