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My company runs a couple of B2B apps (written in Rails) dealing with parts and inventory and we've been trying to figure out the best way to integrate with some of our bigger users. We already offer the REST-style API that comes with Rails, but that, of course requires an IT Department on their end to decide to integrate it, so we'd like to lower that barrier if possible.
From what we've found, most of them are on SAP systems. Now, pretty much all I know about SAP is it's 1) expensive, 2) huge, 3) and does everything and anything you could ever need for your gigantic business to run. Naturally, this is all a bit imposing, and the resources on the site are a cross between impenetrable buzz-word laden sales material, and impenetrable jargon laden advanced technical material with little for the new, but technically competent user to be able to sink his teeth into.
So what I'm wondering is: as a 3rd party, that's not running a SAP installation, is there a way for us to offer access to our site's data through a web service or other API? Is it just a matter of providing or implementing a certain WSDL (and what would that be)? Is this feasible for someone without in-depth experience with SAP? Or is this a complete non-starter?
I'd say it's not possible without someone who knows the SAP system. You probably won't need to hire someone with in-depth SAP knowledge, but at least for the initial implementation, you'll need both the knowledge and a working system you can develop against. Technically speaking, it's not really that hard, but considering the fact that SAP systems are designed to handle multiple organizations, countries, legal systems, localizations and several thousands of users simultaneously, things are bound to be a bit more complex than almost any other software around - and most of the time not even bloated, it's just easy to get lost in that kind of flexibility.
My recommendation would be to find a customer (or a prospective customer) who has someone in their IT department with the necessary technical and processual knowledge and who is interested in conducting a development project. This way, you'd get access to a real system (testing of course) and someone who can explain to you the basics of the system. But, as I said, be prepared for complexity.
vwegert makes some excellent points.
As to this part of your question:
So what I'm wondering is: as a 3rd
party, that's not running a SAP
installation, is there a way for us to
offer access to our site's data
through a web service or other API? Is
it just a matter of providing or
implementing a certain WSDL (and what
would that be)?
Technically it is possible to expose any of your system's services as web-services to a client's SAP system. In order to do this you do not need any prior knowledge of SAP. (SAP should be able to import a WSDL, although there may be some limitations in the earlier pre-ECC5 systems).
For example a service that provides meter reads, airport departure schedules, industry trends etc is not dependend of what is in the user's system or how they set it up. However as soon as there is a need to initiate updates to the client system's data is when you need access to more specialised SAP knowledge.
Also note that many SAP functions can also be exposed as web services, but generally you do need someone with SAP (ABAP) knowledge to do this.
The ABAP language is actually fairly simple, but there is a huge learning curve to understand the data model and the myriad of configurable options in SAP.
I'm wondering if anyone is currently utilizing Microsoft's Master Data Services? How you are utilizing it? Whether you find it useful? When you believe it would be useful? Thanks!
I have been working with MDS since it was first released as part of a feature pack for SQL Server 2008 R2. While MDS has some compelling features - most notably detailed data lineage, I am not confident in recommending it to clients yet.
My reason for this hesitation is the nature of the install and the tendendency to fail on upgrade or system change. I struggled mightily with the both the SQL Server 2012 RC0 MDS and the RTM installs. There are simply too many brittle aspects of the install (such as the hard requirement that the service be installed on a domain-joined machine and the need to install the Silverlight 5.0 SDK for the client to work properly). I also experienced flakiness in the the Excel add-in.
I see where Microsoft is going and I think the product will eventually be useful. Considering it's purpose (master data repository), MDS must be more 'rock solid' before I would use it in production.
We aren't using it currently in our office, however the presentation Microsoft did in town a while back seemed very interesting. I saw it as sort of a competitor to Oracle's OBAW warehouse. You've probably already looked at these, but Microsoft has a decent set of webcasts that cover how to install and use MDS out here:
http://www.msdev.com/Directory/SeriesDescription.aspx?CourseId=155
I'm anxious to see if anyone else is using it as well, we tend to have a hard time talking our management into letting us try these types of services without being able to point to other corporations that have successfully implemented said product.
