I congratulate and thank Miguel Figueiredo for documenting and sharing his solution for converting Xcelsius dashboards for use on the iPad.
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/20589
As the gap decreases between consumer and enterprise technologies, it is a very exciting time for innovation. We are enthralled with ways to port xcelsius into new platforms specifically this cool workaround to make Xcelsius work on the iPad.
As developers continue to chip away at the closed system Apple established for developing and distributing iPhone/iPad apps, I still advise the following to my customers who are currently evaluating BI for mobile.
1. Evaluate technology designed specifically for iPhone/iPad like Roambi or SAP BOBJ explorer to name a few..
2. Look at the upcoming Android and RIM tablets that natively support Flash knowing that the device speeds and flash player will continue to improve.
3. Wait on Apple and Adobe to figure it out for using Flash-based solutions on iPhone and iPad
4. Alternative work arounds
It is these limitations for converting Flash to iPad/iPhone that drove me to these recommendations:
- No mobile optimization (performance, user experience, etc)
- No distribution method exists for converted dashboards
- No security
- No support from any of the included technology vendors for this conversion
There are workarounds for several of these limitations, but collectively they create a big question mark for our clients who want to re-use their existing Xcelsius investment.
What are your thoughts?
I wonder why SAP is hung up on using Flash as the technology of choice for SCDD and Apple on not supporting Adobe Flash!
For enterprises that are going the iPad way, it’s ridiculous to be unable to use an “enterprise” dashboard tool such as Xcelsius!