U.S. patents, which may cover products that are offered and licensed by Business Objects: 5,555,403; 6,247,008; 6,289,352; 6,490,593; 6,578,027; 6,768,986; 6,772,409; 6,831,668; 6,882,998; 7,139,766; 7,181,435; 7,181,440 and 7,194,465. Business Objects and the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Crystal Xcelsius, Crystal Decisions, Intelligent Question, Desktop Intelligence, Crystal Enterprise, Crystal Analysis, Web Intelligence, RapidMarts, and BusinessQuery are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects in the United States and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Third-party contributors
Business Objects products in this release may contain redistributions of software licensed from third-party contributors. Some of these individual components may also be available under alternative licenses. A partial listing of third-party contributors that have requested or permitted acknowledgments, as well as required notices, can be found at:
Chapter 1 Architecture 5
Overview . . . 6
Product description . . . 7
About the site components . . . 7
Database . . . 8
File server . . . 8
About the client applications . . . 8
BusinessObjects Planning Administrator . . . 8
BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro . . . 8
About the Web applications . . . 9
BusinessObjects Planning Analyst . . . 9
BusinessObjects Planning Workflow Console . . . 9
BusinessObjects Planning Excel Analyst . . . 9
About the server components . . . 9
Web server . . . 10
BusinessObjects Planning Gateway . . . 10
BusinessObjects Planning Application Server . . . 10
BusinessObjects Planning Scheduler . . . 11
BusinessObjects Planning Web Redirector . . . 11
BusinessObjects Planning configurations . . . 12
Local configuration . . . 12
Intranet configuration . . . 13
Scalability . . . 17
Integration with BusinessObjects Finance . . . 17
Product security . . . 19
Authentication . . . 19
Authorization . . . 19
Contents
Audit Trails . . . 21
Hardware and software requirements . . . 22
Site hardware . . . 22
Web clients . . . 22
Workstation clients . . . 23
BusinessObjects Planning Administrator and BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro . . . 23
BusinessObjects Planning Excel Analyst . . . 24
Server components . . . 25
Application Server . . . 25
Scheduler . . . 25
Web Gateway Server . . . 26
Architecture
Overview
1
Overview
The BusinessObjects Planning product suite provides an integrated, Web-enabled analytics software solution that helps companies measure, analyze, and predict business performance and profitability. Organizations use the suite for real-time business planning and forecasting, accelerating mergers and acquisitions, understanding business performance by customer segment, product, channel and business line, and delivering performance information across the company.
BusinessObjects Planning works locally or worldwide, in-house or through the web; the choices are yours. This document presents an overview of the BusinessObjects Planning architecture. Specifically, this document provides the following information:
•
“Product description” on page 7•
“BusinessObjects Planning configurations” on page 12•
“Integration with BusinessObjects Finance” on page 17•
“Product security” on page 19•
“Audit Trails” on page 21Product description
BusinessObjects Planning’s new breed of enterprise analytic software allows Global 2000 companies to deploy an enhanced corporate information supply chain, improving the ability to recognize and exploit emerging opportunities in a rapidly changing and competitive environment.
BusinessObjects Planning provides a holistic view of an enterprise’s corporate performance. It delivers line of business, product, channel, customer, shareholder, and statutory reporting with unrivalled flexibility, timeliness, and precision. The actionable insight derived from these multiple perspectives generates better corporate strategy. This strategy in turn can then be realized through BusinessObjects Planning’s global performance management framework, which includes distributed planning, forecasting, and reporting.
BusinessObjects Planning seamlessly automates critical analytic processes, and permits an organization to quickly and accurately capture, analyze, and share a broad spectrum of information across its global operations. By improving the timeliness, accuracy, and consistency of key decision-support information, the solution significantly tightens reporting, forecasting, and analysis cycles.
BusinessObjects Planning can be rapidly deployed, delivering comprehensive enterprise analytics and automating critical decision-processing and information dissemination – all while leveraging existing infrastructure and legacy systems.
