First things first – Metapedia is a silly name. It doesn't sound "business serious" to me and that's a shame as I think it's likely going to be the entry point for most business users to the value of SAP's Information Steward. In a nutshell from the manual, the SAP Information Steward Metapedia module "allows you to implement a business glossary of terms related to your business data and organize the terms hierarchically." Many businesses and organisations will already have a glossary of business terms, perhaps even initial mappings to database fields. This may be called a Data Dictionary, Mapping Document or Business – IT Mapping Document but, for many, it's usefulness will be restricted by the fact it's hosted in Excel. Metapedia breaks those spreadsheet chains and allows the business end of Data Governance Teams to really direct the focus of those tasked with managing Data Profiling, building Data Quality Scorecards and prioritising Metadata Management.

It's time for another Maxima SAP Scotland Update. We held a couple of these events last year and they proved remarkably well attended (even with one of our seasonal winter 'hurricanes' blowing Central Scotland away!) so we're keen to make sure that everybody who attended those (and new names) will always learn something new each time we do them. This time round we've changed venue (it's the Whisky Experience up by Edinburgh Castle) and, more importantly, will be actually stepping into topics that cover project delivery with the SAP BusinessObjects product suite.

I wasn't going to be writing any more blogs about the new SAP Information Steward Metadata Management immediately but confess to being intrigued by the range of third party metadata integrators available when preparing my blog on adding new SAP integrators. In particular, as both an Oracle and SAP BI Partner, I was interested in the potential of integrating in the metadata available within Oracle BI to the SAP Information Steward. It's proven to be an interesting investigation so thought I'd put up a little blog on what's possible and what, frustratingly, seems not to be.

In previous posts looking at the new SAP Information Steward Metadata Management I've given an overview of how metadata can be brought together from different sources and then walked through how to set up a new Metadata Integrator that will interrogate those sources. In this post I'll give a quick overview of how SAP BusinessObjects developers can use this gathered metadata to quick start the process of Universe Design. Of course building Universes will be bread and butter stuff to most SAP BusinessObjects developers but I think there's a potentially productive new discipline on offer through this SAP information Steward feature. As I've mentioned before in these blogs, SAP Information Steward is an environment where both Business and IT users can come together. By sourcing the tables and columns they are going to use from those verified in SAP Information Steward, Universe Designers can be sure that they are using the business preferred data sources or, alternatively, use the tool to suggest preferable options.

In my previous post I gave an overview of the Metadata Management module of the new SAP Information Steward. This provided a single directory structure for a number of Metadata Integrators providing a unified view of metadata across your BI environment. Metadata Integrators are available for a wide variety of integration points including SAP BusinessObjects, Data Services, Data Insight, CWM Models and Third Party interfaces such as Oracle Data Integrator or Microsoft SQL Server. In this blog I'm going to look at the process for setting up a new Metadata Integrator, specifically one which will gather the metadata details from an SAP Data Services Repository. The process is similar regardless of which Metadata Integrator you are setting up so hopefully of use for most scenarios.

In previous blogs about the new SAP Information Steward I've looked at the Data Profiling and Quality Scorecarding capabilities. Both are useful for developing a true picture of the quality of your data and ongoing initiatives to improve it - key requirements for any Data Governance programme. But what about the use to which that data is put? How is it transformed? Where is it deployed? What reports rely upon it? It's to answer these questions and more that SAP Information Steward also includes a Metadata Management module and this is going to be my subject for the next few blogs in this series.

In my previous posts in this series (here and here) I looked first at scheduling the SAP Information Steward Data Profiling tasks and then building and processing the Business Rules that validated specific tests against this data. Both are essential pre-requisites for the design and build of SAP Information Steward Quality Scorecards reviewed in this post.

The principal benefit of the Quality Scorecards to my mind is that it provides a front window to any organisations Data Quality initiative. It brings to life what is too often an abstract concept by using proven dashboard communication principles. Aggregating the weighted results of the previously defined Business Rules allows Data Stewards to present a single view of any data domain (e.g. a single score recording the quality of our Product Data) and, crucially, the progress being made over time in improving this quality. Combined with the other features of SAP Information Steward – the Metadata Integrators, Metapedia definition resources and Cleansing Package Builders – these Quality Scorecards have the potential to become the central point of Data Governance team management, prioritising and monitoring activity.

 

In my previous blog about using SAP Information Steward to Build Scorecards, I reviewed the fairly straightforward process by which Data Profile tasks are scheduled. This is important as it automates the delivery of profiling results which too many Data Governance environments are currently running on a costly, manual basis. It also provides the raw data profile results by which a Data Governance team can then apply Business Rules which validate business constraints and requirements and it is the setup of this process in SAP Information Steward which I'll cover in this blog.

The distinction between profiling data and applying business rules to data is a useful one for any Data Governance team. It may be, for example, that your profiling of a product data set reveals there to be lots of misspellings in the Product Colour field. In some businesses that may be fine whilst for others this could be a rule cause of concern. The former group will be relaxed about the occasional key slip and not need to prioritise correction. The latter group however will perhaps be grouping the results of queries by colour and will create a business rule that checks how many records comply with the correct spelling. They will want to use this business rule to monitor the accuracy of colour on an ongoing basis. This may, for example, help them decide whether to change the input of colour at source system screen from free text to a fixed list of values.

