Installing Infoview 2

[funkmonsteruk]

I've been using Business Objects for about a year now and have found it to be very useful, however I've just been rumuging through a software liscence storage database and it appears that we also have Infoview.

Now I've located the BO instalation disk but have a few questions, was wondering if anybody could shed some light on the situation:

1: What does Infoview do? I've been told that you install it on your server and it allows anybody with an Internet Broswer to view and refresh reports - is this the case

2: The disk cover say's that it has Infoview on it but when i take a look at the installation screen no mention of Infoview is made (However there are several greyed out SDK items - are they anything to do with it?)

3: Are there any special server requirements? We currently operate an NT server, but can gain access to a larger web server if that's what's required (I work for HSBC, but it's a bit of an outdated office with old school server equipment)

4: Will I have to create a new set of reports for use with Infoview? Or can i just use my old reports from my existing repository?

Any answers that anybody can provide me with will be very much appreciated

 

[skrandel]

1. This is the case. InfoView is a web based BO "Portal". It lets you read/refresh/paramterize reports.

2. InfoView is a sub-portion of WebIntelligence. Use your Server license keys to install it. If you don't have keys for it, ask for them. You should be entitled to it. Install everything the keys let you install.

3. Server should be Windows 2K, but NT 4 SP3 still works. It needs to have IIS running. There are some other pre-requisites, but you can read those in the install guide.

4. All reports should work fine with Infoview. Be careful of any reports that reference personal data files. The Server would need to be able to access those files.

Licensing is your issue. If you have 10 full-client users, then those same users (no others) are allowed to use InfoView. You can buy more Infoview licenses for other users who need the capability.



Steve Krandel
BASE Consulting Group

http://www.baseconsulting.com

 

[funkmonsteruk]

Cheers Steve, whats IIS (Question 3)...???

 

[Sridharan]

Internet Information Server

Sri

 

[pabloj]

4. If you have Drill on full client reports it will not be available through Infoview

Stick to your guns

 

[JeffersonH]

There are a couple of caveats to installing WebI (Infoview):

1. The OSAgent port number...make a note of what you use because if you want to install on another computer in the same sub-net it has to be different.

2. The WebIntelligence Manager and WebIntelligence ORB services need to be run with an account that has admin rights on the box. It is best to use the same account that you use for the COM setup portion of install, so make it first and give it User Rights to logon as a service at a minimum.

3. WIDispatcher has a known problem with 5.1.2 (WebI 2.6.2 and earlier). What happens is a time out failure that fails to release IIS Admin and

http://WWW Publishing

services resulting in a lock up of IIS. There is a registry hack to create a time out extension to the module...email me if you need it.

4. Read the install guide on the authentication options very, very carefully. If you want to use any from of authentication other than BO native, then you have to rename some dll's. It's not hard, but confusing. Also, the authentication in WebI and IIS need to match...but the WebI administrator will prompt you on that. Pay close attention to which methods are case sensitive in relation to user names. Be advised when using NT challenge/response, that from Win9.X clients, the PDC will always pass the username in ALLCAPS. With NT C/R the domain and BO passwords do not have to be synched (in fact most of my users don't know their BO password at all). Using NT Basic authentication the user has to enter NT username and pw, and the passwords don't have to be synched there either, but the case of the username has to match between the login and the user entry in the repository.

5. Versions before 5.1.7 do not properly implement http1.1, so expect performance drags on slow networks.

6. You have to locate a copy of your bomain.key in the server's locdata folder, effectively meaning that the server will only work for the repository relevant to that .key. Only one named BOMain.key will work, unlike with the client where you can pick from the drop down and use development, test, or other keys. There may be a complex way of getting around that, but the point of WebI is to provide an interface environment for end users that allows them to connect to services like shared storage and a private mail system.

7. If you want to have the advanced features of the client launched from within WebI, you can use the ZABO client. However, there are server side settings (using a supervisory account) which enables launching ZABO instead of the html presentation.

8. With WebI you add some administrative overhead, when republishing universes it's necessary to delete the old ones from the server to force them to be downloaded with the fresh copy, and universe and document caching on the server may get corrupted requiring them to be deleted.

9. You must have a cluster manager, but you don't have to have cluster nodes unless you need the capacity and have no other means of load balancing. In my case, we load balance 3 cluster managers behind a Cisco CSS and don't use cluster nodes at all. That makes both administration and data center operations simplier. But CSS' and local directors are not within the means of everyone. But for a small shop you probably don't need more than one CM. From explicit testing on a CQ 580 with 4 733 cpu's and 2 GB ram, it took 85 users clicking on the same button at the same time to crash a server. That agrees to the letter with CQ's PeopleSoft testing. With over 1200 users our concurrency peaks at about 160 at the busiest times...balanced over 3 servers.

10. If you get server hangups you will find it easier to build a batch job to kill and restart services than to reboot with each failure. However, if you avoid or remediate the WiDispatcher time out then you'll find the server to be very stable over long periods even when using ZABO.

tmp.Worldwide
Business Objects 5i
Systems Integrator
Pfizer Global Research and Development