B-tree vs Bitmap indexes - Indexing Strategy for your Oracle Data Warehouse Part 1

Some time ago we’ve seen how to create and maintain Oracle materialized views in order to improve query performance. But while materialized views are a valuable part of our toolbox, they definitely shouldn’t be our first attempt at improving a query performance. In this post we’re going to talk about something you’ve already heard about and used, but we will take it to the next level: indexes.

Why should you use indexes? Because without them you have to perform a full read on each table. Just think about a phone book: it is indexed by name, so if I ask you to find all the phone numbers of people whose name is Larrouturou, you can do that in less than a minute. However if I ask you to find all the people who have a phone number starting with 66903, you won’t have any choice but reading the whole phone book. I hope you don’t have anything else planned for the next two months or so.

Searching without indexing

It’s the same thing with database tables: if you look for something in a non-indexed multi-million rows fact table, the corresponding query will take a lot of time (and the typical end user doesn’t like to sit 5 minutes in front of his computer waiting for a report). If you had used indexes, you could have found your result in less than 5 (or 1, or 0.1) seconds.

I’ll answer the following three questions: Which kind of indexes can we use? On which tables/fields shall we use them? What are the consequences in terms of time (query time, index build time) and storage?

Which Kind Of Indexes Can We Use?

Oracle has a lot of index types available (IOT, Cluster, etc.), but I’ll only speak about the three main ones used in data warehouses.

B-tree Indexes

B-tree indexes are mostly used on unique or near-unique columns. They keep a good performance during update/insert/delete operations, and therefore are well adapted to operational environments using third normal form schemas. But they are less frequent in data warehouses, where columns often have a low cardinality. Note that B-tree is the default index type – if you have created an index without specifying anything, then it’s a B-tree index.

Bitmap Indexes

Bitmap indexes are best used on low-cardinality columns, and can then offer significant savings in terms of space as well as very good query performance. They are most effective on queries that contain multiple conditions in the WHERE clause.

Note that bitmap indexes are particularly slow to update.

Bitmap Join Indexes

A bitmap join index is a bitmap index for the join between tables (2 or more). It stores the result of the joins, and therefore can offer great performances on pre-defined joins. It is specially adapted to star schema environments.

On Which Tables/Fields Shall We Use Which Indexes?

Can we put indexes everywhere? No. Indexes come with costs (creation time, update time, storage) and should be created only when necessary.

Remember also that the goal is to avoid full table reads – if the table is small, then the Oracle optimizer will decide to read the whole table anyway. So we don’t need to create indexes on small tables. I can already hear you asking: “What is a small table?” A million-row table definitely is not small. A 50-row table definitely is small. A 4532-row table? I´m not sure. Lets run some tests and find out.

Before deciding about where we shall use indexes, let’s analyze our typical star schema with one fact table and multiple dimensions.

Star schema with one fact table and multiple dimensions

Let’s start by looking at the cardinality column. We have one case of uniqueness: the primary keys of the dimension tables. In that case, you may want to use a b-tree index to enforce the uniqueness. However, if you consider that the ETL preparing the dimension tables already made sure that dimension keys are unique, you may skip this index (it’s all about your ETL and how much your trust it).

We then have a case of high cardinality: the measures in the fact table. One of the main questions to ask when deciding whether or not to apply an index is: “Is anyone going to search a specific value in this column?” In this example I´ve developed I assume that no one is interested in knowing which account has a value of  43453.12. So no need for an index here.

What about the attributes in the dimension? The answer is “it depends”. Are the users going to do searches on column X? Then you want an index. You’ll choose the type based on the cardinality: bitmap index for low cardinality, b-tree for high cardinality.

Concerning the dimension keys in the fact table, is anyone going to perform a search on them? Not directly (no filters by dimension keys!) but indirectly, yes. Every query which joins a fact table with one or more dimension tables looks for specific dimension keys in the fact table. We have got two options to handle that: putting a bitmap key on every column, or using bitmap join keys.

Further Inquiries...

Are indexes that effective? And what about the storage needed? And the time needed for constructing/ refreshing the indexes?

We will talk about that next week on the second part of my post.

Clariba Obtains the SAP Partner Center of Expertise Certification

Certificate PCoE

SAP service and support audit confirms that Clariba can support its customers in accordance with SAP’s current technical and organizational standards, thereby receiving the Partner Center of Expertise (PCoE) Certification.

On the 30th of May Clariba employees received the amazing news – They had passed the final audit and SAP was granting Clariba Support Center with the PCoE certification.

