SAP Business objects Enterprise XI 3.0 Using Business Views
Using Business Views
BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1
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2008-09-17
Contents
Introduction to Business Views 11Chapter 1
About this documentation..........................................................................12
Business Views Architecture 15Chapter 2
Business Views overview..........................................................................16
Architecture overview and diagram...........................................................17
Client tier....................................................................................................19
Business tier..............................................................................................20
Data tier.....................................................................................................23
Information flow.........................................................................................23
Architectural workflow................................................................................31
What is Business Views?.....................................................................12
Who should read this guide..................................................................12
Business View Manager.......................................................................20
Business Views objects........................................................................21
Data Connection...................................................................................21
Dynamic Data Connection....................................................................21
Data Foundation...................................................................................22
Business Element.................................................................................22
Business View......................................................................................22
Usage scenario....................................................................................24
Data Connection layer..........................................................................25
Data Foundation layer..........................................................................28
Business Element layer........................................................................30
Business View layer.............................................................................31
Using Business Views 3
Contents
Quick Start: Creating a Business View 35Chapter 3
Quick Start overview..................................................................................36
Before you begin........................................................................................36
Sample data - Xtreme.mdb..................................................................37
Conventions.........................................................................................38
Tutorial scenario...................................................................................38
What is a Business View?....................................................................39
Logging on to the Business View Manager..........................................40
Creating and configuring a Data Connection.............................................41
Creating a Data Connection.................................................................42
Setting a Data Connection password...................................................45
Saving and naming a Data Connection................................................46
Modifying the properties of a Data Connection....................................47
Exercise: Creating two more Data Connections..................................49
Creating and configuring Dynamic Data Connections...............................50
Creating a Dynamic Data Connection..................................................50
Adding a Data Connection to a Dynamic Data Connection.................52
Sorting Data Connections....................................................................53
Saving and naming a Dynamic Data Connection.................................53
Creating and configuring a Data Foundation.............................................54
Creating a Data Foundation.................................................................55
Linking tables.......................................................................................57
Inserting a formula................................................................................58
Inserting an SQL expression................................................................61
Inserting a parameter...........................................................................64
Inserting a Business Filter....................................................................66
Creating and configuring Business Elements............................................68
Creating a Business Element...............................................................68
Exercise: Creating additional Business Elements................................70
Creating and configuring a Business View................................................72
4 Using Business Views
Contents
To create a Business View...................................................................72
Using the Business View Manager 75Chapter 4
Business View Manager overview.............................................................76
Working with the Business View Manager.................................................76
Logging on to the Business View Manager..........................................77
Navigating the Welcome to Business View Manager dialog box.........78
Navigating within the Business View Manager.....................................80
Saving an object within the Business View Manager...........................81
Exporting and importing Business Views...................................................82
To export Business Views....................................................................82
To import Business Views....................................................................84
Using the Repository Explorer...................................................................85
Accessing the BusinessObjects Enterprise Repository.......................86
Adding folders to the repository............................................................88
Renaming folders in the repository......................................................89
Deleting items from the repository........................................................89
Installing sample repository objects.....................................................90
BusinessObjects Enterprise Repository security model............................92
Applying security settings to folders in the BusinessObjects Enterprise
Repository............................................................................................93
Viewing folder rights.............................................................................95
Creating a list of values.............................................................................95
To create a list of values.......................................................................95
To schedule a list of values..................................................................99
Changing the Business Views Used by a List of Values..........................100
To change Business Views.................................................................101
Creating Data Connections 105Chapter 5
Data Connections overview.....................................................................106
Using Business Views 5
Contents
Working with Data Connections...............................................................106
Data sources......................................................................................106
Creating a new Data Connection.......................................................107
Setting the Data Connection password..............................................109
Testing and verifying data connectivity and object dependency........112
Showing dependent and referenced objects......................................112
Modifying a Data Connection.............................................................113
Saving a Data Connection..................................................................116
Editing rights for a Data Connection..................................................116
Creating Dynamic Data Connections 119Chapter 6
Dynamic Data Connections overview......................................................120
Why use a Dynamic Data Connection?.............................................120
Working with Dynamic Data Connections................................................121
Creating a new Dynamic Data Connection........................................121
Verifying object dependency..............................................................122
Showing dependent and referenced objects......................................123
Modifying a Dynamic Data Connection..............................................123
