PRO DUCT S

BUSINESSOBJECTS METADATA MANAGEMENT XI 3.0

Whats New

New Features in BusinessObjects Metadata Management XI 3.0 Integration with BusinessObjects Enterprise software Additional metadata integrators and broader platform support Metapedia, a business metadata encyclopedia Metadata source group analysis Tighter integration with InfoView

WHATS NEW IN BUSINESSOBJECTS METADATA MANAGEMENT XI 3.0

BusinessObjects Metadata Management XI 3.0 software enables organizations to bring all their metadata to one place. This solution from Business Objects, an SAP company, collects and unifies metadata from disparate tools and sources into a single repository, where it provides a better view of metadata relationships across tools. IT managers and business users can then prevent unforeseen business impacts and provide impact analysis for the entire intelligence environment. BusinessObjects Metadata Management is now integrated with BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.0 solutions to provide a single point of administration, which is designed for high performance across a broad spectrum of deployment scenarios. BusinessObjects Metadata Management XI 3.0 changes and improvements include: Integration with BusinessObjects Enterprise platform Additional metadata integrators and broader platform support Metapedia, a business metadata encyclopedia Supports metadata source group analysis Tighter integration with InfoView

BUSINESSOBJECTS ENTERPRISE PLATFORM INTEGRATION

Integration with the BusinessObjects Enterprise Central Management Server
As an application working on top of BusinessObjects Enterprise, BusinessObjects Metadata Management XI 3.0 uses the security services that BusinessObjects Enterprise provides and takes advantage of the BusinessObjects Enterprise scalable platform architecture. The BusinessObjects Enterprise Central Management Server (CMS) manages security Figure 1: Integration with the CMC information, such as user accounts, group memberships, and object rights that define user and group privileges. When a user attempts an action on a BusinessObjects Metadata Management object, the CMS authorizes the action only after it verifies that the users account or group membership has sufficient privileges.

Integration with the BusinessObjects Enterprise Central Management Console

The Central Management Console (CMC) is a Web-based tool that offers an interface for administrative tasks, such as user management, content management, and server management, across tools like Crystal Reports software, BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence software, the InfoView component, and BusinessObjects Web Intelligence software, among others. BusinessObjects Metadata Management is now an application on the Central Management Console, and it uses the following services that BusinessObjects Enterprise provides: Security for user management and access to BusinessObjects Metadata Management integrator sources, source groups, metapedia, and utilities. Managing and scheduling BusinessObjects Metadata Management integrator source runs and utilities runs.

ADDITIONAL METADATA INTEGRATORS AND BROADER PLATFORM SUPPORT

In this release, we provide additional metadata integrators that you can select when you install Metadata Management: BusinessObjects Data Federator metadata integrator Meta Integration Metadata Bridge (MIMB) metadata integrator. This release also expands our platform support beyond Microsoft Windows and Apache Tomcat to include UNIX operating systems (Linux, Solaris, and IBM AIX), as well as other application servers, such as IBM WebSphere, Oracle BEA WebLogic, and Oracle Application Server. For additional information, please refer to the support platform on the Business Objects corporate Web site.

METAPEDIA BUSINESS METADATA ENCYCLOPEDIA

BusinessObjects Metadata Management allows for the creation of a metapedia, a business metadata encyclopedia. A metapedia allows you to implement a business glossary of terms related to your business data and organizes the terms hierarchically by subject areas or business units. Additionally, with a metapedia, business terms can be linked to related metadata objects (see Figure 2). This business glossary allows your organization to form a standard business vocabulary of words, phrases, or business concepts.

Figure 2: Metapedia, a Business Metadata Encyclopedia

Figure 3: Associate Metadata Objects in the Metapedia

Each term in the metapedia is created to describe a business concept. It contains a unique name and description, but it can also have a list of synonyms and keywords that can later help to associate a metadata object with the particular term (see Figure 3). You can have a category and subcategory of terms to denote a common functionality, and you can also associate terms with more than one category. For example, you create the terms Gross Revenue and Net Revenue, and place them in a category called Financial. However, in your organization, many business users refer to Net Revenue using the word profit, which you do not intend to establish as a term in your metapedia. In the creation of the Net Revenue term, the data steward could identify the word profit as a synonym. Then, when a business user searches the metapedia for the term profit, the metapedia returns the metadata objects associated with Net Revenue. Furthermore, the data steward could associate Gross Revenue and Net Revenue, so when a business user searches for one of the terms, metadata information about the other is also available. The benefit of using a metapedia is that the organization promotes a common and consistent understanding of business terms, while at the same time supporting a mechanism that enforces data governance.

METADATA SOURCE GROUP ANALYSIS

BusinessObjects Metadata Management XI 3.0 lets you group metadata integrator sources such as those found in a development, testing, and production environment. After the groups are defined, you can view impact analysis and data lineage diagrams for a specific Source group. Source group analysis is also important when the organization needs visibility of metadata by enterprise division, business unit, or function area.

Figure 4: Metadata Source Group Analysis

TIGHTER INTEGRATION WITH INFOVIEW

From a business perspective, a huge benefit of metadata integration is data lineage, which allows BI users to view the context of data in their BI reports. Your users can see how data was computed, and where it came from all the way back to the original transactional source. This visibility is critical to help your users gain better trust in their information. In this release we have created easy access to metadata for business users from within their already familiar BI reporting portal. BI users can view data lineage for BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence and Crystal Reports directly within InfoView, or by single sign-on from InfoView into BusinessObjects Metadata Management explorer for richer metadata discovery

THE MOST FLEXIBLE, UNIFIED, AND SCALABLE METADATA MANAGEMENT ARCHITECTURE TODAY
BusinessObjects Metadata Management XI 3.0 provides an open and flexible architecture that supports a multitude of deployment and configuration scenarios. You can divert processorintensive scheduling and processing to dedicated servers to improve performance. The architecture is designed to meet the needs of virtually any business intelligence deployment. For more information, visit our Web site at www.businessobjects.com.

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