This was the finishing line of a process that started in 2011 and took a lot of effort from Clariba Support Center members, going from the installation of SAP Solution Manager (the system used to provide support), through certifying support center staff, creating all marketing materials and finally undergoing a 6-hour audit to evaluate if all requirements were in place.

“It’s been a very long and complex process, since it was our first experience with SAP native applications. Installing and configuring SAP Solution Manager has been a big challenge, but now it  allows us to provide full SAP Enterprise Support to our customers. We use SAP Solution Manager to monitor our customer installations remotely as well as connect them with the resourceful SAP back-end infrastructure. In addition, SAP Solution Manager provides our support customers with a Service Desk available 24x7, to create and track their incidents and to ensure a fast and efficient service for very critical issues at any time” says Carolina Delgado, support manager at Clariba.

The Partner Center of Expertise (PCoE) certification affirms that the defined procedures, guidelines and certified support team members are available to provide qualified, timely and reliable support services for SAP BI Solutions.

“As a requirement for achieving the PCoE certification, all our support consultants have the Support Associate - Incident Management in SAP BusinessObjects certification and as a commitment to high quality and professionalism, we require all our consultants to be certified in the SAP BusinessObjects suite. Both accreditations ensure that our support staff has the required knowledge to efficiently address and resolve any technical issue that may arise. In addition, they can draw from a wide knowledge base that comes from many years of experience on SAP BusinessObjects installation and development as well as on a continuous interaction with the SAP community" mentions Carolina.

PCoE Process

With this in place, Clariba Support Center can offer VAR delivered support to its clients, providing the knowledge and support tools for SAP BusinessObjects licenses through a single point of contact ─ a familiar, agile and available partner, ensuring that a defined and known point of contact is always available to customers in the event that any problems arise in their SAP BusinessObjects systems.

Carolina points out that the Key benefit is the proximity with customers and their environments. “In most cases we are maintaining BI systems which have been deployed by Clariba itself. This gives us the advantage of better understanding the customer's environment, so that we can provide a more accurate and tailored service.”

As a SAP Partner Center of Expertise (PCoE), Clariba can offer their clients

a fully qualified staff according to SAP quality standards;

real-life SAP BusinessObjects implementation, training and support experience;

a relationship with the client organization built on trust and past successes;detailed knowledge of the organization’s history, systems and business processes when the BI system has been deployed by Clariba;

staff trained for rapid issue resolution and focused on customer satisfaction;

very strong cooperation and relationship with SAP experts worldwide and an integrated support platform that ensures the best quality of service.

For more information on Clariba´s Support Center offerings visit http://www.clariba.com/bi-services/support.php

Working with Data Services 4.0 repositories

On my previous blog,  “Installing Data Services 4.0 in a distributed environment”  I mentioned there was an important step to be carried out after installing data services in a distributed environment:  configure the repositories. As promised, I will now walk you through this process. Data Services 4.0 can now be managed using the BI Platform for security and administration. This puts all of the security for Data Services in one place, instead of being fragmented across the various repositories. It means that Data Services repositories are managed through the Central Management Console. With Data Services 4.0 you will be able to set rights on individual repositories just like you would with any other object in the SAP BusinessObjects platform. What is particularly interesting about managing Data Services security using CMC is that you can assign rights to the different Data services repositories.

Data Services Application in CMC

Now you can log into Data Services Designer or Management Console with your SAP BusinessObjects user ID instead of needing to enter database credentials. Once you log into Designer, you are presented with a simple list of Data Services repositories to choose from.

I advice anyone who is beginning to experiment with Data Services to use the repositories properly from the start! At first it might seem really tough, but it will prove to be very useful. SAP BusinessObjects Data Services solutions are built over 3 different types of meta-data repositories called central, local and profile repository. In this article I am going to show you how to configure and use the central and the local repository.

The local repositories can be used by the individual ETL developers to store the meta-data pertaining to their ETL codes, the central repository is used to "check in" the individual work and maintain a single version of truth for the configuration items. This “check in” action allows you to have a version history from which you can recover older versions in case you need it.

Now lets see how to configure the local and central repository in order to finish the Data Services’ installation.

So, let’s start with the local repository. First of all, go to Start Menu and start Data Service Repository Manager Tool.

Choose “Local” in the repository type combo box. Then, enter the information to configure the meta-data of the Local Repository.