Saving a Dynamic Data Connection..................................................128
Editing rights for a Dynamic Data Connection...................................129
Managing Data Foundations 133Chapter 7
Data Foundations overview.....................................................................134
Working with Data Foundations...............................................................134
Creating a new Data Foundation.......................................................135
Verifying object dependency and verifying databases.......................137
Showing dependent and referenced objects......................................137
Modifying a Data Foundation.............................................................138
Linking tables.....................................................................................139
Inserting data tables...........................................................................150
6 Using Business Views
Contents
Setting the Database Explorer Options..............................................155
Inserting a formula..............................................................................157
Inserting an SQL expression..............................................................167
Inserting a parameter.........................................................................172
Inserting a filter...................................................................................178
Importing a custom function...............................................................183
Using the Referenced Data Connections window..............................186
Using the Property Browser...............................................................187
Using the Object Explorer..................................................................188
Saving a Data Foundation..................................................................189
Editing rights for a Data Foundation...................................................190
Managing Business Elements 193Chapter 8
Business Elements overview...................................................................194
Working with Business Elements.............................................................195
Creating a new Business Element.....................................................195
Verifying object dependency..............................................................196
Showing dependent and referenced objects......................................196
Modifying a Business Element...........................................................196
Setting and resetting the field structure..............................................197
Inserting a Business Field..................................................................198
Inserting a filter...................................................................................199
Inserting a parameter.........................................................................203
Using the Referenced Data Foundation window................................206
Using the Property Browser...............................................................206
Using the Object Explorer..................................................................208
Saving a Business Element................................................................208
Editing rights for a Business Element................................................209
Using the Business Element Wizard.......................................................211
Creating a new Business Element.....................................................211
Using Business Views 7
Contents
Dynamic Prompts and Cascading Lists of Values 215Chapter 9
Parameters and prompts.........................................................................216
Dynamic prompts overview......................................................................216
Supported components............................................................................217
Understanding lists of values...................................................................218
Lists of values and prompt groups...........................................................219
List-of-values types............................................................................220
Determining which list-of-values type to use......................................221
Using Separate Value and Description Fields....................................222
Null Handling......................................................................................223
Using dynamic prompts and cascading lists of values in Business Elements
and Data Foundations.............................................................................223
Using Business View Manager to manage prompting repository objects.224
Managing lists of values in Business View Manager.........................224
Managing security for lists of values..................................................228
Scheduling lists of values in Business View Manager.......................229
Managing prompt groups in Business View Manager........................231
Best practices for prompting....................................................................233
Converting unmanaged reports to managed reports...............................234
Deploying managed reports with dynamic prompts.................................235
Managing Business Views 237Chapter 10
Business Views overview........................................................................238
Working with Business Views..................................................................238
Creating a new Business View...........................................................238
Importing and exporting Business Views...........................................239
Showing dependent and referenced objects......................................239
Modifying a Business View.................................................................239
Overriding the linking in a Data Foundation.......................................242
8 Using Business Views
Contents
Saving a Business View.....................................................................249
Editing rights for a Business View......................................................250
Business Views Security Concepts 255Chapter 11
Security overview.....................................................................................256
Business Views object rights overview....................................................256
Using the Edit Rights dialog box..............................................................257
Applying security settings...................................................................258
Adding a group or user.......................................................................261
Object and folder rights............................................................................261
Viewing Business Views object rights................................................262
Using inheritance to your advantage..................................................263
Security deployment................................................................................264
Security considerations............................................................................267
Root folder..........................................................................................267
Reports based on Business Views.....................................................268
Importing and exporting Business Views...........................................268
User Scenarios 271Chapter 12
User scenarios overview..........................................................................272
Data integration.......................................................................................273
Simplifying existing infrastructure through data abstraction...............273
Multiple data sources...............................................................................274
Reporting off multiple data sources....................................................274
Specifying locale: a global, multi-lingual deployment.........................275
Security applications................................................................................275
Applying row security.........................................................................276
Applying column security....................................................................276
Setting object security........................................................................276
Using Business Views 9
Contents
Get More Help 279Appendix A
Index 283
10 Using Business Views
Introduction to Business Views
1
Introduction to Business Views
1
About this documentation
About this documentation
This help provides you with information and procedures that cover a wide
range of administrative tasks. Procedures are provided for common tasks,
including the use of the Business View Manager. Conceptual information
and technical details are provided for all advanced topics such as the
Business Views architecture, and security and deployment recommendations.