The BusinessObjects Planning suite is comprised of the following types of products:
•
Site components•
Client applications•
Web applications•
Server componentsAbout the site components
The site components are the heart of BusinessObjects Planning. They store all shared files and data, and distribute information between sites. All other BusinessObjects Planning applications require a site to be installed before they can run. The site components include:
•
DatabaseArchitecture
Product description
1
Database
The database contains all the data for the site. This data includes user information, group information, permissions, scenario information, transaction logs, and other information. BusinessObjects Planning supports both Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle for its database.
File server
The file server contains all the shared files for a site. Shared files include such information as: configuration information, server logs, model information, scripts, and reports.
About the client applications
The BusinessObjects Planning client applications, BusinessObjects Planning Administrator and BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro, provide users with a feature-rich interface to the BusinessObjects Planning site.
BusinessObjects Planning Administrator
BusinessObjects Planning Administrator is a powerful and comprehensive tool through which non-technical users can rapidly and easily configure, deploy, and administer the BusinessObjects Planning system across multiple sites. From a central location, users can install and synchronize
geographically dispersed sites, build and manage multiple business models, and assign user access rights. Users can also use BusinessObjects Planning Administrator to create and maintain reports, and to quickly build, manage, and execute scripts that automate complex tasks such as report production and distribution. All this functionality leverages an intuitive graphical interface, a drag-and-drop system, an extensive range of formatting features, and advanced automation capabilities.
BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro
BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro is designed for nontechnical users who have sophisticated information requirements. A comprehensive range of formatting features, and drag-and-drop functions allow users to easily create and maintain reports. In addition, users can quickly build, manage, and execute scripts that automate complex tasks such as scheduled report production and distribution.
About the Web applications
The BusinessObjects Planning Analyst applications provide users with a feature-rich Web interface to the BusinessObjects Planning Analyst servers. The BusinessObjects Planning Analyst applications include:
•
BusinessObjects Planning Analyst•
BusinessObjects Planning Workflow Console•
BusinessObjects Planning Excel Analyst (uses the BusinessObjects Planning Analyst site)BusinessObjects Planning Analyst is driven by Favorites, meaning that the reports you can access through BusinessObjects Planning Analyst are determined by the reports that have been added to your Favorites folder in BusinessObjects Planning Administrator and BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro.
BusinessObjects Planning Analyst
BusinessObjects Planning Analyst provides secure remote access to real-time report information anywhere, anyreal-time, through a Web browser. Intelligent graphic indicators, drill-down toolbars, built-in annotation capabilities, forecasting tools, and a sophisticated charting interface allow users to easily view, enter, and edit report data.
BusinessObjects Planning Workflow Console
The BusinessObjects Planning Workflow console is part of the
BusinessObjects Planning Analyst site and provides organizations with the ability to apply Workflow to the planning and forecasting process.
BusinessObjects Planning Excel Analyst
BusinessObjects Planning Excel Analyst allows users to leverage the central repository for all data and business rules, user and group rights, and system auditing features, all from within a familiar and flexible Microsoft Excel environment.
About the server components
The server components provide the request handling and processing for the web applications. The web server components include:
•
Web server•
BusinessObjects Planning GatewayArchitecture
Product description
1
•
BusinessObjects Planning Scheduler•
BusinessObjects Planning Web RedirectorWeb server
The web server is a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) machine that hosts the BusinessObjects Planning Analyst site. The Web Server’s role is threefold:
•
It authenticates the BusinessObjects Planning web application user•
It provides the web site content or “framework” that users see when they run a BusinessObjects Planning web application•
It forwards requests it receives from the BusinessObjects Planning web application users to the BusinessObjects Planning Gateway and returns any responses received from the BusinessObjects Planning Gateway to web application usersBusinessObjects Planning Gateway
The BusinessObjects Planning Gateway decodes requests for
BusinessObjects Planning Application Server services (such as opening reports and scenarios) that it receives from BusinessObjects Planning web application users via the web server. BusinessObjects Planning web
applications use Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to make requests for BusinessObjects Planning Application Server services. When a user makes a request, the web application sends the request to the web server, which then routes it to the gateway. The BusinessObjects Planning Gateway decodes the SOAP requests and maps those requests to the BusinessObjects Planning Application Server.