Configuring Local repository

For the central repository chose central as repository type and then enter the information to configure the meta-data of the Central Repository. Check the check box “Enable Security”.

Configuring Central repository

After filling in the information, press Get Version in order to know if there is connection with the data base. If there is connection established, press Create.

Once you have created the repositories you have to add them into the Data Service Management Console. To do that log in DS Management Console. You will see the screen below.

DS Management Console Error

This error is telling you that you have to register the repositories. The next steps is to click on Administrator to register the repositories.

On the left pane, click on Management list item.  Then click on Repositories and you will see that there are no repositories registered on it. In order to register them, click the Add button to register a repository in management console.

Finally, write the repository information and click Test to check the connection. If the connection is successful, click apply and then you will be able to see the following image which contains the repositories that you have created. DO NOT forget to register the central repository.

DS Management console

After that, the next logical step is to try to access Data Services using one of the local repositories. Once inside the Designer, activate the central repository that you have created. Data services will display an error telling you that you do not have enough privileges to activate it.

To be able to active the central repository you have to assign the security. To do that go to Data Services Management Console. In the left pane go to “Central Repository” and click on “users and groups”.

Central repository - Users and groups

Once you are inside Users and Groups, click “add” and create a new group. When the group is created select it and click on the “users” tab which is on the right of the group tab (see the image below).

Add and Create new group

Now you can add the names of the users that can activate and use the central repository in the designer tool. As you can see in the image below the only user that you added in the example is the “Administrator”.

Add user names

Now the last task is to configure the Job Server to finish the configuration.

As always, go to Start Menu and start Server Manager Tool. Once you start the Server Manager the window below appears.

Server Manager tool

Press Configuration Editor a new window will be opened. Press Add and you will have a new job server.

Configuration editor

Keep the default port and choose a name or keep the default one for the new Job server. Then press Add to associate the repositories with the job server created.

Once you press “Add” you will be able to add information in the right part of the window “Repository Information”. Add the information of the local repositories that you have created in the previous steps.

At the end you will see two local repositories associated.

Add Repository Information

With this step you have already finished the repository configuration and are now able to manage the security from the CMC and  use the regular BO users to log into the designer and add security to the Data Services repositories like you do with every BusinessObjects application.

If you have any questions or other tips, share it with us by leaving a comment below.

SMEs Run SAP – Myth 4: SAP is not Agile Enough

Picture3

The 4th and last post on our SAP Myth busting series, this article intends to show how SMEs can meet their need for speed with SAP.A bigger business is a better business. It’s a common assumption, but it’s not strictly true. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) have a number of advantages over their larger counterparts. Their size is often their strength – it makes them agile. In fact, most SMEs we speak to pride themselves on this. They can respond faster to changes in the market and take advantage of new insight and opportunities faster than larger organizations.

To capitalize on their agility, SMEs need systems that play to this strength. Unfortunately, some SMEs get bogged down by manual processes. They rely on off-the-shelf software that doesn’t quite meet their needs and depend on spreadsheets for their business intelligence. All these things slow their businesses down and mean they’re more likely to miss opportunities. In this environment, executives often resort to making important decisions on a gut feeling rather than the latest data.

That’s why it’s always a surprise to hear an SME wondering if SAP software will slow them down. Maybe the perception is that SAP software is only for enterprise organizations, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s another business myth. Rather than slow these businesses down, SAP helps them become more agile and able to capitalize on opportunities faster.

Clariba has helped companies streamline their internal reporting processes, arriving in a particular case to an 80% reduction in the time it took to produce monthly internal reports. We also allow organizations reduce reliance on manual data, improving reporting accuracy, reducing errors and promoting decisions based on solid information rather than just gut feeling.

More importantly, we have the expertise to speed up the implementation process, so that your company can start enjoying the benefits of an SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence solutions in a short time frame. Furthermore, if you are worried about the impact the change will have over your employees, Clariba has best-in-class trainers, with years of experience, ready to help your employees make the transition from a spreadsheet based organization to the innovative and integrated information hub they will soon benefit from.

Contact us to discover how much SAP and Clariba can deliver to your company.

SMEs Run SAP – Myth 3: SAP is Too Complicated for Us

Blog number 3 on our SAP Myth Busting Series. It intends to show how SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligece (BI)can take you on a simple route to real business benefits. We know that implementing new IT systems can be a daunting prospect for some businesses. They worry that it’ll interrupt their everyday activities, take time to deploy and that staff will need time to get used to it. Similarly, when we talk to small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) about SAP software, they’re often under the false impression that SAP software is too complex for a business of their size. While they agree it could help them, they’ve always assumed it’s built for large enterprises.