What is Business Views?
Business Views is a flexible and reliable multi-tier system that enables
companies to build detailed and specific Business Views objects that help
report designers and end users access the information they require.
Using Business Views, you can integrate data from disparate sources. You
can also bring together data from multiple data collection platforms and
application boundaries so that the differences in data resolution, coverage,
and structure between collection methods are eliminated.
Business Views includes the Business View Manager, a thick-client
application. This designer enables administrators to create and modify
Business Views objects:
• Data Connections
• Dynamic Data Connections
• Data Foundations
• Business Elements
• Business Views
Who should read this guide
This help is intended for system administrators who are responsible for
configuring, managing, and maintaining a Business Views installation.
Familiarity with your operating system and your network environment is
certainly beneficial, as is a general understanding of web server management,
scripting technologies, and general security concepts. However, in catering
12 Using Business Views
Introduction to Business Views
About this documentation
to all levels of administrative experience, this guide aims to provide sufficient
background and conceptual information to clarify all administrative tasks and
features.
Business Views administrators should also be familiar with BusinessObjects
Enterprise, as Business Views is integrated with and is a part of
BusinessObjects Enterprise. For more information about BusinessObjects
Enterprise, consult the BusinessObjects Enterprise Getting Started Guide,
the BusinessObjects Enterprise Installation Guide, the BusinessObjects
Enterprise User's Guide, and the BusinessObjects Enterprise Administrator's
Guide. Online versions of these guides are included in the doc directory of
your product distribution.
Working and conceptual knowledge of Crystal Reports and general reporting
concepts will also be beneficial; for more information on Crystal Reports,
see the Crystal Reports User's Guide.
1
Using Business Views 13
Introduction to Business Views
About this documentation
1
14 Using Business Views
Business Views Architecture
2
Business Views Architecture
2
Business Views overview
This section provides a detailed overview of Business Views and its
architecture, and it describes the different objects that you can create and
modify using the Business View Manager.
Business Views overview
Business Views is a multi-tier system that enables companies to build
comprehensive and specific Business Views objects that help report designers
and end users access the information they require.
Business Views are useful as companies engage in data management to
collect and organize operational data into databases. Companies often use
data integration technology to build data warehouses or data marts to cleanse,
aggregate, and store data for analytic use. However, data warehouses must
serve the lowest common denominator and can—but often do not—provide
the various views and granularity that different business units require in order
to understand and analyze their businesses. In addition, these warehouses
may not provide the level of detail necessary for some analytic operations.
Using Business Views, you can integrate data from disparate sources. You
can bring together data from multiple data collection platforms across
application boundaries so that the differences in data resolution, coverage,
and structure between collection methods are eliminated.
In addition, Business Views enables you to add the necessary business
context to these data islands as you link them into a single organized
Business View for your organization. This view is more than just an integrated
network of data. It can include consistent definitions of corporate hierarchy
or customer information, and provide a variety of detailed or summarized
viewpoints for the various information consumers in your business.
Administrators use the Business View Manager—a thick-client designer,
which runs as a Microsoft Windows application. This designer provides a
wide range of capabilities for creating Data Connections, Dynamic Data
Connections, Data Foundations, Business Elements, and Business Views.