Once the BusinessObjects Planning Application Server processes the request, a response is sent back to the BusinessObjects Planning Gateway. The gateway encodes the response using SOAP and transmits it back to the web server, which forwards the response to the user.
Typically, the BusinessObjects Planning Gateway and the web server are on the same machine.
BusinessObjects Planning Application Server
The BusinessObjects Planning Application Server manages all business model and calculation engine operations. It performs all analytical processing on requests received via the BusinessObjects Planning Gateway, such as building and delivering reports, and consolidating data. If required, the BusinessObjects Planning Application Server also retrieves up-to-date data
from the database, and sends the data and any responses back to the BusinessObjects Planning Gateway, which routes the responses back to the user via the web server.
BusinessObjects Planning Application Servers can be grouped together in a server cluster to support many concurrent users and increase reliability. Load balancing within the server cluster ensures that client processing is
distributed across servers.
Multiple business models can be loaded into the BusinessObjects Planning Application Server simultaneously, allowing shared access to information. Each application server on a network communicates with the other servers to create a distributed data repository. Notification exchange ensures that clients are notified of any changes to data, and that all servers are synchronized. BusinessObjects Planning Application Servers streamline client requests and provide data integrity to prevent data conflicts. In addition, the servers allocate available resources such as memory and network bandwidth effectively among multiple users.
In addition, BusinessObjects Planning Servers also act as schedulers, enabling you to schedule scripts for execution at set intervals.
BusinessObjects Planning Scheduler
All BusinessObjects Planning application events can be batched using scripts written with the powerful BusinessObjects Planning scripting language - a language compatible with Visual Basic® for Applications. BusinessObjects Planning Scheduler is used to execute scripts that have been scheduled for execution by BusinessObjects Planning users.
BusinessObjects Planning Scheduler can be installed on any computer on the network that has been registered in BusinessObjects Planning Administrator or BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro. Registering a server adds the server to the Script Servers folder. Any user with creation rights for a report server can register a script server.
For those users who don’t want to use BusinessObjects Planning Scheduler, BusinessObjects Planning also provides the ability to schedule scripts using third-party schedulers.
BusinessObjects Planning Web Redirector
BusinessObjects Planning Web Redirector is a component that is installed on top of a local BusinessObjects Planning web site that handles all applet access locally, but redirects all authentication and business traffic to a central BusinessObjects Planning web site.
Architecture
BusinessObjects Planning configurations
1
•
Have a slow internet connection to the central site and don’t want the connection to be used up downloading applets or images.•
Don’t want a BusinessObjects Planning Gateway at their local site.•
Want authentication to be performed using the central web site, thereby reducing additional administration and policy maintenance.•
Want a local web site with minimal processing and maintenance requirements.BusinessObjects Planning configurations
In a minimal sense, a BusinessObjects Planning site is merely a file server and a database server (SQL Server or Oracle) that users connect to with any of the BusinessObjects Planning applications. After installing a site, it is the organization’s responsibility to decide what sort of configuration to implement for their users. The main criteria for deciding on how to install and configure the BusinessObjects Planning environment are: the number of users that will be accessing the application, and where they are dispersed. For this reason, BusinessObjects Planning supports three main configurations of
BusinessObjects Planning applications:
•
Local•
Intranet•
GlobalLocal configuration
Local configurations are useful in small environments, where all users are connected directly to the site through a local network. In a local configuration, the file server and the database server can be on the same machine. The following diagram depicts a small local configuration. The file server and the database server are on the same machine and there is one administrator and several local users connected.
