RE: Business Objects with DB2 data

We did not really see users who got frustrated (some did but not the majority). What we saw was that the "boss" thought it would be good if his/her staff could get answers without calling IT. The staff had to learn BO and when they saw how much it took to do their own reports over sending an email to another office saying "My boss needs to know the total blah blah blah by county for the last 3 years" they starting asking what tasks they were no longer to do in order to get the reports done. So it went back to calling IT asking for the report and then going back to what they were doing.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Paul Nelson
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2013 9:39 AM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: Business Objects with DB2 data

" but they really want to go this route of user creating their own reports"

See Mike Cunningham's response. Your users will get frustrated and give up, and you will end up with yet another new IT director.

Been there, seen it, had to clean up after the massacre.

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 512-392-2577
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Hoteltravelfundotcom
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2013 8:29 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Business Objects with DB2 data

The decision to go to business objects is based on having a front end portal for the end users to create reports. We also want to offload the reporting from the AS/400 onto the SQL server. other tools we are now interested in exploring. Some were mentioned earlier in this thread like SEQUEL. This seems to be the most common for this purpose. I understand that Rob's point about the Business Rules getting in the way, but they really want to go this route of user creating their own reports.Or at least that we in IT can assist.


On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Paul Nelson <nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

DSPSYSVAL QMODEL
DSPSYSVAL QPRCFEAT

Figure out how much memory and disk you have. There is probably
nothing wrong with your ERP software except lack of knowledge in how it works.

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 512-392-2577
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Hoteltravelfundotcom
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2013 8:19 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Business Objects with DB2 data

How can I find out what type of I we have? is there a system value? I
am not on site.


On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 9:03 AM, Paul Nelson <nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Slapping a tool like BO and/or Crystal Reports onto your system is
the wrong approach. If you are having response time problems and
"bugs", you have more serious problems than trying to summarize
sales.

Your new IT director needs to spend some money and get a systems
expert

to

review your situation. Programmers aren't going to help you here.

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 512-392-2577
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of

Hoteltravelfundotcom

Sent: Friday, August 02, 2013 7:51 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Business Objects with DB2 data

OK this is definetly an eye opener for me and I thank you all for
responding. It seems to me that the first thing they need to do is
get a consultant who can go over these options as discussed.
The IT Director is new, and has no prior AS/400 background. The

ownership

only knows one thing, that the current ERP is very slow and has many

bugs

that need to be addressed on a constant basis by 2 outside
consultants

plus

one in house Manager-programmer. So requests for many needed reports

have

been allocated to Crystal Reports hence they want to advance that to
Business Objects. Some reports that I have done lately for instance
are simple summaries of sales according to Product lines. They don't
want anything added to current AS/400 because of space. The upgrade
to 7.1 is planned but i need to find out which machine this will be,
based on

Rob's

idea.


On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 8:12 AM, Mike Cunningham
<mike.cunningham@xxxxxxx>wrote:

We have an instance of BO tied in to our iSeries DB2 using ODBC.
We

also

got BO when it came bundled with a Financial Package we purchased
so

we

decided to try and use it to also provide reporting services to
all of

our

i based data. What we did was write our own custom

Extract/transform/load

(ETL) application that runs nightly on the iSeries and pulls all
the

data

needed for reporting and puts it in a different set of tables in a
different library formatted for reporting. BO then points to this

library

only. Most Data warehouse setups to the same including the
Financial Package we purchased. In their case they take the data
out of one

MSSQL

database server and replicate it all to a second MS SQL server
used by

BO.

After training everyone to use BO and the reports then can get
from

the

data and all the 'cool' things it can do, we have exactly 0 users

using

it.

Even after years of complaining that they had no reporting package

like

other colleges had. We do have our research office using the i
data

for

many reports but they prefer to use Access. The database is the
same,

we

just allowed them ODBC access to the special library. They love it.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Hoteltravelfundotcom
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2013 5:50 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Business Objects with DB2 data

I am interested in hearing of any Iseries shops which use Business

Objects.

We are interested
in that product to use for reports and allowing users to create
their

own

reports.
I am concerned in that that AS/400 ERP we have is rather old
product, basically RPG from back in the 90's and data base is very
bulky - any experiences would be welcome.
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