Design Studio in SAP BO

Design Studio in SAP BO

Design Studio in SAP BOSAP BusinessObjects Design Studio enables application designers to create analysis applications and dashboards for browsers and mobile devices (currently only for iPads) on top of BW and SAP HANA data sources. It is the product of choice when full support for BW and HANA data models and engine capabilities is required. The product offers a design tool that allows you to create applications in an easy and intuitive way without the need for native HTML and iPad UI programming skills. SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio can be used both locally and integrated into the BI platform. In local mode, you can create first analysis applications for presenting and evaluating SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio with users on the customer side.

Basic concepts

Entities

The design tool of SAP Business Objects Design Studio enables application designers to create and edit applications.

These applications are saved in an XML file format. Applications generally consist of user interface components (such as charts, crosstabs, and buttons) and data source aliases.

Data Source and Data Source Alias

A data source alias represents an instance of a data source (for example, a BW query, or a SAP HANA data source) at runtime of the application.

A single application can contain multiple instances of one data source. Every instance, for example, can apply its own filters on the same data source and thus represents its own subset of data.

You can see the list of components and data source aliases used in an application in the outline view of the design tool.

Data Binding

To visualize data from a data source alias in a cross tab or chart, define a data binding in the design tool for these components.

The data binding is simply a reference to the data source alias which provides the data. When the data of a data source alias changes (for example, a filter is applied at runtime), the system automatically updates all components that have data binding to that data source alias. You can also see the data binding relationships between components and data source aliases in the outline view

User Interaction

Typically you create applications that not only visualize data but which also provide possibilities for the application used to interact with the data; for example, changing filters, selecting drill-down dimensions, or branching into a detailed view for a selected set of aggregated data.

To enable user interaction with the data, add the relevant UI components to the application. For example, you could provide a row of buttons above a crosstab and chart component to filter the visualized data by different criteria.

Eventing and Script API

UI components provide a set of specific events that the application user can execute on the component. For example, every button provides an on-click event. You can see a list of all available events of the component in the properties view of the design tool. Here, you can open the script editor and specify which actions should take place when the application user triggers the event. The script language is a subset of JavaScript and allows a sequence of script API method calls to be defined. The script API provides access at runtime to the application itself as well as to its components and data source aliases.

Therefore, the application designer has flexible control of the application behaviour by using event scripts.

Setting Properties in Design Time and Run Time

• Besides the events, components also offer a variety of other properties in the properties view of the design tool.
• Some properties are common for all or almost all components; the component name identifies the component within the application,
• for example, and the layout properties define the size and position of the component within the application.
• Other properties are specific and depend on the component type.
• In all cases, the property values displayed in the properties view define the initial state of the components at application startup time.
• At application runtime, you can enable modification of properties by executing event scripts, as almost all component properties are accessible through the script API.

Create an Application

Log on to SAP Design Studio

Create Application

Add a Data Source to an Application

We can create Data Source under Application

Browse Available Connections

Note: We can create data Sources on SAP HANA Models or BEX Queries

Select any connection

Select Data Source(Bex)

Connect to SAP HANA

We can connect Design Studio with SAP HANA using ODBC Connection.

Select HANA ODBC Driver to create ODBC Connection

Create Data Source

Select SAP HANA Cube

Add a hyperlink to an application

Design a Query Select Button Component

Go to properties & Provide Name, extra properties

Write relevant Script

Save the application

Display metadata for applications and data sources

Design Query 

Select Application & go to Properties

Write required Script

Pass URL parameters between applications

Design two applications

Select one of the components of any application

Write a script with URL

Go to 2^nd application & apply our URL

Insert Variables

For an in-depth understanding of SAP BO click on

• Widgets in SAP BO
• SAP Business Object Mobile Configuration
• Business Objects Web Intelligence