The complexity of SAP is yet another myth that vanishes when you start looking at hard facts. We often speak to SMEs and they’re looking for software that’s easy to run, install and use, and they want to see real-life examples to prove it. They want to see organisations like theirs that have been there and done it. Thankfully, for us, SAP has 88,000 SMEs that have been there and done it. You can see what some of them have achieved by clicking here, they’ve got the figures to prove that it doesn’t take long to deploy the software and see a return on investment.

In the last few years, the number of SMEs implementing SAP software has tripled. That’s partly down to the fact that it’s easy to use and install, but also because it delivers all the benefits that SMEs are led to believe are just for the big boys. It’s not usually very long before they’ve automated previously manual processes, gained greater insight into their business and generated significant cost savings.

Clariba can help you unleash the potential of your SME, with the right business intelligence solution for your company, no matter how you are running it now. Our solutions based on SAP BusinessObjects technology and the expertise of our consultants will help you implement faster so you can enjoy the benefits quicker. We are also experts in end user training, to make sure that your employees will make the best of their new BI tool.

Still think SAP might be too complicated for you? watch this SAP Video and think again!

If you are an SME and want to know more about Clariba and SAP BusinessObjects Solutions, get in contact with us.

Clariba Webinar – Exxova MyBI Mobile: Movilidad para su Negocio

Obtenga la posibilidad de tomar decisiones a cualquier momento visualizando los datos de su empresa desde su dispositivo móvil con Exxova MyBI

Asista a nuestro Webinar (en Castellano) 16 de Mayo de 11.00 a 12:00 (CET GMT+1:00)

REGISTRESE AQUÍ

Muchas empresas han realizado importantes inversiones en el desarrollo de sus soluciones de Business Intelligence. En el caso de SAP BW y BusinessObjects, dichas empresas han acumulado cientos de informes utilizando herramientas como Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence y Dashboards (Xcelsius) de SAP, realizando además grandes esfuerzos para establecer un modelo de seguridad y suponiendo todo ello, una inversión considerable. La percepción actual del mercado es que los dispositivos móviles actuales, no pueden manejar el análisis de datos de la misma manera en que lo hacen las soluciones de BI avanzadas y maduras de hoy en día, por lo que los negocios tienden a modificar sus procesos y contenidos para la movilidad.

Sin embargo, la aplicación MyBI Mobile permite a las compañías aprovechar sus inversiones anteriores. Con ella el usuario puede acceder al contenido crucial de toda la empresa en cualquier lugar, en cualquier momento y sin ninguna modificación importante en el contenido o la plataforma existentes. Los usuarios pueden imprimir, cambiar, actualizar y hacer todo el trabajo que realizan actualmente en el sistema BI de la empresa a través de un dispositivo móvil, facilitando la acogida por parte de los usuarios.

Le invitamos a invertir una hora de tu tiempo para conocer esta solución y verla en acción en nuestro webinar MyBI. La agenda del evento es:

• Introducción
• Características principales de Exxova MyBI Mobile
• Beneficios principales de Exxova MyBI Mobile
• Demo
• Preguntas y respuestas

REGISTRESE AQUÍ

Para obtener más información visite nuestro sitio web.

Saludos Cordiales,

Lorena Laborda Business Development Manager – Clariba EU

SMEs Run SAP – Myth 2: SAP is Too Expensive for Us

Continuing on our series of blogs on Myths that surround SAP, this second one intends to show how spending can be the best way to save.

Invest to Save

A popular piece of received wisdom is that you have to speculate to accumulate, or, in simple terms, you've got to spend money to make money. Most businesses know that you can’t just throw money at a problem. However, they also recognise that carefully planned purchases can pay dividends.

Clariba works with many small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and we know how important every financial decision is to them. That’s why it’s important that we can demonstrate the value of what we do. Most of the businesses we talk to know SAP software can help them reduce costs. However, some of them have been under the impression that the software is only available to enterprise organisations with big budgets. These businesses risk missing out.

We get to break the good news that SAP is an affordable option for SMEs. In fact, SAP has around 88,000 SME customers to prove it. These businesses are not only reducing costs with SAP, they’re also boosting profitability. In most cases, that translates into a quick return on investment. As a result, we find that most of the SMEs we talk to conclude that they can’t afford not to deploy SAP software.

