[ SARAH MERTZ. Exploring Auditor. Eric Vallo EV Technologies [ GREG REISCHLEIN [ DAVID SWIERENGA ASUG INSTALLATION MEMBER MEMBER SINCE: 2007

Transcription

1 Exploring Auditor Eric Vallo EV Technologies [ GREG REISCHLEIN ASUG INSTALLATION MEMBER MEMBER SINCE: 2007 [ DAVID SWIERENGA ASUG INSTALLATION MEMBER MEMBER SINCE: 2005 [ SARAH MERTZ ASUG INSTALLATION MEMBER MEMBER SINCE: 1998 ]

2 Learning Points Challenges in leveraging Auditor data for system health inspection Shaping Auditor for deeper analysis Why Explorer is cool InfoSpaces that make Auditor analysis fly What s happening in BI4? 2

3 My Introduction Experience as Business Intelligence Architect for three enterprise customers over the last 12 years Have provided architecture solutions for enterprises of all sizes as a consultant Certified on SAP Business Objects Enterprise Completed successful migrations from classic Business Objects products to SAP Business Objects XI R2-3.1 Experience managing systems ranging in size between 250 users and 30,000 users 3

4 Diversified Semantic Layer A new podcast by BOBJ nerds, for BOBJ people that won t call themselves nerds Recorded by a bunch of guys in the social media community Cool episodes on content ranging from the death of Deski to BI4 Follow on twitter 4

5 Purpose Many organizations are already sitting on a set of tools that give administrators the ability to seek out proactive means to effectively monitor and manage SAP Business Objects deployments. It s time to start putting the tools at our disposal to good use. 5

6 Auditor Auditor is a rich set of data that when properly enabled, captures detailed what happened details about most facets of the SAP Business Objects environment User logon activity Report view and schedule activity Limited report structure insights Destination flags 6

7 What Should Auditor Tell Us? How is the platform trending in user activity? Who are the top report producers on the platform? What are the distinct scheduler failure rates? What users are distributing content externally from SAP Business Objects? much more There is not enough room in this presentation for the rest of the questions! 7

8 The Activity Universe Included with SAP BusinessObjects, Auditor is exposed via the Activity universe A detail oriented universe with little aggregation Must traverse large amounts of data Limited, canned answers to questions such as the universe name or document name Geared most appropriately to detailed auditing, identifying the who, what, and when. 8

9 Challenges With Auditor While the data is deep, it isn t necessarily optimized for analytical reporting High level event data stored at the AUDIT_EVENT level Detailed activity is stored in a structure with an ever-awkward, multi-purpose CLOB inside AUDIT_DETAIL Runtime servers used in SERVER_PROCESS Large amounts of historical data in Auditor create challenges in analysis Included derived table work in universe does little to aid with aggregations on demand One system at a time Changes to the schema are not supported! 9

10 Auditor Schema at a Glance 10

11 Auditor Schema at a Glance Detail types provide the ancillary data about your events to determine what the audit event pertained to, along with a host of other runtime information. 11

12 Putting it in Perspective Building a metric-driven universe based on Auditor data isn t all that challenging. Consider report views as an example to precalculate. We have distinct values to calculate based on whether the event was a Crystal Report or Web Intelligence report The Event Type of denotes a Crystal Report event, while 11 denotes a Web Intelligence report Each has an appropriate corresponding Detail Type, of 3 and 8 respectively SUM(CASE WHEN (AUDIT_DETAIL.Detail_Type_ID = 3 and AUDIT_EVENT.Event_Type_ID = ) or (AUDIT_DETAIL.Detail_Type_ID = 8 and AUDIT_EVENT.Event_Type_ID = 11) THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) 12

13 A Metric-Driven View With those metrics constructed and ready to view, we can derive results aggregated via dimensions such as time, user, and report. 13

14 Activity Before 14

15 Activity Before 15

16 Activity - Reloaded 16

17 Activity - Reloaded 17

18 Mental Note: What to Audit Without centralized auditing, we must take granular control over each service and define the auditing needed (but be selective). Consider auditing: Security events (log on/log off) Report scheduler failures and successes Grab report ad hoc events but realize space implications of properties like the report SQL If used, keep LifeCycle Manager audit data for migrations 18

19 Explore it Explorer gives us a new bridge that stops short of ETL to enable more robust analysis of Auditor s data Create file based indexes based on our tough to answer auditing questions for fast analysis Schedule the data collection Let Explorer make smart decisions on which exploration context to choose based on relevance in the data Compare multiple metrics 19

20 Relating InfoSpaces to Auditor Data Let s make sure we understand the correlation of Auditor based data to InfoSpace terminology Measures Number of Report Views Number of Concurrent User Logons Peak Report Runtime Facets Document Name Application Name Event Month Filters Event Occurrences in Current Month Event Occurrences in Current Year 20

21 Job Analysis Job Analysis ensures levels are monitored to prevent unnecessary utilization on both SAP Business Objects and the database Explore both success and failures to understand overall rates Include sufficient facets to identify owner and runtime system Include appropriate time dimensions to compare both at a near term interval as well as over a longer duration 21

22 Job Analysis A default exploration path is selected. 22

23 Job Analysis Enhance the analysis Explorer can best guess search Explore multiple measures Find the right visual Pivot the tabular data 23

24 Report Interaction Analysis Report Interaction Analysis studies the patterns of user adoption, across reports, their customizations, etc. Explore a comparison of report views, edits, or even new report creation Include sufficient facets to identify owner, reporting mechanism type and runtime system Include appropriate time dimensions to compare both at a near term interval as well as over a longer duration 24

25 Report Interaction Analysis Extended analysis 25

26 Other Ideas for Exploration User and group membership (based on report runtime snapshot) User logon activity Report instance destinations Report run times (min, max, peak) 26

27 Observations Why not just use Crystal Reports or Web Intelligence? Great for guided analysis What about Xcelsius? Also very scripted More visual for leadership level visualizations How much Auditor data is too much data? Consult your corporate compliance department Rolling 13 months is generally good rule How big can InfoSpaces be? Non-accelerated InfoSpaces can typically handle more rows than a Web Intelligence micro-cube 27

28 SBO Explorer for Mobile? Killer eye-candy that is a great presentation tool for both iphone and even better, on the ipad Why not make sure everything is as it should be on your environment while you wait in line at Starbucks in the morning? DEFINITELY justifies your entire team needing an ipad 28

29 What s Happening in BI4? New auditing options streamline and consolidate audit events Completely new schema to support auditing No universe or reports have been scoped in to the release Auditing is centralized within the CMC to improve management and detail level 29

30 What s Happening in BI4? <> 30

31 What s Happening in BI4? 31

32 What s Happening in BI4? 32

33 What s Happening in BI4? Implications of these changes Old auditing goes out the window Keep old schemas for historical audit reporting requirements Existing universe and reports can be migrated to the BI4 platform, but will generally remain separate from new reporting 33

34 Leverage Sherlock 34

35 Maintaining Consistent Health Seek out long term solutions to an ongoing need, creating an easy to manage maintenance lifecycle for your SAP Business Objects deployment. Environment Inspection User Education Environment Tuning 35

36 Key Learnings Auditor can make sense Don t fear your own Auditor universe Understand the appropriate combinations of event types and detail types in the administrators guide Don t audit the unnecessary (report SQL as an example) Explorer provides a robust interface for rapid guided analysis Scan large amounts of data FAST Create InfoSpaces in the familiar semantic layer style Automate the refresh Search Explore 36

37 Contact Information Contact: Eric Vallo On the Web: Blog: 37

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