Transcript MyITgroup, Ltd. SAP Business Itelligence NetWeaver 2004s

SAP Business Intelligence (BI)
The Latest Tools, Technologies, and Benefits
Penny Silvia & Dr. Bjarne Berg
MyITgroup & Comerit Inc.
What We’ll Cover …
• “Selling” across your organization – what is your
Business Case?
• Understanding your Technology Needs – what you
REALLY need!
• Preparing for the Implementation – and the Future
• Learn from our Experiences – good and bad!
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What We’ll Cover …
• “Selling” across your organization – what is your
Business Case?
• Understanding your Technology Needs – what you
REALLY need!
• Preparing for the Implementation – and the Future
• Learn from our Experiences – good and bad!
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What is the Business Case to upgrade SAP BI?
• This is not a cut and dry answer … We’ve seen different answers
for different customers – and for different business units.
• The justification must be aligned with concrete business benefits
• The best way to write it is to align it with one of these areas:
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Money
Enterprise
reasons
IT reasons
Strategy
Reducing time &
effort of delivery
Hint!! successful
business cases are
written around this
Improved user functionality
and speed for end users
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Ex: Enterprise Benefits of SAP BI that Mgmt will support
Area
Observation
SAP
BWBI
Benefit
Cost of Ownership
Maintaining a custom developed
BI solution is complex and
expensive.
SAP is responsible for
maintenance of the
product.
Cost Avoidance
Enables retirement of legacy DW.
Updating extract programs to
custom DW when upgrading R/3
is expensive.
BW – R/3 integration
points are maintained
and tested by SAP
Substantial cost savings, by
not having to redevelop new
extract programs for each
SAP upgrade
Web strategy
Web delivery requires rapid data
delivery of high consistency with
the source system.
SAP BI is closely integrated
with SAP Portal and can
deliver data that reflects
The source system at short
time intervals.
Enables web initiatives to get
closer to the source data,
both in time and consistency
with simplified security setup.
Reconciliation Effort
A substantial portion of the data
warehouse effort is spent on
reconciling information
BW is “closer” to the
source system, and more
accurately reflects data
Users spend less time on
reconciling data, and more
time analyzing it.
Information Access
Business users need a high
Availability solution
Load times in BI are
less than traditional,
custom- developed
data warehouses
Users get earlier access to
information
Substantial maintenance
cost savings
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Example Enterprise Benefits of SAP BI (cont.)
Area
Observation
SAP BI
Benefit
Faster Deployment
Need to increase time to
deliver new applications and
enhancements existing areas
More content. Typical
60-80% of predelivered content is
used,. It increases
development speed
Reduced development
time for new decision
support areas such as
formatted reports,
cockpits, broadcasting…
Integrated Products
SAP continues to offer new
products and modules that
the organization might wish
to leverage in the future. I.e.
PDF, security, APO, CRM etc..
SAP BI is the
“cornerstone” of
SAP’s NetWeaver
product offerings
Enables closer
integration with other
SAP modules, and is
sometimes required.
Query speed
Business users need fast
access to their data
Through use of
summaries, TREX,
and the new BIA,
Multiproviders and
memory cacheing,
SAP BI lends itself to
fast performance
Users get the data they
need quickly to perform
their job functions
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Example Enterprise Benefits of SAP BI (cont.)
Area
Observation
SAP BI
Benefit
SAP Strategy
It is the organization’s
SAP strategy to leverage
investments in the SAP
to the fullest extent, and
maximize SAP resource
utilization.
SAP BI is a SAP product,
and is based on standard
SAP NetWeaver
technologies
Strategic fit and synergy
with SAP. SAP Basis,
ABAP, etc. resources
can be used across SAP
projects, including SAP
BW/BI.
Tool
Standardization
The organization must
be able to leverage
industry standards to
enable business users to
access data in a variety
of ways
SAP presentation and
development tools have
evolved into best-of-breed
tools and also supports
Java, ODBO, XML and
more.
Simplifies user access
to data, expands options
for using standard
presentation and web
tools, or developing
your own.