In a local configuration, the following BusinessObjects Planning products must be installed:
•
BusinessObjects Planning site•
BusinessObjects Planning Administrator or BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro for site administration•
BusinessObjects Planning Administrator or BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro for regular usersInstructions for installing a BusinessObjects Planning site can be found in the BusinessObjects Planning Installation Guide.
Instructions for installing BusinessObjects Planning Administrator and BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro can be found in the BusinessObjects Planning Installation Guide.
Intranet configuration
You may want to consider using your corporate intranet to connect your users to BusinessObjects Planning. An intranet configuration uses the
BusinessObjects Planning web components to connect users to the BusinessObjects Planning site.
The BusinessObjects Planning web components consist of the following applications:
•
BusinessObjects Planning Analyst site•
BusinessObjects Planning Gateway—sends user requests to the BusinessObjects Planning Application Server and returns the response•
BusinessObjects Planning Application Server—processes user requests The intranet configuration employs a three-tier architectural model. From a purely functional perspective, the three components of the model are:Database Server and File Server Cartesis Planning Analyst Pro Cartesis Planning Administrator Cartesis Planning Analyst Pro Cartesis Planning Analyst Pro
Architecture
BusinessObjects Planning configurations
1
•
Presentation tier—consisting of the BusinessObjects Planning Web sites, BusinessObjects Planning Login Servers, and BusinessObjects Planning Gateway servers. The Presentation tier provides users with graphical interfaces, thereby allowing them to interact with the application by inputting data or manipulating/formatting reports that arrive at their workstation. Within the Presentation tier are the Gateway servers that interact with the BusinessObjects Planning Application Servers though the Load Balancing system thus ensuring efficient processing and performance.•
Business Logic tier—consisting of the BusinessObjects Planning Application Servers. The Business Logic tier receives the requests from the web applications and processes the rules that governBusinessObjects Planning applications, such as the business logic and calculation engine operations.
•
Data Services tier—consisting of the BusinessObjects Planning site. The Data Services tier is a relational database for persistent data storage, and a file server for file storage.This architecture allows for the isolation of all major functions. Report presentation is independent of the business rules and logic that are, in turn, isolated from the data services that manipulate the information. Although this model requires more up-front analysis and design, the result is decreased maintenance cost, increased function flexibility, and ease of scalability. In a small-scale intranet configuration, like the one depicted in the following diagram, the Web server (that hosts the BusinessObjects Planning Web sites) and the BusinessObjects Planning Gateway can be on one machine, the database server and the file server on another machine, and the
Larger organization may want to expand their intranet configuration to handle many more users. You can separate the application activities for the
database/file server duties by placing these activities on separate servers. Through the separation of responsibilities, you can have increased the efficiency and throughput for your users. In addition, you can add multiple BusinessObjects Planning Application Servers to handle the number of requests. Although such a configuration involves the use of more hardware, it allows for larger numbers of users, faster turnaround, and increased
throughput.
Internet/ Intranet
Firewall Cartesis Planning Application Server Database Server/ File Server Web server/ Cartesis Planning Gateway Small-scale intranet
Cartesis Planning Site Configuration Cartesis Planning Analyst Cartesis Planning Excel Analyst Cartesis Planning Administrator
Architecture
BusinessObjects Planning configurations
1
In an intranet configuration, the following BusinessObjects Planning products must be installed:
•
BusinessObjects Planning site•
BusinessObjects Planning Administrator or BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro for site administration•
BusinessObjects Planning Application Server, as the processing engine for Web users•
BusinessObjects Planning Gateway, to process user requests and the BusinessObjects Planning Application Server’s responses•
BusinessObjects Planning Excel Analyst or BusinessObjects Planning Analyst, to provide Internet users with a presentation frameworkInstructions for installing a BusinessObjects Planning site can be found in the BusinessObjects Planning Installation Guide.
