Link: https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/14966

A new Service Pack of Xcelsius 2008 is scheduled to be released at end-of Q3 / early Q4 2009. This release will include integration of Xcelsius 2008 with NetWeaver 7.0 meant to leverage BW data through Xcelsius BI Dashboards.

What functions will the integration provide?

• A new Xcelsius direct connector to BEx queries & views
• Support SAP transport mechanism for lifecycle
• Support for text translation
• Xcelsius Dashboards accessed via NW Portal BEx iView using standard SAP credentials
• The solution does not require Business Objects Enterprise

When should this solution be considered?

When BI data resides in SAP NetWeaver Business Wharehouse.

When the business requirements are about highly visual interface with intuitive guided navigation for casual BI users: executives, managers and operational staff. Xcelsius dashboards are not desgined for Olap style analysis. Currently it does not provide visualization for hierarchical data.

If business requirements includes Web Intelligence ad hoc reporting, Infoview or Dashboard Builder BI portal delivery. Recommendation is to use Xcelsius hosted by Business Objects Enterprise enabling dashboard delivery via Infoview, Dashboard Builder. In a Business Objects Enterprise deployment, recommended Xcelsius data connector for BW remains Live Office.

What software will be required?

Dashboard authors:

• BI 7.X AddOn SP901 or higher
• Xcelsius Designer 2008 SP2 (release scheduled for end-of July 24th 2009) or higher
• SAP GUI 7.10

Dashboard consumers:

• Flash Player 9 or Flash Player 10

Server side NetWeaver Platform:

• SAP EHP1 for SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SP5 ABAP and Java (scheduled for October 2009)

I can't await this release and hope that this new (native) connector will be really fast!

FlashVars are a nice feature for providing a data push method to Xcelsius Dashboards.
A common scenario for using FlashVars is to provide the Webservice-URL to a Dashboard in a multiserver environment. Imagine you are working in a 3 layered Business Objects Enterprise server architecture with a development server, a test server and a production server.

Transporting a Dashboard in a multiserver architecture is easy if you are using the Import Wizard of Business Objects. If you are using LiveOffice connections who should ensure that the ObjectIDs stay stable. For more information about LiveOffice connection migration, take a look at: Migration of LiveOffice Connections.

Adding a FlashVar to you Dashboard is simple and you will find more infos about implementing FlashVars in Xcelsius documentation, SDN or other Xcelsius-Guru-Blogs.

Today we are foccussing on calling Flashvars. In the screenshot below you will see a simple CSV-Flashvar called var1.

There a several ways of calling a FlashVar.

1.) You could write a HTML document and embed the SWF-File and it's properties (including FlashVars).
The following link will provide the standard syntax for embedded Flash Files: Adobe TechNote Macromedia Flash OBJECT and EMBED tag syntax

For adding a FlashVar you habe to add PARAM NAME=FlashVars VALUE="%FLASHVARNAME%=%FLASHVARVALUE$" below the OBJECT-Tag and FlashVars="%FLASHVARNAME%=%FLASHVARVALUE$" into the EMBED-tag

2.) Call a FlashVar as a parameter in an URL String. The syntax is described in the example below:

http://servername:port/dashboard.swf?%FLASHVARNAME%=%FLASHVARVALUE%

3.) Deployed to Business Objects Enterprise you can change the FlashVar in the properties of the object in CMC.

4.) Provide the Flashvariable in an OpenDocument-Call
The syntax is - openDocument.jsp?iDocID=&sIDType=CUID&sKind=Flash&ls[varname1]=[varvalue1]&ls[varname2]=[varvalue2] (Thanks to Pavel)

When you are using a multilayer server architecture with Dashboards deployed to Business Objects Enterprise that have different FlashVar requirements you have to adapt them manually in CMC after every transport because they are overwritten by Import Assistant.