Industry Trend
The organization’s
competitors and some of
the organization’s
business areas are
installing SAP BI
Increased industry
resource pool and
knowledge of SAP BW
Enables the organization
to leverage industry
solutions and knowhow.
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What are Businesses (aka: Users!) using to drive the upgrade?
FUNCTIONALITY! FUNCTIONALITY! FUNCTIONALITY!
• Business units are seeing huge gains in
usability, as well as features & functions in
SAP BI 7.0
• Business units are seeing opportunity for
improving the solutions they have in SAP
BW today – and making them more user
friendly
• What specific features?
• Cockpits, Printing, Real-Time, BI
Accelerator, Formatted Reports,
Integrated Planning, Ad Hoc Queries
But is this enough to
justify an upgrade?
What is IT using to drive the desire to upgrade?
• What is being pushed by IT departments as justification
for upgrading?
• TECHNOLOGY! TECHNOLOGY! TECHNOLOGY!
• IT departments are seeing significant potential savings in TCO,
maintenance, development time, support and more
• More empowerment for end users = less
requirements to IT
• More flexibility and ability to change with the
organization = less cost to make changes and
more willingness TO make changes
• Advanced features and capabilities =
opportunities to sunset non-SAP BI solutions,
tools and add-ons
• But is this enough to justify an upgrade?
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What’s the Right Answer?
• The “right” answer is the one that is going to
resonate within YOUR organization – and get
you the funds that you need for the upgrade!
• Some ideas:
• Cost avoidance: Cost of developing BSPs is high and will have to be
redone later..
• Unicode conversions are easier when system is small
• Benefit of Java based development tools are great and users like the
drag and drop better..
• Tool access (i.e. may not need Crystal, when you have report writer),
broadcasting to printers, PDF, better bursting…
• Better ETL interface, more content, cockpit tools
….
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Be Careful…
• If you’re going to go with an IT
and cost-savings approach to
justify your upgrade …
• Make sure all the technology
works the way you expect it to
before committing an ROI to it
• Make sure you have a full understanding of the total cost of the
solution (specifically BI Accelerator) and the benefits you will
receive before committing an ROI to it
• Look at the systems you propose to de-commission and confirm
that SAP BI will deliver an acceptable alternative – and that the
business will not “block” your plans for de-commissioning
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What We’ll Cover …
• “Selling” across your organization – what is your
Business Case?
• Understanding your Technology Needs – what you
REALLY need!
• Preparing for the Implementation – and the Future
• Learn from our Experiences – good and bad!
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What are your technology requirements for 2004s?
• MANY of the tools and features of 2004s require the
SAP Enterprise Portal tool
• All Web-based tools
• Report Designer
• New BEx Web Application Designer
(Unicode, Command Wizard, ...)
• Exporting to PDF and Printing
• BI Integrated Planning
• “Drag & Drop” (Analysis Web Item)
• Document Integration with Storage
in Knowledge Management
These may well be the tools that
you are using to position the
upgrade to your users – or for
your business case … so what
does that mean to your overall
efforts and cost?
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Another common question: “When Will You Install
AS-Java/Portal/BI-Java?”
 BEx Web and BI Integrated Planning require Usage Types BIJava, EP, and AS-Java as technical foundations
 All 7.0 BEx front-end tools require BI-Java, EP, and AS-Java
as technical foundations
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BEx Analyzer
BEx Web Application Designer
BEx Analyzer
BEx Report Designer
BEx Query Designer
 Therefore, the question becomes not if but when
• With a “technical upgrade” project approach, Portal/Java/BI-Java are
delayed until medium- or long-term phases
Remember – you CAN continue to use the 3.X interface – and functionality –
without the Portal / Java – until you are ready to install. The “cost” … you won’t
get to use all the cool new functionality of 7.0 until you install Portal / Java
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What does this mean for your overall Portal strategy?