Whats more, Clariba´s solutions based on SAP BusinessObjects have helped small and medium sized business to:

• automate distribution process of reports to users

• improve management performance with reporting, query & analysis, and data integration

• optimize customer support resources

• improve campaign effectiveness

• enhance data quality and compliance

We also have available our range of pre-packaged solutions called FastTrack. They are accessible and quick to deploy, which means your company can start enjoying the benefits of a top technology tool in a short time frame.

Here is what one of our SME clients has to say about one of our FastTrack solutions: “With Clariba’ FastTrack for Siebel CRM solution we are now able to better analyze data, segment customers, measure the ROI of our marketing initiatives and provide a rolled-up sales forecast. This capability allows us to be more competitive, offer better service to customers and provide a faster response to changing market conditions.”

Is your company an SME?  Contact us to  know more about how to benefit from SAP Solutions

SMEs Run SAP - Myth 1: You Have to be Big to Work with SAP

Myths and misnomers litter the business world. All small businesses are agile, all enterprises are big corporate entities, sales figures are the most important, customers will always buy the best product. As we all know, these don’t stand up to scrutiny. Some large businesses are agile, some small businesses aren’t, cash flow is more important than sales and the best product isn’t always the most popular. Business people can’t afford to make assumptions and to blindly follow these misconceptions. That’s why we do our research and base decisions on facts. We started a series of blog post about myths that surround SAP, the platform that Clariba chose to bring Business Intelligence (BI) to our customers. This first one intends to explain why you DON´T have to be an enterprise to work with SAP and SAP BusinessObjects.

SMEs can run SAP

SAP actually works with a client base composed by a  majority of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SAP software combined with Clariba´s implementation expertise allows them to automate processes and gain valuable insight into their businesses. By doing this, these businesses take assumptions out of the equation – it means that instead of relying on anecdotal evidence, they work with the facts. The result is they find it easier to spot opportunities and identify areas to improve.

However, before these businesses start dealing with the facts, they often need to challenge another set of preconceptions. One Clariba comes across frequently is that SAP only works with enterprise organizations. But this isn’t the case. More than 77% of SAP’s customers are SMEs. That’s about 88,000 businesses! What’s more, SAP has been working with SMEs for nearly 40 years. As a result, the company understands the unique challenges they face and the tools they need to grow.

Clariba´s work is to translate that to the customers, helping them match their requirements to the best SAP tool available. Our audits help SME´s to get an idea of where they are in terms  of their BI environment and the benefits they could enjoy with Clariba and SAP:

• our accessible pre-packaged solutions allows for rapid deployment

• streamline processes by automating reporting tasks

• improve data quality, reducing misleading information that leads to poor decision making

• uncover hidden  facts and make insights available to take the best course of action

• help small companies improve management of different departments

If you are an SME and want to know more about SAP Solutions, contact us.

Problem Uninstalling Data Services

I have faced a problem uninstalling Data Services  recently and I wanted to share the resolution, just in case you find the same problem. I was trying to upgrade a Data Services machine following SAP procedure (this is copying the configuration files uninstall and then install the new version – not very sophisticated as you can see). This was not as simple as I first thought.

Problems started after uninstalling the software, the new version refused to install stating that I should first uninstall the previous version. I uninstalled the software again… but Data Services is still there, so uninstalled again, but this time the process failed (makes sense as the software is already uninstalled), so I kept trying… reboot…uninstall… reboot…rename older path name… reboot…you see where this is going…

So, how did I finally solve this?

1. Start Registry Editor (type regedit in a command window or in the Execute dialog).
2. Take a backup of the current Registry content. To do this, with the top node of the registry (Computer) selected go to File -> Export and select a name for the backup file.
3. Delete the Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBusiness ObjectsSuite 12.0EIM (Suite XX.X may vary).  NOTE: You may want to write down the key KEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBusiness ObjectsSuite 12.0EIMKeycode first as it contains the license code.
4. To remove the entry for the software in the Uninstall Window’s dialog, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows CurrentVersionUninstall and look for a KEY which property DisplayName is “BusinessObjects Data Services.
5. Finally delete the content of the installation directory (typically: C:Program FilesBusiness ObjectsBusiness Objects Data Services)

Now you can launch the installer and it should work.

Hope this may help you if in case you are experiencing the same issue. If you have any doubts or if you ever faced the same issue, leave a comment below.