We're just starting to investigate the use of MDS to support our consulting practice, specifically around data analytics and ETLs to deduplicate, standardize, and sanitize client data. It's probably just scratching the surface of MDS, but we were led to MDS initially for its inclusion of regular expression capabilities in SQL to transform free-form text data.
Before MDS/DQS, part of the sustainability / enduring-success of a custom database application was heavily dependent on one or both of the following items...
Having a full-time technical resource to manually update the master data. Someone who can work with the Business Experts and make the necessary adjustments to the data in the database.
Developing (in addition to the database/application/etc) a custom UI that is intuitive enough for the less-technical Business Experts to use for managing the master data themselves.
Neither of these were ideal from a cost-perspective. With MDS/DQS, a developer/contractor can come in, design an end-to-end Data Warehouse/BI solution including full integration with DQS/MDS (probably via SSIS packages) with relative ease. The Business-Experts can be trained to manage the master data using a UI they are already very familiar with (ex. Excel), and the developer/contractor can move on to the next project/client.
Also, if the business already has other data sources (via acquisitions or silo'd-yet-overlapping efforts or whatever), MDS can be used to manage all the master data in one centralized location.
It might not be the best MDS product available yet however it does come with SQL Server. Compared to most of the bespoke efforts for accommodating meta-data or master data in warehouse loads it's a pretty good option since most of the time is spent concentrating on the warehouse and the mastering of ancillary or other data isn't normally well accommodated for leaving questionable results. I prefer to use it than create some other flaky option that the customers will find it difficult to maintain. If you have budget however I would consider looking around for something more polished.
Like anything though give master data the respect it deserves. If it is going to be used then it's worth spending the time to model the entities, flow of data and usage correctly. The data stewards will need to savvy and will require training (it's not the most usable interface in the world - to say the least).
As we are a small consulting and development company we don't use MDS internally but we do implement it at customers with a focus on managing the Golden Record as the customers have a myriad of databases and applications all using the same data (customer, product …)
I agree with Lynn Langit's comment about installation and SilverLight dependency and the general comments about the UI. There are also a lot of smaller companies that don't run SQL Enterprise Edition but whom could benefit from MDS.
Those are the reasons why we are now developing a modern web application which we will host for our customers (probably on Azure).
If you're thinking about MDS I'd recommend to have a look at the API to replace (parts) of the UI.
Master Data Service is very useful for managing Master Data,
We have used Master Data Services 2012 and 2016, there are not too many features present in 2012 ,2016 is much better than 2012 with some new features , but I think still Microsoft needs to improve Master Data Services, they should include some flexibility in business rule's area.
It is for a small business, looking for the best solution... Did a search and only came up with very specific question related to ecommerce
May be worth taking a look at http://shopify.com/
OSCommerce is a well proven, free ecommerce solution, which is easy to set up
You might also consider just opening up an eBay store :) That way you essentially get free advertising, search engine indexing etc.
I always suggest that a company that is very small start with an open source solution such as DashCommerce. This way you get the development experience of the people supporting that project, plus the tested framework that many other companies are already using. The more people that use the code base the more reliable it is. Also, the more plugin type features that it might support such as tax, shipping, etc.
Take a look at DashCommerce's feature list to get an idea of what a complete ecommerce system should have.
Yahoo! Stores has one of the easiest ecommerce setups and has low upfront costs. The ongoing fees is how they make their money, and it becomes expensive with more volume.
A similar question has been asked: MSDN subscriptions on the cheap?, but I am not interested in the solutions provided:
I am not developing a product for sale, I am starting up a consulting company, so Empower is not an option.
I have visited the links to MS regarding MSDN subscriptions and they do not point to a way to get an inexpensive copy.
I am not interested in suggestions that I become a MVP. Frankly, I'm desiring to focus on developing my company, not jumping through MS's hoops.
