Business Objects Announces BUSINESSOBJECTS 4.0 SUPERVISOR and DESIGNER modules; New SUPERVISOR Module Provides IS with Graphical User and Security Administration; New DESIGNER Module Streamlines Setup

Business Wire, March 25, 1996

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 25, 1996--Business Objects, a leading provider of enterprise decision support tools, today announced version 4.0 of its BUSINESSOBJECTS SUPERVISOR and BUSINESSOBJECTS DESIGNER modules.

A major part of the overall BUSINESSOBJECTS 4.0 announcement (Editors Note: please see related releases dated March 25, 1996), the SUPERVISOR Module is an entirely new product designed to facilitate the mass deployment of BUSINESSOBJECTS. The DESIGNER Module contains a number of major enhancements that greatly streamline the setup of the BUSINESSOBJECTS environment.

"Easy setup and deployment is critical for delivering enterprise decision support solutions to the masses," said David Folger, program director, Workgroup Computing Strategies, Meta Group.

"BUSINESSOBJECTS 4.0 DESIGNER Module offers rapid setup, and the SUPERVISOR will help companies manage the security critical to enterprise-wide deployment. BUSINESSOBJECTS 4.0 will allow IS groups to rapidly deploy a DSS solution across the enterprise, while maintaining the necessary controls."

New SUPERVISOR Module Delivers Graphical Administration

As penetration of BUSINESSOBJECTS continues into customer deployments of ever-increasing size -- represented by some customers with more than 10,000 seats -- BUSINESSOBJECTS administrators need an environment to manage and administer the mass deployment of BUSINESSOBJECTS throughout an enterprise. Towards that end, the new SUPERVISOR module provides a number of powerful features that complement the existing features in BUSINESSOBJECTS to support large-scale deployment. Key SUPERVISOR features include:

-- A graphical interface that makes user administration easy.

-- A powerful, object-based security model that allows IS to assign and modify the rights granted to users and groups thereof. Nested groups and inheritance streamline the management of large numbers of users structured in large numbers of groups.

-- A rich security model that applies not only to information access (BUSINESSOBJECTS universes and documents), but also to system resource consumption (e.g., the maximum number of rows returnable from a query), and even to product functionality, with virtually every function in BUSINESSOBJECTS being fully configurable by the administrator using the SUPERVISOR module.

-- Support for multiple administrators working in tandem to support massive user installations.

-- Support for remote client/server management.

The SUPERVISOR provides the ability to setup and manage the BUSINESSOBJECTS Repository, an open, portable repository that provides a central point of control for IS. Together, the SUPERVISOR and the Repository provide administrators with the industry's riches environment for supporting the deployment of a decision support solution.

New DESIGNER Module Streamlines Setup Process

The BUSINESSOBJECTS 4.0 DESIGNER module presents a new, and greatly enhanced, way for IS professionals to setup the BUSINESSOBJECTS environment. Major new features include:

-- A new graphical interface for creating classes and objects that populate a BUSINESSOBJECTS universe, and provide end users with a business representation of a corporate database or data warehouse. This new interface is easy to use, featuring extensive use of drag and drop and WYSIWYG. To support more complex universes, the interface features zoom in/out and split pane display.

-- Automated universe creation. DESIGNER includes a new Quick Design Wizard that, in six simple steps, fully automates the process of creating a BUSINESSOBJECTS universe. This means that IS staff can have fully operational universes functioning within minutes of installing BUSINESSOBJECTS.

-- Powerful semantics. More than a drawing tool, the DESIGNER can detect loops in database schemas and offer both contexts and aliases to resolve them. In addition, the DESIGNER can perform detailed integrity checks on universes to ensure that all aspects -- from join cardinalities to table references to SQL definitions -- are correct. These features ensure the accuracy of information presented to users of the universe.

-- Aggregate awareness. The DESIGNER now includes the ability to define aggregate-aware objects that can rely on precalculated, database-resident aggregates to improve runtime query processing performance by up to a factor of 100 times.

-- Workgroup development. At large-scale sites, several universe developers often work in tandem to develop universes. DESIGNER now supports this workgroup development with check in/check out concurrency control to ensure consistency and delta versioning to minimize the storage requirements and maximize the performance of workgroup development.

-- Universe derivation. This feature supports large-scale sites by allowing them to create a set of central shared universe definitions and then derive specific universes from them. In this way, IS can develop a core set of classes and objects that are shared among multiple universes, without having to copy and maintain those objects in multiple, different universes.