The Business View Manager enables you to design relational views of
information. This designer also enables you to set detailed column and
row-level security for various objects in your report.
Note:
Business Views objects consists of Data Connections, Dynamic Data
Connections, Data Foundations, Business Elements, and Business Views.
16 Using Business Views
Business Views Architecture
Architecture overview and diagram
Business Views supports the transition from one view to another at runtime,
thereby enabling powerful analytics and rich information presentation through
a broad range of BusinessObjects Enterprise client tools. The Business View
Manager is designed to help organizations consolidate data by dynamically
mapping back-end data into Business Views. These Business Views can
then be secured at a granular level by administrators and used as the basis
for reporting, analysis, and information delivery processes. This flexible
approach enables organizations to use the data repository of their
choice—including multiple repositories—for their views and to leverage all
of these Business Views objects within their BusinessObjects Enterprise
environment.
Note:
• Business Views is intended for administrators who are familiar with
BusinessObjects Enterprise. For more information on BusinessObjects
Enterprise, see the BusinessObjects Enterprise Administrator's Guide.
• Business Views is similar in concept to Crystal Dictionary files and Info
Views, but provides numerous additional features and is designed to
integrate seamlessly with BusinessObjects Enterprise.
2
Architecture overview and diagram
Business Views is a multi-tier system. The following diagram illustrates how
each of the various components fits within this system.
Using Business Views 17
Business Views Architecture
2
Architecture overview and diagram
Business Views is comprised of three tiers: the client tier, the business tier,
and the data tier.
•
Client tier on page 19
The client tier consists of any Business Objects client application that
accesses the Business Views that are stored and organized in the
business tier.
•
Business tier on page 20
Business Views objects—a collection that includes Data Connections,
Dynamic Data Connections, Data Foundations, Business Elements, and
Business Views—are a part of this tier. Using the Business View Manager,
you specify the settings and conditions for the various objects so that the
client tier has access only to specific information from the data tier.
•
Data tier on page 23
18 Using Business Views
The data tier consists of data sources, such as multiple databases on
different machines that provide the data for the business tier.
Client tier
The client tier includes Business Objects applications (such as Crystal
Reports and the Report Application Server) that access the Business Views
that are stored and organized in the business tier. Business Views
administrators control and define security and access to specific objects
within the various Business Views.
Report designers using Crystal Reports see only the tables and fields that
they have access to, as defined within the specific Business View. For
example, a report designer in the company's sales department can access
only regional sales data, and thus, design a report with sales-specific
information, even though the data store also contains employee-specific
information. Thus, depending on how the report is created and designed, a
manager running the same report (or another report) has access to the
Business Views Architecture
Client tier
2
Using Business Views 19
Business Views Architecture
2
Business tier
additional information on employees within the company. All of the security
and access information is handled by the Business View Manager.
Business tier
The business tier is the primary tier of the Business Views system.
Administrators access this tier through the Business View Manager; they
use this designer to create and modify Data Connections, Dynamic Data
Connections, Data Foundations, Business Elements, and Business Views.
Business View Manager
The Business View Manager enables you to create and modify Business
Views and the various objects that make up these Business Views. The
administrator uses this designer to specify different Data Connections, to set
security, and to control access to the data found within the different data
sources in the data tier. This thick-client designer is the only part of Business
Views that administrators interact with directly. End users access the data
specified within the Business View Manager through their Business Objects
client application, such as Crystal Reports (via the BusinessObjects Enterprise
Repository) or through the Report Application Server.
20 Using Business Views
Business Views objects
Business Views objects include the following: Data Connections, Dynamic
Data Connections, Data Foundations, Business Elements, and Business
Views.
Data Connection
Data Connections specify and define the data sources for a Business View;
they define how these data sources are made available to users. Thus, a
Data Connection is a connection object, and an administrator can apply
security to this object. Each Data Connection contains information that
describes the physical data source, such as the server and data being
accessed, the logon credentials, and the type of server being accessed.