There are really only a few options available
Buy it at standard price
Become a Microsoft Certified Partner, and get a good discount (Actually much simpler than you would think, I did it in under 2 weeks for my business)
Find a MVP buddy that is willing to share a free giveaway
But in all reality, these are the ONLY legal options. You might also try calling Microsoft, you never know what might happen, they have many special programs that are not necessarily publicly advertised.
What you want is the Action Pack: https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40016455.
(Note, as an employee of Microsoft, I apologize that you have to LOG OUT of your LiveID to see this page if that LiveID is not already attached to a Registered Partner.)
You don't have to be certified to get access to this, just registered (there are three levels of partnership: 1. Registered, 2. Certified, 3. Gold Certified). You do have to pass a fairly simple assessment test, though.
See the pdf referenced at https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40082823 for an overview of the process.
One last thing - if you are a student (I suspect the OP is not), you can get many Microsoft tools free from http://www.dreamspark.com.
Surely your consultancy will need a website in ASP.NET and perhaps your clients would like a widget that talks directly to a web service on your site? There's your product.
Also, look into "Value added Services" amongst the Empower documentation.
I'm on the Empower program - there really aren't any barriers to entry, as such.
I used to go directly through MS, but nowadays, I always order mine through Xtras.net - they have good multi-year discounts and you manage the subscription online through Microsoft's site as normal.
Does Empower require that the 'main' use is developing a product?
You can always develop a product as well - doesn't have to be very sucessfull, perhaps something to display the time in a window?
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Every project invariably needs some type of reporting functionality. From a foreach loop in your language of choice to a full blow BI platform.
To get the job done what tools, widgets, platforms has the group used with success, frustration and failure?
For knocking out fairly "run of the mill" reports, SQL Reporting Services is really quite impressive.
For complicated analysis, loading the data (maybe pre-aggregated) into an Excel Pivot table is usually adequate for most users.
I've found you can spend a lot of time (and money) building a comprehensive "ad-hoc" reporting suite and after the first month or two of "wow factor", 99% of the reports generated will be the same report with minor differences in a fixed set of parameters.
Don't accept when a user says they want "ad-hoc" reports without specifying what goals and targets their looking for. They are just fishing and they need to actually spend as much time on THINKING about THEIR reporting requirements as YOU would have to spend BUILDING their solution.
I've spent too much time building the "the system that can report everything" and for it to become out of date or out of favour before it was finished. Much better to get the quick wins out of the way as quick as possible and then spend time "systemising" the most important reports.
For most reports we use BIRT.
I've used Reporting Services and Crystal fairly extensively, and I'm writing a few reports using Excel(ick) at the moment.
Reporting Services is pretty good for simple reports but as soon as you need total control over formatting,complex formulas and charts etc. Crystal is a long way ahead. I also find Crystal to be far more usable; being able to change things within the report preview is invaluable (it may be possible in later versions of RS?).
RS also needs to be deployed to a web server which limits it's usefulness if you are writing applications that need to be deployed externally.
Older versions of Crystal were very buggy but the latest ones are much better, it's much more mature than Reporting Services.
For a lot of projects we use ActiveReports.
I am a committer on the BIRT project, so I am biased. BIRT provides a very well thought out report object model (ROM) and appropriate API for the various design and deploy function that is needed. In addition, BIRT provides the best multi-language support and the ability to separate development from design through the use of CSS.
BIRT can be embedded into your application for no license cost through the REAPI or it can be purchased through a couple of commercial offerings.
Cognos is a robust suite of tools (we use it as a front-end for an Oracle back-end), but there's a pronounced lack of documentation on how to accomplish complex reporting tasks -- mostly, you end up banging on it until you get something to work.
I wouldn't discount the usefulness of using Microsoft Access as a reporting front-end. It doesn't have that useful Web-enabled functionality, but for in-house reports it's very versatile and surprisingly powerful.
We use i-net Clear Reports for our reporting (seeing as how we "eat our own dog food"). ;)
It is like Crystal Reports,
can read Crystal Reports templates,
the API is more useful,
costs less than Crystal Reports (and if you factor in support costs, costs less than open source)
is platform independent because written in Java.
we offer a free and fully functional report designer
If you have all the money in the world, go with Cognos. They provide a data cube that essentially makes the reporting "developer free" and the end user can create reports, dashboards, anything they like.