Instructions for installing BusinessObjects Planning Administrator,
BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro, and BusinessObjects Planning Excel Analyst can be found in the BusinessObjects Planning Installation Guide. Instructions for installing BusinessObjects Planning Application Server, BusinessObjects Planning Gateway, and BusinessObjects Planning Analyst can be found in the BusinessObjects Planning Installation Guide.
Internet/ Intranet
Firewall Cartesis Planning
Application Servers Process requests received from the Cartesis Planning Gateway to build and
deliver reports. Web servers/Cartesis Planning Gateways
The web servers host Cartesis Planning web sites, authenticates users, and forward user requests to Cartesis Planning Gateway. The Cartesis Planning Gateways decode user
requests received from the web servers and map requests to Cartesis Planning Application Servers.
Large-scale intranet Cartesis Planning Site
configuration Cartesis Planning Excel Analyst Cartesis Planning Analyst Database Server File Server Cartesis Planning Administrator
Scalability
The BusinessObjects Planning architecture design is highly scalable. Capacity can be increased either through upgrades to the server hardware or through the addition of more Web servers, BusinessObjects Planning Gateway servers, or BusinessObjects Planning Application Servers.
Multiple Web servers must be load balanced using third-party load balancing tools; the load-balanced requests are then sent to the specific
BusinessObjects Planning Gateway servers that are designated to handle the Web server requests. Multiple BusinessObjects Planning Application Servers are load balanced using BusinessObjects Planning’s propriety load-balancing system. This highly-customizable system allows you to configure your BusinessObjects Planning Application Servers to efficiently manage high volumes of client requests. As requirements grow, the various server farms can be expanded, without the loss of throughput, because of the load balancing system’s ability to maintain efficiency.
Integration with BusinessObjects Finance
BusinessObjects Finance, the Business Objects financial consolidation and management reporting solution, can be seamlessly integrated with the planning and forecasting power of BusinessObjects Planning, providing organizations with a unified and comprehensive business performance management suite that can take advantage of single sources of data and business values.
The following diagram depicts an example of an integrated BusinessObjects Planning–BusinessObjects Finance configuration:
Architecture
Integration with BusinessObjects Finance
1
Once BusinessObjects Planning and BusinessObjects Finance are integrated, their databases are linked, allowing for:
•
the sharing of BusinessObjects Finance metadata with BusinessObjects Planning applications•
the exchange of financial data between BusinessObjects Planning and BusinessObjects FinanceAn integrated Business Objects EPM suite enables organizations to create and manipulate single core sets of data and business objects for use in both actual and plan/forecast reporting cycles. This type of single sourcing can potentially save an organization significant amounts of administration time and resources by eliminating the need for duplicate model building and data creation in different applications. It also ensures that a single, true,
consistently updated data source is used for all related consolidation, budget, planning, and forecasting reporting, by all applications.
Organizations who choose to integrate BusinessObjects Planning and BusinessObjects Finance do not need to define their business models twice in order to carry out actual and plan/forecast reporting activities. Thanks to the direct flow of BusinessObjects Finance metadata to BusinessObjects Planning, much of the BusinessObjects Planning business model can be constructed from existing BusinessObjects Finance dimensions, hierarchies, and custom properties once these elements are properly mapped between applications. The mapping of metadata is a simple, point-and-click process that users can carry out in the familiar environment of BusinessObjects Planning Administrator.
Internet/ Intranet
Firewall Cartesis Planning Application Servers Web servers/Cartesis
Planning Gateways
Integrated configuration: Ccartesis Planning - Cartesis Finance
Cartesis Planning Analyst Database Server File Server Cartesis Planning Administrator Cartesis Planning
Excel Analyst
Cartesis Finance SOAP
Once the mapping of metadata between BusinessObjects Finance and BusinessObjects Planning is complete, BusinessObjects Planning can access BusinessObjects Finance data (such as actuals) in real time, allowing BusinessObjects Planning users to quickly retrieve numbers that are accurate and up-to-date for use in their reports. Conversely, BusinessObjects Finance users have direct access to current budget data (such as monthly plan or forecast data) from BusinessObjects Planning, allowing them to view and manipulate that data to meet their reporting needs.