You have choices …
• Consolidated BI/enterprise portal
• One portal, two uses (BI portal and enterprise portal)
• Might require you to upgrade the Portal
• Support Package synchronization between BI and the Portal
• Standalone BI and enterprise portal systems
• Several Portals if one Portal is for BI only and one “corporate” Portal
• Several Portals could be integrated by Federated Portal Network
• No Support Package synchronization between BI and “enterprise” portal
• Multiple production BI systems drive architecture towards a distributed portal
strategy
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Heads Up! Restriction with SAP NetWeaver 7.0
New technical architecture ... each
SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Portal can connect
to one and only one BI system
There can only be a 1:1 relationship between an SAP
NetWeaver BI 7.0 instance and a Portal 7.0 instance
Either an existing SAP portal must be used for BI
query runtime, or a new portal must be dedicated to
support the BI query (BEx) runtime (running together
with an existing portal)
Multiple production BI systems drives a more complex
portal landscape (because of the 1:1 relationship)
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Federated Portal Strategy – Considerations
• The consumer portal can integrate complete portal roles of a producer
portal
• You currently cannot combine roles from several producer portals
• Use Remote URL iViews instead to create portal roles with content from several producer
portals
• Information Broadcasting is possible within one producer portal
• Documents will be created within Knowledge Management (KM) of the producer portal
• KM does not support Federated Portal Networks directly
• Broadcasting between different producer portals is not possible
• Several options are available to make documents created by
Information Broadcasting visible:
• Remote KM Navigation iView (recommended if no combined storage
is required)
• CM Repository Manager (recommended if combined storage is required)
See http://service.sap.com/nw-fpn * and SAP Note 969040 for details
* Requires login credentials to the SAP Service Marketplace
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What We’ll Cover …
• “Selling” across your organization – what is your
Business Case?
• Understanding your Technology Needs – what you
REALLY need!
• Preparing for the Implementation – and the Future
• Learn from our Experiences – good and bad!
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Decision #1 – What Is Your Technical Upgrade Path?
• There are different upgrade paths which depend on your
current version and the applications and scenarios used on
your source version
• Scenario 1:
• SAP BW 3.5 w/ABAP only or BW 3.1C, 3.0B, 2.1C, or 2.0B
Source: SAP
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More Upgrade Paths …
• Scenario 2:
• BW 3.5 w/ABAP with BI Java Components on AS Java
Source: SAP
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A Different View …
Source: SAP
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Decision #2 – Technical or Functional Upgrade?
• Quite honestly, it really all boils
down to this question. Are you
going to ONLY do a technical
upgrade (and not release any new
functionality) or are you going to do
a technical AND functional upgrade
and immediately roll-out the new
capabilities of SAP NetWeaver
BI 7.0?
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Our General Recommendation: Technical Upgrade First
• Most organizations (at least the ones we are dealing
with) are opting for a technical upgrade – with
functionality releases in phases in the future
• This is the least risky approach, but it does lead to user
expectation management
• This also minimizes transition activities associated with objects that
don’t convert automatically
• This also minimizes risks against “undocumented features”
• But as an organization you have to make this decision
for yourself … based on your requirements, business
case and “tolerance for risk”
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How can you weigh the choices of Technical or Functional?
Technical
Functional
Less Time
Longer Project
Less Money
Tons of New
Functionality
Less Risk
Increased User
Satisfaction
Less Functionality
Opportunity to Sunset
other BI solutions
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Weighing Towards a Technical Upgrade
• A technical upgrade
is the “safest” way to
proceed
• It is also the fastest
and the least
expensive
• Your user community
will notice little to no
change UNTIL you
start rolling out the
new functionality
Technical
Functional
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Weighing Towards a Functional Upgrade
• A functional upgrade (which
includes all the technical
activities) will make the
biggest impression on your
user community
Technical
Functional
• This will take longer – and cost
more money
• You will be able to sunset
other solutions sooner
• You will get the most
benefits – from usability and
management
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Three Key Considerations
What are your Functionality Needs?
Dashboards?
“Real” Time
Data?
Printing?
Integrated
Planning?
Formatted
Reports?
Excel Formulas
and Formatting?
