May 12 2009
SAPPHIRE 2009 Day 1 – Explore Your Own Data
I mentioned Explorer in my first post today from SAPPHIRE… I just got out of a session where we got to talk more about Explorer and other emerging technologies from SAP. By the way, does anyone realize that “Explorer” is a recycled product name for Business Objects? In the “old days” the desktop product was licensed as a base module (Reporter) and two add-on modules. One of the add-on modules was the Slice and Dice panel, and the other was the drilling capability. The drilling add-on was named “Explorer” and here we have it again. 🙂
Anyway, one of the gentlemen in that session gave me a card with a URL that I thought I would pass on. It seems that you can take your own data, drop it into Excel, and then upload it to a website where you can then experiment with Explorer on your own data. I haven’t tried it yet, but I certainly plan to. For now, here’s the URL if anyone else wants to give it a shot:
To experience SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software with your own data, click the “Register” link, below. Within a few days of your registration, we’ll set you up with an account in your own hosted environment for 21 days – where you can upload datasets, navigate with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, and share your findings with others. Seeing is believing. Test-drive SAP BusinessObjects Explorer today and see your data come to life!
You can get Explorer in one of two modes: it can either be accelerated or not. Without acceleration you apparently get the natural language question capabilities along with the reporting features. The acceleration takes your explorer data and loads it into memory. Having everything in memory makes it quite fast, as you can imagine. 🙂
There is a similar website at http://create.ondemand.com, allowing you to upload datasets and do mashups with RSS feeds etc, and explore them with Explorer or place Xcelsius analytics over the top.
Navigate directly to http://create.ondemand.com/explorer, and you can upload Excel/CSV files and use Explorer directly without any login accounts..
– Josh
Hi Dave – i tried your link but unfortunately it seem they are still busy building it as I get:
The site is undergoing maintenance.
We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.
Which is a pity as I was interested to see what there was available.
I’ll keep watching it in the hopes it comes right.
Sarah, I tried it this morning and it was working. I had also tried it at the conference to make sure it was up before I posted it. 😳 I’m sorry you’re seeing problems.