BOE-XI WebIntelligence Tool (800,000+ rows)

[MJRBIM]

We are a CRYSTAL 10 shop that is now upgrading our CR and CE software to BOE-XI (R2) including WebIntelligence. I'm not a WebI head, so I thought I would ask for some Tek-Tips advice...

One of our users would like to use WebIntelligence to interrorgate a Universe that pulls from one large history table (800,000+ rows) in their ORACLE db.

What the are basically asking for is to give them "AD-HOC" access to the whole-table (800,000+ rows) in WebIntelligence and they will drag and drop what they need out of it and then apply their own filters. They say they need to see what is in the data before they can pick the filters.

From a classic-crystal POV this sounds like a bad idea, not making your Filter parameter selections before you run the query. Also, I think that WebIntelligence has a Maximum rows returned setting of approx. 10,000 - so they will only get partial-data anyway.

Anyone had a request like this before...? If so, what is the best way to tackle this within WebIntelligence...?

Thanks In Advance!

 

[satinsilhouette]

WebI is the ad hoc tool of choice right now. But that is an unusual request to have to see all 800,000 rows before they par down their data. Normally a universe's purpose is to give certain preset data sets to end users to work with. But not the whole kitten kaboodle.

I would work with the end user to figure out what exactly the purpose of their query is and try to work a universe around that.

Thanks so much!
satinsilhouette

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Why not use CR( client side) or InfoView (server-side) instead of WEBI? If the Universe is doing nothing but replicating the table, it is useless and just adds a layer that is not needed...

If the Oracle schema is well sized, 800K rows returned to a report ( while perhaps too large to be useful) should not stress the database side.






To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[MJRBIM]

They have been pretty clear that they want to use WebI and not Crystal Reports explorer for the "AD-HOC" reporting.

I suppose I can create a Prompted-Universe with picklists that contain all the distinct records for each column.

 

[synapsevampire]

Should be interesting to watch this person navigate the 800,000 rows looking for the brilliant pieces of information needed to make your business more successful.

Given a super fast mind, and they review 100 rows a second, they can get through the rows in just over 2 hours.

I suggest that you plan a meeting around it with top management so that they understand the quality thinking being directed your way in the form of requirements.

In other words, walk this self-aggrandizing person out the door and find someone that can articulate meaningful business requirements.

-k

 

[MJRBIM]

...but what do you do when it's "top management" creating the low-quality requirements....?

 

[MJRBIM]

To provide more detail -

It's a master-table on school enrollment for individuals from different groups.

Every individual has a record for each School Year including their AGE, GENDER, GRADE, SPECIAL NEEDS, LANGUAGE, etc, etc, etc. (85 Colums per row)

The only real measure is a Distinct Count of their unique student ID for Summary Purposes...

Sample Queries could include -

1.) List individual records for all Special Needs students in the last five years.

2.) Summary Counts of all students with summary on all Grades, Genders, Languages, and Special Needs classifictaions.

As mentioned, they have been pretty clear that they want to use WebI and not Crystal Reports explorer for the "AD-HOC" reporting.

 

[hilfy]

WebI on top of a universe is actually much easier for non-technical users to use than trying to learn how to navigate through the complexities of Crystal. A well-built universe completely hides the complexities of the underlying data. I think we tend to think of using Crystal because it's what we know, but I've had to try to teach unsophisticated users how to use Crystal and it's not a simple thing.

Having said that, this does seem to be just a 1-table universe, at least initially. This should be fairly simple to set up and should not put much strain on the database or on BusinessObjects. If it's set up well, the user could easily create drill-down type reports that initially display a summary of information and he could drill-down to get to the details of specific students without having to pull in all of the records at once.

Also, in the Central Management Console application I've seen where it's possible to set the number of records returned, but I can't find the setting right now. So, increasing the number of records returned is not necessarily impossible.

-Dell

A computer only does what you actually told it to do - not what you thought you told it to do.