Dynamic Data Connection
Business Views Architecture
Business tier
2
A Dynamic Data Connection is a collection of pointers to various Data
Connections. An administrator or user is able to select which Data Connection
to use through a parameter.
A typical scenario involves the migration of data from a development system
to a test system, and finally, to a production system. In this scenario, a report
is run against a development system, and then, when the data is migrated
to a test system, the same report is run against the test system's data. The
only change required is that the Dynamic Data Connection's settings must
be updated so that it points to the test system's Data Connection. Finally,
when the test system's data is migrated to the production system, the same
report can again be run against the production system.
Note:
When users refresh reports that are based on a Dynamic Data Connection,
they are prompted to specify which of the available Data Connections to use.
Using Business Views 21
Business Views Architecture
2
Business tier
Data Foundation
A Data Foundation consists of collections of tables and fields. Default table
joins are defined at this level. Administrators can secure Data Foundations
using the standard BusinessObjects Enterprise security model, which includes
View and Edit rights. The primary use of Data Foundations is for data
abstraction: administrators control which tables and fields users can or cannot
access when these users are designing or viewing a report.
Business Element
A Business Element is roughly equivalent to an OLAP dimension or logical
view; that is, this object is a logically related collection of data fields that are
based on a Data Foundation. These fields can be organized into a hierarchical
structure within the Business Element. The most common example is a
hierarchical structure that contains the following fields: Country, State or
Province, and City. Business Fields in Business Elements can be aliased to
support data abstraction and to facilitate report design. Administrators can
secure Business Elements through the standard View and Edit rights.
Business View
A Business View is a logical collection of Business Elements. Users see
Business Views as abstract database connections, and the contained
Business Elements as virtual tables that, in turn, contain Business Fields.
Administrators can secure Business Views through the standard View and
Edit rights.
A Business View consists of the following objects:
• One or more Data Connections
• One optional Dynamic Data Connection
• One Data Foundation
• One or more Business Elements
22 Using Business Views
Note:
End users can access Business Views through applications such as Crystal
Reports and the Report Application Server.
Data tier
The data tier consists of multiple databases that contain the data used in the
different views and objects, which are used in reports. Business Views
supports a wide range of corporate databases. See the release.html file
included with your product distribution for a complete list of tested database
software and version requirements.
Information flow
Business Views Architecture
Data tier
2
This section describes a typical Business Views usage scenario. It
demonstrates how report-processing is performed and how security access
is defined and applied for the data in a report.
When creating Business Views, it is important to understand how each of
the component objects relates to one another. The objects that make up a
Business View are:
• Data Connections
• Dynamic Data Connections
• Data Foundations
• Business Elements
A Business View requires at least one of each type of object, except for
Dynamic Data Connections, which are optional.
The objects that make up a Business View build on each other in a
hierarchical fashion. You must first create a Data Connection or Dynamic
Data Connection before you can create a Data Foundation. Then, after you
have a Data Foundation, you can create a Business Element. After you finish
Using Business Views 23
Business Views Architecture
2
Information flow
Usage scenario
creating a Business Element, you can then create a Business View—a view
that report designers have access to.
Ultimately, the Business View Manager allows administrators to integrate
complex and disparate data sources seamlessly, effectively removing data
silos in an organization. That is, using the Business View Manager,
administrators can take data from several different sources and abstract it
so that report designers see a single, unified, and logically organized data
source.
This section employs a hypothetical usage scenario to illustrate how the
Business View Manager can be used to create Business Views from which
to base a report.
In this scenario, a company has its data stored in three different databases.
Its personnel data is stored in a Microsoft SQL Server. Its product information
is stored in a DB2. Its sales data is stored in three different ORACLE
databases: one for development, one for testing, and one for production.
The report designers want to create reports that show the performance of
Sales representatives, including personnel information and product data.
Users must be able to run reports based on any of the three ORACLE sales
databases. Additionally, the company wants to specialize the reports for
different regions. The East, Central, and West sales managers each want
to receive the same reports, but want to see data from only their regions. All
of the managers also have unique terminology preferences, and want their
reports to reflect these preferences. To incorporate the different data sources
and the three different sales region preferences, three different Business
Views must be created.