Product security
BusinessObjects Planning security functions at two levels – authentication and authorization.
Authentication
Authentication asks the questions “Who are you?” and “Are you who you say you are?”. BusinessObjects Planning does not maintain a separate set of passwords, since your enterprise already has a strong, well-understood, and well-resourced directory of users and passwords, with a carefully thought-out set of policies. Instead, BusinessObjects Planning integrates with it, ensuring consistency of user ID’s, password policies, and password strengths.
Authentication in BusinessObjects Planning is performed by the network/ operating system using integrated Windows authentication, or by a custom authentication component, such as an LDAP plug-in, Novell®, third-party, or custom authentication.
Once a user is authenticated, their information is passed to BusinessObjects Planning security that uses the authenticated information to determine the security setting for that user. This security setting determines the level of authorization the user has within BusinessObjects Planning.
Authorization
Authorization asks the question: “What are you allowed to see or do?” All BusinessObjects Planning objects and high-level operations are subject to authorization controls that limit which users may view, execute, modify, annotate, create, or delete objects.
To simplify administration, privileges may be granted to object hierarchies that will be inherited by all members of the hierarchies. Also, administrators may define user groups and grant privileges to groups rather than to individual users.
Architecture
Product security
1
BusinessObjects Planning supports controls on the granting of privileges. Users may only grant privileges that they have, and have been entitled to grant.
User impersonation is also supported. Users who are entitled to grant impersonation rights may allow other users to impersonate them. During impersonation, the user will have the same access as the user being impersonated, but the audit trail shows both the real user and the user being impersonated.
When a BusinessObjects Planning site is installed, the login domain and name of the Core user must be supplied. This user has full privileges to the BusinessObjects Planning site. The site installation also defines the system user group, Site Administrators, with a single member, the Core user. Site Administrators and the Core user have virtually the same, universal access. Site Administrators have less control only on areas concerning remote sites. Beyond these two system-defined roles, BusinessObjects Planning roles are fully user-defined. The Core user grants selective privileges and delegation privileges to other users or user groups.
The Core user login may be disabled after the initial configuration and delegation. Impersonation privileges for the Core user may be selectively granted if desired.
BusinessObjects Planning supports user-defined groups of users and nested groups. There are also system-defined groups such as Everyone, Users at Site <x>, and groups built for specific functions, such as report creators. These groups may also be included in user-defined groups. A user can be part of multiple groups as required.
Object Security
Security rights are assigned by granting access rights to view and modify data for certain business model components. Assigning user rights to scenarios makes it very easy and flexible to control the data a user can view and/or modify. For example, a user can be granted rights to view only the scenarios that contain official actuals for a given year while granting other users rights to view and modify scenarios that contain versions of the business plan. Access to reports can be assigned on an individual basis or to a group of reports, by granting rights on reporting folders. If rights are assigned on a folder, all reports in that folder will inherit the same rights.
Within BusinessObjects Planning security, including data editing capabilities, the following activities can be administered:
•
Reports (control, modify, run)•
Business Model (view, control, modify)•
Scripts (control, modify, run)•
Spreadsheets (control, modify)•
Rates (modify, view)•
Business Unit Dimension (view, control, modify)Audit Trails
BusinessObjects Planning delivers a number of controls that allow administrators to view variances between business unit and corporate numbers and determine areas in need of investigation. The application provides facilities to compare corporate numbers to divisional numbers and surface exceptions based on a user-defined threshold. These “Exception” reports enable administrators to quickly identify and determine solutions to integrity issues with the bank-wide model.
BusinessObjects Planning can deliver numerous audit reports that can, for example, provide detailed audits of all changes made to the system,
reconciliation reports, and audit reports that can compare any two sets of data (target versus consolidated, plans consolidated one way versus another) and calculate the difference between them. Additionally, reconciling and
adjustment items can be created as adjustments without overwriting the source data.
