Differences between CE10 and BOXIr2? 1

[bTkalternate]

Hi,

I'm a CE10 admin and very confident in the system but I'm moving to BOXI r2 soon and not looked at it in too much detail.

I can set up the server for use with reports but thats only at a basic level.
What are the new features of the server that I should be looking at? Or are there guides to the new system for CE10 admins?
I'm not sure of things like Universe's, Categories or the Enterprise Applications (Encyclopedia, Web Intelligence etc).

Any help would be great.
bTk

 

[MJRBIM]

Depending on the kind of CE-10 licenses you have you may not see much of a difference with BOE-XI (R2).

Most of the new features you discussed (eg. Encyclopedia, Web Intelligence, Universes, etc.) are only included with PREMIUM licenses, not PROFESSIONAL.

Also, depending on your time-line, and the kind of web-configuration you plan to use (Java Tomcat vs. IIS .Net) you may also want to look at moving directly to BOE-XI (Release 3.0).

 

[bTkalternate]

Cheers.
We have the full enterprise (premium) license.

I'm also asked about Dashboard manager. Is that included with BOXI r2 or seperate install/purchase?

Is Web Intelligence included. I've seen a quick demo on the BO site that shows its a web based report creation page.

Thanks again

 

[MJRBIM]

You really need to talk to a technical pre-sales consultant at BOBJ, as the license-model keeps changing so much it's hard to keep up....

With BOE-XI (Premium) - you can "host/deliver" Crystal RPTs, Universes and WebIntelligence files, but depending on how much interactivity you want end-users to have with WebI content - you might need additional licensing to allow them to create/alter WebI content on-line.

Also, there has been some back-and-forth on "Dashboard Manager" vs. "Dashboard Builder" under BOE-XI (Premium). For a while both were additional licenses - then one was included, but with limited features...

Finally, two words of warning...

1.) If you are thinking about moving your Crystal RPTs to the latest CR-2008 release those are only supported on Enterprise under Release 3.0 (Java Only) - and the future Release 3.1 (IIS supported).

2.) If you are doing a hardware migration as part of this upgrade and currently have CPU or SERVER licenses under CE-10, be really careful about the kind of hardware you are moving to. Most standard servers now come with Multi-Socket / Multi-Core Processors - and BOBJ will charge you for each of those processors based on a sliding scale.

 

[bTkalternate]

Thanks for your replies.

Not to worry about licenses for the moment though or CR2008 but thanks for pointing those out. Very helpful.

I think my questions still stand though.

Is Web Intelligence a new install or already online and how do I get to it?
Is dashboard manager or builder installed and where can I find it?
Are they on seperate CD's?

Is there somewhere that actually explains what these new features of Universe's are etc? Something tells me why Universe's are important and where I can use them (or not).

Any help with these would be great.

Thanks again

 

[MJRBIM]

You would need to talk to a pre-sales technical consultant at BOBJ to get all those details, as it is very much based on how you are migrating.

They should give you access to an Electronic Software Delivery (ESD) account for on-line download of the most current releases of the various tools - rather than CDs.

There should also be a deployment/install plan for the order to install BOE-XI components and service-packs/hotfixes/fix-packs.

Another bit of advice. DO NOT do an upgrade in-place on an existing CE-10 server. Build a "clean" BOE-XI environment on new hardware - then use the Import Wizard to move your users/content over from your CE-10 environment. For large numbers of users/content - you can break-up this work by Business Unit.

As to Universes, they are a "data consolidation" tool (aka "semantic-layer") for creating Relational OLAP (ROLAP) content to write reports against.

Crystal Reports XI content can be written directly against the underlying Tables/Fields in the database - or against a Universe structure.

WebIntelligence content can ONLY be written against the Universe structure - NOT directly against the underlying Tables/Fields in the database.

 

[bTkalternate]

Thanks again MJRBIM.
You say to use Import Wizard on new hardware but unfortunately I'm doing this on the same hardware.
I was going to effectively convert the CE10 db to BOXI by specifying new data source.

Ta

 

[MJRBIM]

I would STRONGLY advise against doing that.

DO NOT do an upgrade in-place on an existing CE-10 server.

If you have an upgrade problem, there is no clean-way to roll-back that hardware to CE-10.

If the CE-10 environment is important enough to your company, have someone find the cash for new hardware for the BOE-XI environment.

 

[bTkalternate]

I just need to use the same hardware so I'll be rebuilding the server first