24 Using Business Views
Business Views Architecture
Information flow
2
Data Connection layer
The Data Connection layer is composed of one or more Data Connections.
Dynamic Data Connections can also be part of the Data Connection layer,
but are not integral to the creation of a Business View.
Data Connections
The first step in the process of building a Business View is to specify data
sources for the Business View by creating Data Connections. Each Data
Connection object connects to a single data source, such as a database, a
data mart, a spreadsheet, and so on. In this scenario you will create five
different data connections, one for each data storage system.
Because all objects in a Business View are located inside the
BusinessObjects Enterprise Repository, BusinessObjects Enterprise security
applies to the objects. Consequently, as a connection property, you can set
which BusinessObjects Enterprise groups have access to a data source
Using Business Views 25
Business Views Architecture
2
Information flow
through a specific Data Connection. (Users in the groups you specify are
considered authenticated users.) For example, you may want only report
designers and managers at a certain level to have Data Access rights to the
Data Connection for the SQL Server database. Report designers must have
access to the Data Connection in order to be able to create reports based
on it. In this case, you can create two groups in BusinessObjects Enterprise,
one for report designers and one for managers, and grant only those two
groups Data Access rights for the Data Connection in the Business View
Manager. Note that by default the BusinessObjects Enterprise
"Administrators" and "Everyone" groups have full rights to each object you
create in the Business View Manager.
• For details about creating groups in BusinessObjects Enterprise, refer to
the BusinessObjects Enterprise Administrator's Guide.
• For information on setting rights in the Business View Manager, see
Business Views Security Concepts on page 255.
When you add a Data Connection, you can choose to store a user name
and password for the Data Connection to use when accessing the data
source. These credentials are stored in the BusinessObjects Enterprise
Repository and are used each time an authenticated user is designing or
viewing a report based on a Business View that uses that Data Connection.
If you prefer to have users log on to data sources individually, do not store
a user name and password in the BusinessObjects Enterprise Repository.
In the Property Browser for each Data Connection, you can change the name
of the Data Connection. Taking the time to name each Data Connection
properly can greatly enhance usability because Data Connection names are
directly visible to report designers and end-users when reporting off a
Business View that uses a Dynamic Data Connection. Report designers and
end-users will be prompted to choose between the different Data
Connections.
By default, at the time of creation, Data Connections are named Data
Connection1, Data Connection2, Data Connection3, and so on. As in the
usage scenario, you would name each Data Connection descriptively:
26 Using Business Views
Business Views Architecture
Information flow
NameData Connection
2
1
3
4
5
Dynamic Data Connections
Once you have created two or more Data Connections, you can choose to
create Dynamic Data Connections. These are pointers that allow
administrators and/or users to choose between different data sources in the
form of Data Connections. Note that each of the data sources that a Dynamic
Data Connection points to must have similar schemas. Any tables, fields,
stored procedures, stored procedure parameters, and other objects that are
in the data sources must have identical structures, names, and content types.
Personnel data in SQL
Server
Sales data in ORACLE
(development database)
Sales data in ORACLE
(testing database)
Sales data in ORACLE
(production database)
Personnel
Product InfoProduct data in DB22
Sales Development
Sales Testing
Sales Production
When a Business View designer creates a Data Foundation that is based
on a Dynamic Data Connection, this user is prompted to specify which Data
Connection to use. Similarly, when a user refreshes a report based on a
Dynamic Data Connection, that user is prompted to specify which Data
Connection to use.
In the usage scenario, you would create one Dynamic Data Connection
composed of the three ORACLE sales databases: Sales Development, Sales
Using Business Views 27
Business Views Architecture
2
Information flow
Testing, and Sales Production. A typical name for such a Dynamic Data
Connection would be Dynamic Sales.