What is your Timeline / Budget?
Are you out of Maintenance?
Do you have a little $$ or
a lot of $$
Do you have a few
weeks or a few months?
Do you need/want to
sunset other BI tools?
What is Risk Tolerance?
Is your management Risk
Adverse – or Bleeding
Edge?
Does your Timeline / Budget
have flexibility?
Do you have the right level of
experienced resources to
help you through this?
What happens if the upgrade
fails or certain features don’t
work?
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Additional Consideration: Resources and Technical Support
Resource
Requirements
Experienced
SAP BI 7.0
Resources
Business
Users for
Testing
Technical
Support
Hardware
and
Infrastructure
BASIS
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What You’ll Need Resources For ….
• BASIS
• Critical that you have the technical resources who are familiar with
installing SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 and integrating all of
the components (SAP Solution Manager, SAP NetWeaver Portal,
etc.)
• SAP NetWeaver Portal administration
• Required for use of vast majority of new presentation functions –
printing, report designer, all Web functions,
Visual Composer
• Experienced SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 support
• This is a MAJOR release – you don’t want someone “learning on
your dime”
• Your regular BI support/maintenance organization
• Must familiarize themselves with the new tools
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What You’ll Need Resources For … (cont.)
• You will also need support from the following
groups:
• Security and Authorizations
• Convert to new authorizations objects
• BI Web Specialists
• Convert BI 3.x web templates to new formats
• Business Analysts/Representatives
• For testing
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Typical Training Requirements
Technical Upgrade
Basis Training on new solution, if necessary
• Could also be handled via Knowledge Transfer from
Integration Partner
Basic Mgmt of Netweaver Portal (if deploying)
Functional Upgrade
Development Team
Delta Training
(DBW70E)
Report / Presentation
Team Delta Training
(DBW70R)
Integrated Planning
Training (DBW70P)
User Training for new
tools
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What We’ll Cover …
• “Selling” across your organization – what is your
Business Case?
• Understanding your Technology Needs – what you
REALLY need!
• Preparing for the Implementation – and the Future
• Learn from our Experiences – good and bad!
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Step -1: Hardware install and BWS Copy
BWX
BWD
BWQ
BWP
In this real example, we are also
installing new Hardware.
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1
BWS
2
BWX
4
BWX
A 2008
Real example
BWX
This gives us lot of flexibility…
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April
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Hardware install
Copy BWD to new BWS
Upgrade DB2 to latest version
Post processing of box
Rename/restore old BWS box
Download latest patches for
upgrade
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Step -1: BWS Unicode conversion, Java upgrade & test
BWX
BWD
BWQ
At this stage you should document and
test all work that occurs. Some time
has to be set aside for notes research
and unforeseen issues.
BWP
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1
BWS
2
BWX
4
BWX
We want to creating a repeatable
process, so no ad-hoc activities are
allowed.
BWX
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Start upgrade BWS
Start shadow instance
SPDD start
ICNV start
Start syst. downtime upgrade activity
Complete BWS upgrade
Post processing
Basis and functional testing
Unicode conversion
Java upgrade
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A 2008
Real example
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Step -2: System copies
BWX
BWX
BWX
You now freeze the development and
can take copies of the BWD and BWQ
system and prepare for upgrades.
BWP
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1
BWS
2
BWD
4
BWQ
A 2008
Real example
The old BWP is still running as the
productive system..
BWX
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Copy BWD
Development freeze
Rename BWD
Copy BWQ
Rename BWQ
Copy PDW (no rename yet). It
is still the production system..
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Step -3: BWD upgrade
BWX
BWX
BWX
We now repeat the process. Remember,
you have already upgraded BWD once
and should know the need for any post
processing.
BWP
3
1
BWS
2
BWD
A 2008
Real example
4
BWQ
Don't ignore the need for technical and
functional testing.