SAP Information Steward allows Data Governance teams to apply their business rules (whether already known or 'discovered' through the data profiling process) to data, automate their calculation and monitor the trends of compliance. With the rules built, it is then possible to aggregate them into the Quality Domains shown in the SAP Information Steward Dashboards. That is a process I'll review in the third of these Building Scorecard blogs. This post is solely concerned with measuring business rule compliance.

When I was first introduced to the concept of Data Quality tools (many moons ago admittedly) my reaction was naively indifferent. So what, I thought. Just a bunch of SQL in a box that checks missing values, formats, etc... Fair enough reaction for one so very young but, of course, there's more to it than that. Simply profiling data is worthwhile but the value is undeniably limited when compared to Data Auditing where those profile tasks are conducted on a regular, automated schedule and the Data Governance team can begin to see the development of data quality issues and/or improvements over time.

SAP Information Steward does, of course, have just this functionality included and, critically, has introduced Quality Domains where aggregated quality scores for related entities can be accessed and reviewed. In my first post about Using Information Steward, I looked at the process of Profiling. In this and a further two blogs, I'll take the story forward to explain how the Information Steward Scorecards are built examining how business data rules are set up against scheduled profiling results before themselves being scheduled and aggregated into a Quality Domain based scorecard.

We'll start with the scheduling of the Information Steward Data Profiling jobs.

Last year, I ran through a series of blogs about installing and configuring the SAP BusinessObjects 4.0, Data Services 4.0 and Information Steward products. Of all these new installs I do find myself going back again and again to the potential business value that can be realised through the use of Information Steward so have decided to run a few blogs on it's core functionality.

My intention is twofold:

i) to demonstrate what SAP Information Steward is capable of and...

ii) make the case that SAP Information Steward will provide a valuable front end to any Data Governance initiative

When I woke up on the 8th December to the news that a huge storm was due to batter Scotland later that day with schools being closed and recommendations not to travel being issued, I felt somewhat depressed. Everyone at Maxima had put a lot of effort and research into preparing our SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 Close Up Event scheduled for that day in Edinburgh and now it looked like the weather was going to decimate our audience. Happily my worries were misplaced and most folk that had signed up to attend were indeed there. I think we can put that down to the resilient nature of the Scots character and, perhaps more likely, the very real rise in interest we are seeing across the board in businesses and organisations wanting to make sure they are well equipped to delivery against Business Intelligence requirements in 2012.

SAP Information Steward is one of the more intriguing components of the recently released 4.0 Product Suite. It's positioned as an aid to Data Governance programmes providing tools to help manage data quality, resolve metadata definition conflict and plan data cleansing routines. The tool not only integrates into your existing SAP BusinessObjects environment but also other metadata sources such as Oracle Warehouse Builder. In later blogs, I'll review some of this functionality in detail but this blog will review the relatively straightforward process of installing the SAP Information Steward environment.

Over the last few months I've been preparing for the SAP Business Objects 4.0 ramp-up and release, specifically looking into the Data Services and Information Steward sections of the new release.

For those of you who haven't come across these products before here's a quick summary.

Last week, Maxima launched SAP Business Objects 4.0 in Scotland at a well attended event programme. It was great to see clients old and new in attendance to hear from Maxima and SAP staff about the new features and business benefits they can expect to see in this latest release of the SAP Business Objects product suite. This log aims to capture the high level content for those who couldn't attend (or jog the memories of those who could!)

The launch of the latest release of SAP Business Objects is upon us at last.  At Maxima, we’ve been exploring this new release for a couple of months now and it’s looking quite impressive.  Even if we are all having to adjust to the new naming conventions. 

Perhaps the most curious of those to me from a personal perspective is that this release is called SAP Business Objects 4.0.  That’s where I came in to the Business Objects world 12 years ago isn’t it?  OK, it didn’t have SAP in front of it but Business Objects 4 was the first release of the application I ever used before quickly graduating to 5i (hello WebIntelligence!) and then 6e (hello a usable WebIntelligence!) before joining Eclectic\Maxima and being fully submerged in the XI world for releases 1 through to 3.   Well, now XI has gone and we’re back to 4.0.  Full circle or the beginning of something new? 

SAP Business Objects 4.0 does mark a complete refresh of the Business Objects stack but one which is very much an upgrade rather than a replace and rebuild project.  If you’ve already invested in SAP Business Objects there are lots of gains to be made by upgrading and if you’re new to the product then it’s a perfect starting point.  Better than the iPad 2 then.

Whatever your circumstances though I think it’s critical you understand where you can gain ROI from SAP Business Objects 4.0.  The days of upgrading for the sake of a new technology are fading fast and nobody is going to invest in technology without a good business reason.  So, when I review the key features of SAP Business Objects 4.0 below I’m going to offer suggested ROI points which will help ensure the technology becomes a sustainable one for your organisation.