Data Foundation layer
After you have created the Data Connection layer (using Data Connections
and possibly using Dynamic Data Connections), the next step is to create a
Data Foundation. A Data Foundation is a component used for data access
management, where you collect a list of data fields to be made available for
use as Business Fields in Business Elements. A Data Foundation is an
abstraction layer into which you can insert and join several types of objects
(from different Data Connections):
• Table objects
• Data tables
• Views
• Stored procedures
• SQL command objects
• Formulas
• SQL expressions
• Filters
• Parameters
• Custom Functions
Note that views, stored procedures, and SQL command objects all appear
as tables once you add them to the Data Foundation.
When you create a Data Foundation, you need to specify your data source,
whether it be one or more Data Connections, or one or more Dynamic Data
Connections. You can have any number or combination of Data Connections
and Dynamic Data Connections for your Data Foundation. In the case of the
usage scenario, the Data Foundation would be composed of two Data
Connections—Personnel and Product Info—and one Dynamic Data
Connection—Dynamic Sales.
28 Using Business Views
The items you choose to include in the Data Foundation determine what
fields will later be available for report designers to use when creating reports.
That is, you, the administrator, can control which tables and columns users
can or cannot access.
Using formulas and SQL expressions
At the Data Foundation level, you can use formulas to create data fields that
will then be available to users working at the Business Element level (a
Business Element is a collection of fields that are based on a Data
Foundation). For example, the existing Data from the Sales Data Connection
may list an employee's sales quota and actual sales, but not the percentage
of the sales quota that employee reached. In this case, you could write a
formula that calculates this percentage. Later, at the Business Element layer,
you could make this field available to report designers, but choose to keep
the sales quota and actual sales fields hidden. This is a simple example of
how you can use the Business View Manager to abstract and control user
access to data.
SQL expressions are similar to formulas, but they are written in Structured
Query Language (SQL). They are useful in optimizing report performance
because the tasks they execute are always performed on the database server
(as opposed to formulas, which are typically executed on the local machine).
Business Views Architecture
Information flow
2
Using filters
Filters provide row-level security for Business Views. You create your own
filters to apply to your Data Foundation. These filters allow you to reference
fields, formulas, SQL expressions, parameters, and other filters. You can
use Boolean operators to create Business Filters that restrict access to certain
information for specific users or groups. After you create a Business Filter,
you can also assign to which user or group you want to apply this filter.
Using parameters
Parameters prompt the user of a report to enter information. Think of a
parameter as a question that the user needs to answer before the report is
generated from the Business View information. The information users
enter—or the way they respond—determines what appears in the report.
Using Business Views 29
Business Views Architecture
2
Information flow
For example, in a report used by salespeople, there might be a parameter
that asks the user to choose a region. The report would return the results
for the specific region chosen by the user, instead of returning the results
for all of the regions.
Using custom functions
Custom functions are procedures you create in Crystal Reports to evaluate,
to make calculations on, or to transform data. When you use a custom
function in a formula, all of the operations in its definition are performed
without the need to specify them individually in the formula itself. Thus, a
custom function provides a way for you to share and reuse formula logic and
makes it easier and less time-consuming for you and your users to create
different Business Views objects and reports.
You create custom functions using Crystal Reports and then save them in
the repository. In the Business View Manager, you reference custom
functions, and then include them in your formulas.
Note:
A custom function cannot be placed directly into a Business Element; it must
be used as a part of a formula at the Data Foundation level.
Business Element layer
A Business Element is an object that allows you to shape your data fields
from a Data Foundation into components that make sense from a business
perspective. It is important to understand that the organization of Business
Fields in Business Elements does not need to reflect the shape of the
underlying tables in the Data Foundation.
Whereas the Data Foundation layer is focused on the physical layout of the
data sources, the Business Element layer allows you to create a hierarchical
information landscape. You can reorganize the tables, fields, formulas, and
SQL expressions from the Data Foundation into a logical view with multiple
levels. A common example of a Business Element is a hierarchical structure
that contains the following fields: Country, State or Province, and City.
When you insert data fields from the tables, formulas, and SQL expressions
that you created in a Data Foundation into a Business Element, each of the
30 Using Business Views
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