The Central Management Server (CMS) Repository

The content of the Business Objects Enterprise (BOE) system consists of the physical files and the metadata information about the physical files.
For a Crystal Report, the physical file as well as the metadata about the file should exist in the BOE system. The Crystal report is stored as a file on File Repository Server (FRS) with an extension of .rpt . The Metadata information such as report name, type, report ID, path, etc is stored as an InfoObject in the CMS Repository.
I will discuss about the CMS repository in this article.
The CMS Repository Database Tables
The CMS metadata is physically stored on a database as InfoObjects.   There are six tables, the purpose of which is given below.

Sno	Physical Table Name	Purpose
1	CMS_VersionInfo	Contains the current version of BOE.
2	CMS_InfoObjects6	Each row in this table stores a single InfoObject.  This is the main table in the repository.
3	CMS_Aliases6	Maps the user alias(es) to the corresponding user ID. For example, a user may have both a Win NT alias and an LDAP alias. Regardless of the number of aliases a user may have, in the  Business Intellengence .Platform each user has only one user ID. The map is stored in a separate table to enable fast logins.
4	CMS_IdNumbers6	The CMS uses this table to generate unique Object IDs and Type IDs. It has only two rows: an Object ID row and a Type ID row. The CMSs in a cluster use this table when generating unique ID numbers.
5	CMS_Relationships6	Relationship tables are used to store the relations between InfoObjects. Each row in the table stores one edge in the relation. For example, the relation between a Web Intelligence document and a Universe would be stored in a row in the WebI – Universe Relation table. Each relationship table has these columns: Parent Object ID, Child Object ID, Relationship InfoObject ID, member, version, ordinal, data.
6	CMS_LOCKS6	This is an auxiliary table of CMS_RELATIONS6.

The Central Management Server(CMS) repository tables cannot be queried directly. Query builder is the tool to be used to retrieve Business Objects metadata information using the virtual tables such as ci_systemobjects, ci_infoobjects and ci_appobjects.
In the forthcoming posts, I will discuss on query builder and file repository server.

Building dashboards using Xcelsius with SharePoint data

Do you know – Xcelsius dashboards can be built using SharePoint data?

Figure 1: Xcelsius dashboard built using SharePoint data

Pre-requisites

• Xcelsius for SharePoint server (XSP) installs a web part container into the Sharepoint web part library.
• After installation and configuration, the web part container can be added to the Web Part Gallery within SharePoint and any user with the appropriate rights can add the web part container to a page within the site.

Xcelsius Web connectivity Parameters to use

• SharePoint Parameter: Used to define parameters or properties in Crystal Xcelsius models that a user can change in the SharePoint environment
• SharePoint Provider: Used to give data to another Web Part published in SharePoint
• SharePoint Consumer: Used to get data from another published Web Part in SharePoint (a SharePoint List or another Crystal Xcelsius model)
• Use the File -> Export -> SharePoint option to generate the .swf file with SharePoint functionality.
• Once generated, you will be able to add and configure the SharePoint Web Part with the .swf file to publish the model

Building the Dashboard

• Add the Xcelsius document to the SharePoint document list
• Copy the shortcut to the uploaded document
• Go the SharePoint page
• Click on Modify Shared web part
• Add a web part
  • From the web part-gallery list select Crystal Xcelsius web-part
  • Use Modify Shared Web Part option
  • In the Xcelsius Visualization source, specify URL (paste the shortcut you copied from the document list) and apply
• It is possible to customize models Real-time – Change chart type, title etc when defined as SharePoint Parameter
  • Use Modify Shared web part at run time

• Add a SharePoint List, say “Sample” as a web part in the same page
• In the Xcelsius web part configuration menu, “connections” option is enabled once a list is added in the page
• In the connections, specify consume list from “Sample”
• All Sharepoint lists and Providers in the same page will be listed in the connections option.
• In order for a Xcelsius model to consume data from Sharepoint Provider, there should be two models deployed in the same page – one for the provider and one for the consumer
• The visuals in the swf file with the consumer will change based on the data from the provider once connection is set