The application’s transaction log keeps a record of all high-level user activity, including login, logout, object-creation, modification, deletion, and privilege modification. The audit trail covers all information stored within
BusinessObjects Planning and can be configured to run at a specific time, allowing the administrator to use the audit trail at the appropriate, critical junctures.
The transaction log can optionally keep track of detailed data changes. BusinessObjects Planning supports checked-out and active states of data automatically, providing two versions that users can compare. It also supports replicated data copying, which can be used to construct an arbitrary number of named versions. The audit trail captures original data and new data. This information can be viewed using BusinessObjects Planning audit reports or loaded back into a view using the BusinessObjects Planning standard report suite.
Audit trails are physically stored in the database in separate tables. These tables can be queried using user-supplied reports or by reports supplied with the product (Crystal Reports®).
Architecture
Hardware and software requirements
1
Hardware and software requirements
The following sections define hardware and software requirements for BusinessObjects Planning components. The specifications are recommended minimum starting points only. You will determine your actual hardware requirements in conjunction with your BusinessObjects Planning Consultant.
Site hardware
The BusinessObjects Planning site handles potentially hundreds of clients requests simultaneously. For this reason, you should ensure that your database server and file server can handle the volume of requests.
Web clients
Web clients (sometimes referred to as “thin” clients) include BusinessObjects Planning Analyst, Workflow Console, and the BusinessObjects Workforce Planning Module. Users wanting access to these applications require a minimum of:
Requirement Database Servera File Server
CPU Consult the documentation that comes with your database software for recommended minimums.
500 MHz
RAM 256 MB
Available Hard Drive
Space 10 GB
Operating System Windows® 2000 or Windows Server™
2003 (32 or 64-bit edition) Database Software Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Oracle 9i Release 2 or Oracle 10g Release 2 Network Capacity Server to server 100 MB/sec
Workstation clients
Workstation clients (sometimes referred to as “fat,” “full,” or “thick” clients) are those that support the full BusinessObjects Planning Administrator and BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro modules and the BusinessObjects Planning Excel Analyst.
BusinessObjects Planning Administrator and BusinessObjects Planning
Analyst Pro
Client workstations that will be running BusinessObjects Planning
Administrator or BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro require the following minimum specifications:
Requirement Web/Workflow/Workforce Planning
CPU Pentium III-500 MHz (1 GHz or higher is recommended.)
RAM 128 MB
(256 MB recommended) Available Hard Drive
Space 20 MB
Display 1024 x 768 or higher
Operating System Windows 2000 or Windows XP (32 or 64-bit edition) Note: To access the Web application, the Windows XP Internet Connection Firewall must be turned off. Other Adobe® Reader® Version 7 or higher
Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 5.5 or 6.0 Sun® JRE 5.0 Update 9
(The Sun JRE is shipped on the BusinessObjects Planning installation CD in the Redistribute->JRE folder.)
Network Capacity Web client to Web server 28.8 KB/sec
Requirement Administrator/ Professional
CPU Pentium III 600 MHz (1 GHz or higher is recommended.) RAM 256 MB (1 GB or more is recommended.)
Architecture
Hardware and software requirements
1
Note: BusinessObjects Planning Administrator and BusinessObjects Planning Analyst Pro can be installed on a Citrix server (over Windows 2000 Terminal Services or Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services) and can be specifically configured for this environment.
BusinessObjects Planning Excel Analyst
Users wanting access to the grid-based and function-based BusinessObjects Planning Excel Analyst require a minimum of:
Note: The BusinessObjects Planning Excel Analyst can be installed on a Citrix server (over Windows 2000 Terminal Services or Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services) and can be specifically configured for this environment. Operating System Windows 2000 or Windows XP (32 or 64-bit edition)
Other Microsoft Office 2000, XP, or 2003 (if spreadsheet interface is needed)
Oracle: Oracle ODBC 9.2.0.5 or higher is recommended. (Microsoft ODBC for Oracle is not supported.)
