Aug 29 2012
BI 4 Web Intelligence Satisfaction Poll on BOB
There is a “satisfaction” poll running right now on BOB that asks folks how they feel about the Web Intelligence experience in BI 4.x. If you’re currently using BI 4, please consider logging in to vote. (Only registered BOB members can vote on polls.)
BI4 Web Intelligence Satisfaction Poll
Thanks
Dave, thanks.
I’m currently involved in a XI4 project.
The posts from Nick Daniels are very to the point I must say.
The significant slower development time in XI4 compared to XI3 is unacceptable. I do not understand how SAP can design such an interface (Rich Client and Webi) without consulting some experienced developers. The tab approach is very ‘SAP’ for entering transactions but building reports is something completely different.
I also spend a lot of time trying to get basic functionality working (like converting a well designed straight forward Universe to unx) only to find out that this was a product defect.
The feature pack solved a lot of issues but there is still a LOT of work for SAP to get this product at a reliable and stable level.
In keeping with the season (at least in the US), “are you better off now than you were four years ago?!?!? But seriously, a good initiative for BOB.
I have said it a couple of times with respect to Webi 4.0:
Me loveS:
– New charting engine
– direct connectivity to SAP BEx
– support of OLAP hierarchies
– Finally some CSS support, which.. is a start to hopefully sometime true templates
Me Hates:
– convoluted, ineffective and cumbersome new GUI (Ribbon style) making most things harder to accomplish = more mouse-clicks = trakes me more time than before
Should the satisfaction poll include a category for “Currently on XI 3.x or earlier, but NOT planning to upgrade yet”?
Thanks.
The number of bugs and defects is astounding; and I thought Web Intelligence v3.5 was bad. Every single day it crashes to desktop on me or I run into a new bug and I curse at the monitor. Everything from Live Office using the latest instance to format the sheet rather the report itself or removing prompts but still having them show up when you refresh (sometimes only when scheduling). v3.5 was not ready for Production and v4 is far worse from what I have seen. I am forced to upgrade by our IT department otherwise I would stay in v3.5 and use Desktop Intelligence until I could find another product that meets our needs.
The manual work for converting things over is inexcusable. “An automated tool is in the roadmap.” is cold comfort for people right now. The report conversion utility is worthless and lies. I am better off rewriting most of my 2,000 reports than having to repeatedly fix things which it says are converted (both with v3.5 and v4); not to mention then 10% which it couldn’t do anything about and returned an unknown error.
PS: I find it funny that people are complaining that it takes twice as long to make reports with Web Intelligence v4 but didn’t seem to mind that it takes 5-10 times longer with Web Intelligence than Desktop Intelligence. You let them take away features to make their lives easier and they will keep doing it. Now that it affects you it is a problem…
I have been working with BO for over 10years as a developer.I feel that there have been a lot of changes but very few actual real improvements to BO in all that time.Everytime I get really proficient and used to the User Interface they change things around so that I have to relearn ,and I always discover they have actually removed some functionality which means when migrating reports (other than the simplest )they have to be manually edited.What was once a nice cool program for building reports from a database has bloated into a platform trying to be all things in BI but the quality of the core software is full of annoying bugs and very poor,making life increaingly painfull and slow when having to develop reports to tight deadlines.