Summary

Team-Fly

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The ODBO interface makes SAP BW an open product. Users can now leverage existing investments in third-party client tools to access data from SAP and provide a quick Web-based data access solution. Though the ODBO interface is a powerful interface, it cannot take advantage of all the services that SAP BW provides, such as full access to the SAP BW data model and multi-language and multi-currency features. To exploit all SAP BW capabilities, third-party-tool providers may program their applications at the ODBO BAPI level or by direct use of OLAP_API function modules. The inSight example showed how quickly one could implement and deploy SAP BW Web-based solutions. SAP BW version 2.0A provides limited Web reporting capabilities. However, in BW 2.0B and in future versions, you will see more robust Web implementation built within the SAP BW software. I also tested the Brio Query 6.0 and the Business Objects 5.1 field beta test versions against SAP BW 2.0A. Both products seem to be working as expected. At the time of testing, these products were still undergoing the SAP BW 2.0 ODBO certification process. Check http://www.sap.com for a list of ODBO-certified third-party data-access products.

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Team-Fly