It hasn't exactly been a "slow news week" in the Business Objects community. So, we thought an extra edition of The Repository was in order to bring you up to speed on some developments in the past couple of weeks.

Business Objects/SAP Integration News
When SAP acquired Business Objects at the beginning of 2008, I wrote a short article discussing what the ramifications might be for customers. If I recall my short-term predictions, they revolved around pricing and support. Well, a little over six months in, some of these predictions are coming true.

While the jury's still not completely in on the pricing prediction, several indicators are that prices are increasing. These "indicators" may merely be attempts by BOBJ's sales staff to incentivize customers to purchase immediately, rather than put off a purchase until later in the year. Or, the predicted price increase could actually be reality. We haven't received final pricing for the just-announced Crystal Reports Server 2008 and BusinessObjects Edge 3.0 products yet, but we'll let you know if we see significant price increases coming (although I can tell you that Crystal Reports Server 2008 includes more flexible Named User License pricing, as opposed to the Concurrent Access Licensing pricing that was the only option for most of the lifecycle of Crystal Reports Server XI).

But, the support issues have come to a head as SAP has attempted to integrate Business Objects customers into their existing SAP support organization during the second week of July. If you have a Business Objects support agreement, you may very well have been one of the many who have had difficulty in getting technical information, creating new support incidents, or working on existing incidents. If you don't have a support contract, you may want to consider yourself lucky for the time being. Even if you've just tried to look up an issue in the Business Objects KnowledgeBase, you've discovered the change. In a nutshell, the integration of the SAP and Business Objects support systems has not been a shining example of planning, testing, and implementation.

You may "feel the pain" by reading The SAP/Business Objects Support Blunder by Cindi Howson (another Business Objects author with my publisher Osborne/McGraw-Hill), and, a Business Objects-oriented message board.

While we don't have any Business Objects support agreements in place (why would we? ;-), we have noticed three immediate issues with this transition:

• We got an e-mail on July 23rd (more than 2 weeks after the support cutover) labeled "On Behalf of your Business Objects Partner." The e-mail provided credentials and directions to use the new support site. We thought this a bit odd, considering that we are a Partner. Upon further investigation, it appears that our contact info, instead of our customer's, has been converted to the new support system. We don't look forward to trying to straighten this out.
• Previously freely-available knowledgebase articles are now tougher to find on the SAP site. It also appears that Enterprise-oriented content may be "locked away," only available to those who have paid for a support agreement, while Crystal Reports and Xcelsius content appears to still be relatively free and open.
• All the hyperlinks in previously-released Business Objects support documents (many, many documents hyperlinked to other documents, white papers, and so forth) are now broken.

New Versions of Crystal Reports Server and BusinessObjects Edge
One of the challenges of writing a technical book is dealing with publishing lead times and software release schedules. While my editor allowed me some extra time in preparation of Crystal Reports 2008: The Complete Reference to accommodate the just-released BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.0, I didn't have any information about the product very likely of interest to many Crystal Reports users, Crystal Reports Server 2008. Furthermore, the new version of BusinessObjects Edge wasn't available for me to look at either.

Well, they've arrived! Crystal Reports Server 2008 and BusinessObjects Edge 3.0 have both been announced. Both these products are built on the BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.0 platform, and faithfully adhere to the look, feel, and features of the initial Enterprise XI 3.0 product line. That's good for this author, as the material in Crystal Reports 2008: The Complete Reference is right on the mark! It's also good because there are some exciting new features in the new releases of the software.

For Crystal Reports users, the immediate benefit is support for all the new Crystal Reports 2008 features. Saved data selection, optional parameter fields, and the Parameter Panel are really exciting. You can now design a report that allows a great deal more interaction without having to refresh the report. And, Sort Controls also provide the ability to resort your report on-the-fly without having to re-run or refresh the report. If you use Xcelsius or other Flash-based development tools, you'll also appreciate the new web support for integrated Flash within a Crystal Report. And, then there are those new cross-tab derived rows and columns!

There are additional features in Edge 3.0 as well. In particular, all Edge editions now include the full Dashboard Manager product and new offline Web Intelligence support. You also have the option of purchasing additional "Data Quality" add-ons with Business Objects Edge 3.0 Professional Edition to supplement the already-included ETL features of Data Integrator.

These are just a few of the new features of these just-released products. I'll be offering interactive webinars later in the year to highlight all the new features. So, stay close to your Inbox for more info!

Interesting Change in National User Conference
If you're a long-time Crystal Reports user, you may remember the Seagate Software and Crystal Decisions User Groups of North America (abbreviated SSUGNA and CDUGNA, respectively). In the days of Seagate Software and Crystal Decisions, this independent user-driven organization worked with the vendor to host a national user conference every year. However, upon Business Objects' acquisition of Crystal Decisions, the vendor chose its Marketing Department to organize and host a national user conference and the independent national group disbanded. Well, what goes around comes around, and the SAP acquisition of Business Objects has resulted in an interesting change.

You may have already received an e-mail announcing the next national user conference. If not, it is scheduled for October 20-22 in Dallas. The big difference is that the e-mail announcement came, not from Business Objects, but from the Business Objects Community Alliance, a new offshoot of ASUG, the Americas' SAP Users' Group (self-described as "an independent, member-driven organization with 50,000 members in North America"). This new organization will host the national conference in conjunction with the ASUG Fall Focus Business Management event.

I found this particularly exciting. While the previous Business Objects-hosted Insight conferences were pretty well focused, they tended to be "marketing" oriented and didn't necessarily provide the balance of more user-driven and user-organized events. Hopefully, some of that balance will return this October (and, hopefully I'll be able to, once again, make a presentation or two—Business Objects steadfastly refused to allow me to present during several previous Insight conferences).

Get information and keep up-to-date on conference preparations by visiting:
www.myboc.org