What's new in CMS/Connect 2.6.3?
As we gear up for the next release of CMS/Connect 2.6.3, some have asked: So what's new in this release?
The most significant enhancement is performance related. As enterprise volumes of BI content mushroom day by day, month by month, the need to efficiently report against entitlements, content volumes and growing infrastructure complexities of the who-what-when-where of SAP Business Objects Enterprise - becomes more and more vital to effectively managing deployments in ways that save time and money. Version 2.6.3 aggressively addresses the "Mega CMS" problem with several options.
Enhancement 1: Ultra-fast and optimized real-time quering.
CMS/Connect still allows users to run their CMS queries in real-time as they always have. However, this time around, CMS/Connect uses a concept of what's known as a "data pipe" which is a conduit between the client and CMS, which performs transformations must faster than before and implements a new caching mechanism. It intelligently retains already-queried-for information in a semi-transient store so it can be reused, reducing excessive round-trips to the CMS. Also, additional batching mechanisms have been put in place to make CMS/Connect faster than its ever been!
Enhancement 2: Extract to Disk
For those looking to extract their entire CMS databases - including all security and objects - a CSV extraction option exists that will write to disk a complete extract of a query developed in Web Intelligence. And, like any BI assets that exist in the enterprise, these reports can be scheduled, and hence integrated into your own in-house metadata activities or ETL processes.
Enhancement 3: Extended Rights Reporting
The new CMS/Connect Universe brings with it greatly extended security and rights objects that provide true, deep-and-wide security inspection across the Enterprise.
To follow will be additional CMS/Reports that help illustrate the use of the new object additions and enhancements to the CMS/Connect universe.
Enhancement 4: Multi-CMS Reporting
Until now, users attempting to report against more than one CMS at the same time had to clone the CMS/Connect universe and create an additional connection - in effect creating a 1-to-1 CMS-to-CMS/Connect installation and then develop multiple data providers against these different Universes. 2.6.3 makes multi-CMS reporting easy by simply providing a CMS Selector filter in the Universe which queries all available registered CMS's, removing the overhead of duplicating the universe for each CMS. Comparing two or more CMS databases is finally a basic reporting activity.
So, when can you download CMS/Connect 2.6.3 you ask? The release date of this version is just a few days away - June 30th - Stay tuned!