I first met Mark Hudson and members of the Antivia team at the 2008 BOBJ user conference following a presentation, “Xcelsius Web Intelligence Suite”. From that presentation, I knew that Antivia was on a path to change how we think about enterprise connectivity for Xcelsius. Since then, each version of Xcelsius Web Intelligence Suite (XWIS) has significantly improved connectivity and navigation of data from BusinessObjects Enterprise.

With Xcelsius Web Intelligence Suite 2.5 (XWIS), Antivia has continued their innovation streak with so much compelling functionality, that I had difficulty picking out my favorite new features for this article. XWIS 2.5 simplifies the development process for building real, scalable, enterprise dashboards, which is something that organizations have struggled with Live Office and Query as a Web Service. For the first time, developers can meet complex business requirements without laying lots of data connectors with Excel logic. Instead XWIS 2.5 is a scalable solution designed from the ground up to address enterprise dashboard development using Xcelsius or SAP Crystal Dashboard Design as the development platform. The following list is my favorite new features, so make sure you obtain a full list from Antivia.com.

Point and click connectivity to WebI and Crystal Reports- XWIS provides a suite of components that provide direct connectivity to Web Intelligence and now Crystal Reports. With enhanced connectivity management, dashboard developers can re-assemble any combination of measures and dimensions from WebI and Crystal Reports to create true drilldown, hierarchical navigation, and adhoc analysis without data volume limitations or Excel logic.

Autowire- A new feature with XWIS 2.5 is an ability to automatically link standard Xcelsius charts to live data WITHOUT BINDING TO THE SPREADSHEET. Antivia has beat BusinessObjects to the punch, enabling dashboard developers to connect, navigate, drill, and visualize data without a single Excel binding. In addition, Autowire will either synchronize to multiple charts within the dashboard, or provide an in-line chart navigator allowing an end user to toggle between multiple chart types.

Autowire also features in-line chart drilldown while retaining a breadcrumb navigation to drill back up the hierarchy across all chart types.

Connectivity to any source with XMLA and JDBC- For customers who want to access OLAP data sources directly from Xcelsius, XWIS’ new XMLA connectivity option provides the flexibility that developers have been asking for a long time. In addition, an JDBC connectivity option provides and interface to inject your SQL queries directly into XWIS, while retaining the same functionality to navigate and drill they support against WebI or Crystal Reports.


Online/Offline and Bursting- Previously available with XWIS 2.0, dashboard end users can easily save dashboards for offline use, while retaining all of the data from XWIS. I get a ton of requests for this functionality, so I wanted to re-iterate its availability and importance for the future success of Xcelsius. To further expand offline capabilities, XWIS 2.5 now features dashboard bursting integration with BOE Publisher so you can now personalize and distribute Xcelsius dashboard to hundred if not thousands of users.

Custom Hierarchies- Within XWIS components, dashboard developers can create custom hierarchies from Crystal Report and WebI using a simple point and click interface. Now, dashboard developers can map custom hierarchies to match and synchronize non-hierarchical data with point and click ease.

Custom Variables- For dashboard developers who spend lots of time buried in Excel logic, this feature is a major enhancement. Abstracting custom variables to XWIS, developers can leverage report measures to create custom variables for use in the dashboard. This feature among others illustrates that Antivia truly understands how developers have struggled building scalable enterprise applications and delivered an important feature to make development and maintenance much better.


I have highlighted my favorite new features, but there is so much XWIS can do, and the guys at Antivia have many more amazing ideas to make connecting and navigating information in Xcelsius easier than ever.

If your organization is building dashboards on top of BusinessObjects, XWIS 2.5 is a must have. For more information, please visit Antivia.com.

Over the years, I have seen a lot of different business requirements for Xceleius to writeback to a database. The most common is remote scenarios where dashboard end user can persist data to a database so it can be recalled at a later date. Recently for a customer project, my team had re-created the local scenario button user experience with remote storage on a MS SQL 2008 database.

Essentially, the custom Flex component transacts data to a simple .NET web service that triggers a stored procedure. I wanted to see who else has recently had requirements for Xcelsius remote scenarios to see if this is something we can provide to the marketplace. I am in the process of setting up the database on our web server so you can try it for yourself and provide feedback.

Software as-a-service applications like Salesforce.com and Google Maps Premier enable organizations of all sizes to offload operational and infrastructure costs associated with on-premise software. Organizations that have made significant investments in on-premise business intelligence are now mashing up data from web-based solutions thanks to powerful APIs. In the last year, Salesforce.com and Google Maps integrations for Xcelsius have popped up making it easier than ever to integrate these technologies without any coding. Third party software solution providers like Centigon Solutions and Moss Solutions are bridging the gaps between these powerful web-based platforms and Xcelsius.

-Read more about this dashboard at EverythingXcelsius.com

Last week, Centigon Solutions release a new data connector for Xcelsius enabling direct connectivity to csv (comma separated values) files. Geared toward customers who require a simple method for updating Xcelsius dashboards, CSV Connector adds value by streamlining dashboard development and connectivity to external data.

Until now, Xcelsius required XML data and web services for live connectivity. CSV Connector is an optimal component for your developer toolbox to connect a dashboard to a flat file located on your desktop or web server.

Since I started using this data connection, CSV Connector has proven to be a perfect low cost solution for building dashboards against legacy reporting systems and databases. In several projects where I have successfully injected csv connectivity, I saved a tremendous amount of development resources previously expended in writing redundant .NET or J2EE services. Even when web services are required to meet customer requirements for live personalized data, I use CSV connector while refining the dashboard design. In several cases I have used a combination of csv connectivity and web services to enable a customer to mashup data from different data sources.

From a property sheet data preview to a simple row filter property, CSV Connector is optimized to make development a breeze while enabling direct connectivity without any additional server-side installation. Try CSV Connector using the free trial and feel free to post any comments or questions.

This week I was working with Live Office on XI3.1 and was racking my brain over a 26306 error when running the SWF: " Failed to fetch data provider data. (LO 26306)"

After a quick Google search I recalled that this error is common when you have a Live Office query with a report prompt that is not identified. Here are a few tips to make sure you don't pull your hair out as you troubleshooting and fix your Live Office/Xcelsius issue.

1. Make sure you refresh your report inside of Live Office before trying to identify and bind your prompts. This will ensure that you not only have the latest report data, but also that you are not looking at cached report data. If your WebI report itself is not setup to refresh on load, Live Office will used the cached data which will cause the LO 26306 SWF runtime error.

2. If you get the error and have to go back and define your prompts, either by hard-coding or binding them to cells, remember to DELETE AND RE-IMPORT YOUR LIVE OFFICE CONNECTIONS IN THE DATA MANAGER!. When you make changes to your Live Office connection inside of the nested Excel instance, the data manager wont detect and apply changes to your Live Office configuration. Simply deleting and re-adding your Live Office connections in the data manager will solve the problem if you modify the Live Office objects or prompts.

Keep these two guidelines in mind for as you build Live Office enabled dashboards and you can keep your sanity.