BWX
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Complete Prepare on BWD
Apply fixes
Start upgrade BWD
Start shadow instance
SPDD start
ICNV start
Start syst. downtime upgrade activity
Complete BWD upgrade
Post processing
Basis and functional testing
Unicode conversion
Java upgrade
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March
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April
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Step -4: The real test -- BWQ upgrade
BWX
BWX
BWX
BWP
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1
2
A 2008
Real example
Notice, we refreshed the new BWQ
from BWP, so this is really a BWP
upgrade…
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Go/no-go decision on April 17th!!
BWS
BWD
BWQ
BWX
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21
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Complete Prepare on BWQ
Apply fixes
Start upgrade BWQ
Start shadow instance
SPDD start
ICNV start
Start syst. downtime upgrade activity
Complete BWQ upgrade
Post processing
• and functional testing
Basis
• conversion
Unicode
Java upgrade
Functional test and go/no-go decision
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Step -5: The Big One: Cut-Over weekend….
BWX
BWX
BWX
Contingencies should be made. I.e. notice
that is any showstoppers occur on 20th, the
old BWP can be renamed back, or if the
time becomes too short the Unicode can be
done the next weekend.
BWX
3
1
BWS
2
BWD
4
BWQ
BWP
January
21
Java install
Remove data in new system
Rename BWP
Complete Prepare on BWP
Apply fixes
Start upgrade BWP
Start shadow instance
SPDD start
ICNV start
Start syst. downtime upgrade activity
Complete BWP upgrade
Post processing
Basis testing
Functional test
Unicode conversion (TBD)
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A 2008
Real example
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March
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April
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Top Challenges Cited by BI Upgrade Teams
• What is actually REQUIRED from a technical perspective?
• “How much” SAP NetWeaver Portal is necessary?
• What do we do if we have another portal tool as our corporate
portal?
• How do I manage the user expectations – they hear about all this
great functionality and they want to use it NOW – with the need to
balance what we rollout?
• How can I create an environment in which SOME people can use the
new functionality and some people can’t?
• There is so much … where do I start?
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Experiences of BI Upgrade Pioneers
• The EARLY, EARLY pioneers (the people who did this
during ramp-up) ran into some frustration
• But the good news is that you get to learn from all their frustrations
and deal with a product that is much more stable and dependable!
• Others who have the system live already are finding …
• Higher user acceptance of the system as they roll out new
functionality
• BI Accelerator can dramatically improve the performance of queries
– but make sure you use it against the RIGHT queries (as we’ve
already talked about)
This might be the time for a complete re-install vs. an upgrade
– and build all the “old” BW stuff over in the new solution
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Reminder: Be Careful How You Sell This Internally
• If you promote the functionality then you are
committed to a functional upgrade – which is a
BIG effort
• Managing user expectations is very important here
• There has been a LOT of marketing on the new features,
many of which users (especially those coming from other
BI tools) feel should have been there a long time ago
• If you are not rolling out all functionality right away, you are going
to have to manage expectations and offer alternatives
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Reminder: Don’t Try to Go-It-Alone
• Get support from the most experienced resources (internal
and external) that you can find – and afford
• There is so much going on in this upgrade – and so many new integration
points – you will really want as much “been there, done that” as you can
get
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Reminder: SAP NetWeaver Portal is a “Must-Have”
• If you don’t install SAP NetWeaver Portal you don’t
get all the “good” functionality
• E.g., Printing, Formatted Reports, Ad Hoc Queries, etc.
• Many companies are struggling with this point as
they have selected other portals tools as their
corporate portal
• People are looking at having to own and maintain two portals
solutions – and expose one through the other
• Organizations in this position (that I have been working with)
are choosing to say that SAP Enterprise Portal PRODUCES
content and their corporate portal DISTRIBUTES content
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Remember: Be Careful How You Access Your New System
• Remember, if you go the technical upgrade route,
be careful how you access the system!
• You will have two access methods (via the 3.5 interface or
via the 7.0 interface)
• If you go in as if through 7.0 and save certain objects
(like queries) then they are no longer accessible via the
3.5 interface!
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Time for YOUR questions!
How to contact us:
Penny Silvia: [email protected]
Dr. Bjarne Berg: [email protected]
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