Installing Data Services 4.0 in a Distributed Environment

Following my first experiences using SAP BusinessObjects platform 4.0, I decided to write this article after spending 3 days to discover how to install Data Services 4.0 in a distributed architecture. Why did I spend so much time to figure this out? There is something different in the new Data Services: SAP has tried to unify the security and the control of the servers using the CMC. With this new feature we will be able to manage Data Services users and services using the CMC instead of using the Data Services Management Console. This has brought slight changes to the installation process of Data Services 4.0 in comparison with other releases.

I was working with a distributed architecture, which means that I was planning to install the SAP BusinessObjects platform (including Live Office, Dashboard Designer 4.0, Client Tools and Explorer) in one server, let’s say “ServerA”, and Data Services 4.0 in a separate server named “ServerB”.

If you have installed older version of Business Objects such as XI R2 or XI3.0 and 3.1, you know that we would install BusinessObjects platform in ServerA and Data Services in the ServerB and then we would see that we don’t have Data Services intragrated with the rest of the platform and probably we would see the same in the CMC that is shown in the image below.

As you can see this image comes from a SAP note that explains how to solve this problem on past releases, but if you installed Data Services 4.0 in a distributed architecture, the error won’t be solved using the solution described in the SAP note 1615646.

Once the scenario is clear let’s start with the process to install Data Services in a distributed architecture. Before starting ensure that BusinessObjects 4.0 platforms and the client tools with their latest service packs and patches are installed in the ServerA.

Step 1: Install Data Services 4.0 in ServerA

As in every new software that has to be installed the first step is uncompress (if needed) the file downloaded from SAP service market place in the ServerA. Open the root folder, go to data_unit and run the setup.exe. After that chose the language to use during the installation.

After these “typical” steps the installation program checks for required components. Review the results and decide whether to continue with the installation, or abort and correct any unmet requirements.

In the next three steps you have to review the SAP recommendations, accept the license agreement and finally, fill the gaps with the license key code, name and company. Once the license key is verified you can chose the support language packs you wish to install.

Then it is time to choose the folder, but in this case, the wizard doesn’t let you choose because BO platform was install before so it takes the BO installation folder as a default.

After that you have to configure CMS information. In this case our ServerA is going to be named “MVBOBITEST01”

This is the important step! The next screen invites you to select what you want to install. In ServerA you have to install all (if needed) Data Services’s features apart from Designer, Job Server and Access server. See the image below.

The subsequent screen will ask for merging with an existing configuration. In this case no existing configuration can be reused so the answer is: skip configuration.

Then you can choose if you want to use an existing data base server or you want if you want to skip this part and do it after the installation. Chose what suits you best. Imagine that you or your vendor doesn’t have the database or schemas for the CMS repositories ready when you were planning to install Data Services. In that case, you can configure the CMS parameters after the installation without problems.

After filling in the information for the CMS systems data base and the Audit database (if required), the Metadata Integrator configuration starts. I am not going to describe this step in depth because it hasn’t got an impact on our installation. Furthermore, configuring Metadata Integrator is not  difficult; as always you only have to choose the ports, folders and the name.

Once we have finished installing Metadata integrator and ViewData, the installation will start. After the installation process we can proceed to the next step.

Step 2: Install Data Services 4.0 in ServerB

After a few hours installing the first part of Data Services we are ready to install Data Services in a dedicated server which is going to have the ETL only.

Again it is time to uncompress the file you downloaded before, run the DVD or whatever is the installer you are using. Run the setup.exe.

Once the installation starts, we are going to repeat the same firsts steps mentioned before until we reach the screen to specify CMS information. Add the CMS information related with the ServerA or “MVBOBITEST01”. Why? Because we don’t have CMS installed in the ServerB.

Choose the components that we did not choose before during the BusinessObjects server installation: Job Server, Access server and Designer.  

As we did in the ServerA installation choose skip the configuration if no previous configuration exists.

In the next step you have to configure the account on which you would like to run Data Services. You can choose to run it using a system account or run it with a specific service account previously defined. What is good about using a service account rather than a system account is that if you want to stop a service (like Data Services Job Server) you need the password of this account, because it is not related to the system account with which you log onto the S.O.

Then configure the Access Server. In this case I kept the default values.

After the last step the wizard asks to start the installation. After a couple of hours you will have Data Services 4.0 running.

There is another important point after the installation process that I will be covering on my next article due on the beginning of May:  the repository configuration. One of the new and best features of Data Services 4.0 is the integration with the BO platform using the CMC, which results in a complete integration when you configure the repositories properly.

If you have any questions or other tips, share it with us by leaving a comment below.