Although it's been available since November in it's version 2 revision, yesterday marked the first time I've had a chance to take a serious look at Business Objects Labs' Query as a Web Service (QaaWS).
QaaWS lets you create a query using Business Objects proprietary Universe technology and publish the query as a webservice. You can then consume the web service using any SOAP compliant consumer API. Business Objects provides client implementations in Crystal Reports and Crystal XCelsius. I was focussed on the latter yesterday mostly because it somewhat weaker (in my opinion, at least) data connectivity
If you're unfamiliar with Crystal XCelsius, this is a technology that Business Objects aquired in 2005 when it purchased Infomersion of San Diego. XCelsius lets you create data visualizations using a graphical canvas-based editor and product Flash SWF files than can be pulished on the web or embedded in PDF or MS Office documents. My understanding is that one of the original company's founders was a game developer. Certainly, many of the visualizations are quite pretty.
I didn't get too far in my exploration with the tool, I ran into some trouble passing date values into the query. I had no problem with a non-parameterized query. As it's beta software (it shows), rough edges are certainly to be expected
Getting started with QaaWS
This is a tool for use with BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 (not sure if it works with Crystal Vision, or the new, awkwardly named BusinessObjects Crystal Decisions). You need:
- Service Pack 1
- Apache Tomcat
- A BusinessObjects Universe connected to your data
You can download QaaWS from the Business Objects Labs site, but unfortunately BusinessObjects Enterprise is not available in a downloadable evaluation, so you need to be a Business Objects customer, partner or developer to join the fun.
I'll be working on some prototypes in the next couple of weeks and will report back.
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