SQL Server: Microsoft ODBC Driver
Network Capacity Workstation client to database server 256 KB/sec (10 MB/sec is recommended.)
Requirement Administrator/ Professional
Requirement Excel Add-in
CPU Pentium III-500 MHz or higher
RAM 128 MB (256 MB or higher is recommended.) Available Hard
Drive Space 50 MB
Display 1024 x 768 or higher
Operating System Windows 2000 or Windows XP (32 or 64-bit edition) Other Microsoft Excel 2000, Excel XP, or Excel 2003
Adobe Reader Version 7 or higher
Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 5.5 or 6.0 is recommended. Network Capacity Web client to Web server 28.8 KB/sec
Server components
The server components provide request handling and processing for Web applications. Machines that will be running these applications require the following minimum specifications.
Application Server
The following table lists the minimum hardware and software requirements for the Application Server:
Scheduler
The following table lists the minimum hardware and software requirements for BusinessObjects Planning Scheduler:
Requirement Application Server
(for each 50 concurrent Web client users)
CPU Four 2.0 GHz or two 2.4 GHz
RAM 4 GB
Available Hard
Drive Space 200 MB
Operating System Windows 2000 (If you are using more than 2 CPUs, you must use the server and not the workstation operating system.) Windows 2000 Advanced Server (recommended for large-scale deployments)
Windows Server 2003 (32 or 64-bit edition)
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition (32 or 64-bit edition) (recommended for large-scale deployments)
Other Software Oracle ODBC 9.2.0.5 or higher is recommended. (Microsoft ODBC for Oracle is not supported.)
If you are using an Oracle database, you will also need to install an Oracle client.
Oracle driver version 9.2.0.5.4 or higher is recommended. Network Capacity Server to server 100 MB/sec
Architecture
Hardware and software requirements
1
Web Gateway Server
The following table lists the minimum hardware and software requirements for the Web Gateway Server:
Requirement Scheduler
CPU Pentium III-1.0 GHz
RAM 256 MB or higher
Available Hard
Drive Space 300 MB Operating System Windows 2000
Windows Server 2003 (32 or 64-bit edition) Other Software Oracle ODBC 9.2.0.5 or higher recommended.
(Microsoft ODBC for Oracle is not supported.)
If you are using an Oracle database, you will also need to install an Oracle client.
Network Capacity Server to server 100 MB/sec Web client to server 28.8 KB/sec
Requirement Web Server/Gateway Server
(for each 500 concurrent Web Client users)
CPU Four 2.0 GHz or two 2.4 GHz
RAM 1 GB
Available Hard
Operating System Windows 2000 for IE 5.5 (IIS 5)
Windows Server 2003 (32 or 64-bit edition) (IIS 6)
It is recommended that the latest security patches and service packs be applied.
Other Software IE 5.5 or 6.0 or MS XML Parser version 2.0 or greater .NET Framework version 2.0
SSL
If Windows 2000 is installed, Windows Integrated Authentication must be disabled on the Web server for Sun VM support. If Windows Integrated Authentication is required then Windows 2003 must be installed.
Network Capacity Server to server 100 MB/sec Web client to server 28.8 KB/sec
Requirement Web Server/Gateway Server
Architecture
Hardware and software requirements
A
aboutBusinessObjects Planning Excel Add-in9
BusinessObjects Planning Gateway10
BusinessObjects Planning Scheduler11
BusinessObjects Planning Server10
BusinessObjects Planning Web9
BusinessObjects Planning web applications8, 9
BusinessObjects Planning Web Redirector11
BusinessObjects Planning web server components7, 9
web servers10
B
BusinessObjects Planning Excel Add-in, about9
BusinessObjects Planning Gateway about10
BusinessObjects Planning Scheduler about11
BusinessObjects Planning Server about10
BusinessObjects Planning web applications about8, 9
BusinessObjects Planning Web Redirector about11
BusinessObjects Planning web server components, about7, 9
BusinessObjects Planning Web, about9
