Web Intelligence Certification and Polestar XI 3.1
I sat the Web Intelligence XI 3.x Level Two exam last week and passed, which means I’m now a BusinessObjects Certified Professional in Web Intelligence XI 3.x. This is a new certification from BusinessObjects and covers the new Web Intelligence features, as well as the old, and also some universe features. I’ve noticed that recently BusinessObjects have stepped up the complexity of the exams and I’ve find both the Webi and Data Integrator exams to be more difficult than the older Crystal Reports and Admin exams.
However, I also noticed, especially during the Level 2 exam, several mistakes about the questions, including errors in Webi formulas.
I also recently got hold of a pre-release copy of Polestar XI 3.1. I have to say, without having spent much time with it, I’m impressed with the improvements they’ve made to Polestar. It feels more stable, and has some nice new features.
A word of warning however, during the install (I performed it on two different servers runnning XI 3.1), major problems occurred with the deployment of the new WAR files into Tomcat. The Polestar install replaces, or creates, the following WAR files for:
- InfoViewApp
- InfoViewAppActions
- CmcApp
- CmcAppActions
- PlatformServices
- polestar
- polestar_help
- polestar_tutorial
- PolestarAppActions
However, Tomcat doesn’t successfully deploy these WAR files, and the above Tomcat directories, when viewed, are empty, so to the end-user, both InfoView and the CMC stop responding, and you can’t access them. This can be resolved by undeploying, then redeploying, the affected WAR files. I used the Lambda Probe (http://www.lambdaprobe.org/d/index.htm) to do this, but it can also be done by deleting the affected directories within the ‘webapps’ folder, and copying the above WAR files into the ‘webapps’ directory. Tomcat should then deploy the WAR files automatically.
Apart from the issue described above (a major one BusinessObjects are now trying to work into a hot fix), Polestar seems stable and has some great new features. When I get to play and experiment with it more, I will post a more detailed description.
EDIT: I also forgot to mention that SAP BusinessObjects also released an online demo version of Polestar that anyone can play with. Find it here (http://polestar.ondemand.com/polestar/).
- Josh