For the "common man", I've grown quite fond of the ComponentOne reports for .NET library/tools. It has a similar feel to Crystal Reports, but has a very friendly XML format that you and edit under the hood and none of the headaches with versioning, keys, and other items that I've had to deal with when making simple updates to either the report or the underlying version.
I don't really have much SSAS work to do but I've been quite taken with this:
Cube Browser for ASP.net
It offers many of the capabilities of an excel pivot table in a web app, (thought I'm not enough of an expert on Excel to really know the whole of the pivot table's capabilities - it at least looks comparable to visual studio's cube browser).
Unfortunately the demos don't seem to be online anymore :(
I would have to agree, I really like SQL Server Reporting Services. It just does stuff, and does it easily.
Crystal Reports, because it is easy to take the same exact report file and
1 - Post it on the intranet
2 - Embed it in an application
3 - Schedule it to be emailed as an Excel output every so often to whoever needs it
Also (as I already suggested), it exports easily to Excel, PDF, and other formats.
We've been using BIRT which had a steep learning curve for me until I realized how many WYSIWIG features it had (I started editing the xml source code direct, which I don't recommend.) There are some output specific tricks (like using a 0 left margin to not get a blank A column when outputting to XLS format) but for the most part it's quick and easy to use, edit and preview.
I have also been impressed on how easy it is to intermix different datasets in a single report. While not a silver bullet, its a better all around tool than 99.999% of people are going to build on their own.
"Give them data and they will love you for it"
Out of the methods and tools I've used in the past, I would rank them in the following order based on abilities/versatility/usability/speed to deploy. I'm leaving cost out of it because while it is always a factor it is a different factor for everyone.
1 is Cognos (version 8)
2 is SQL Server Reporting
3 is Crystal Reports
4 is Custom written code
I haven't used any of the other tools mentioned. Cognos 8 is nothing short of awesome. While pricey, you are only limited by your imagination. It can do anything.
This isn't so much a positive suggestion, but more of a cautionary tale against crystal reports... As with other people, getting the right version of the crystal runtime is important, but having done that, I still had this problem:
Spent weeks developing reports that had embedded images.
Tested on dev and staging environment, all A-OK.
Deploy to live server - doesn't work... Hmmm...
Spent two weeks trawling forums and looking for advice, eventually got a response from a crystal body on their forums. Suggested that he had seen a similar problem to do with MS Paint being set up as the default application for a certain file extension.
At this point, we gave up trying (after I convinced my boss that this wasn't a take the piss answer, but actually a formal response from Crystal). Handily we were migrating to new servers about a month later (where the reports worked), but honestly, wouldn't touch them again...
Oh, and have used SSRS and found it to be pretty good for most things (particularly the most recent version).
Tableau software is an amazing tool to run your reports and get easily deep throught analysis
For simple reports I use the standard ReportViewer included in Visual Studio.
For more complicated reports and ones that require more performance I've used both Report Sharp Shooter and devExpress XtraReports. Surprisingly, in both products creating tables isn't as easy as it should but both are faster than ReportViewer and handle extremely well multi-column reports, barcodes and aggregate data.
We use Cognos, it's a fairly complex system, but very powerful.
i have a small reporting set, made in 2 months:
at least 10 times faster than crystal reports;
easy editing;
.net formula;
easy usage;
small code usage;
serialization and deserialization(fast and small);
extreme security;
multi threaded;
no errors;
We had used MS Reporting Services, but we was completely unhappy with it.
Reasons:
it is needed to make difficult configuration of server
it is not possible to embed report editor into our app without buying SQL server license for every user
it is possible only to use embedded report parameters input form UI or send them from app, but not to create parameters UI by report designer
Now we a using Stimulsoft Reports. It have no such limitations like MS Reporting Services, and we and your users are happy with it.
1) I would think Reporting Services is very good for most of the needs, when in comes to developing table based reports and also matrix reports (drilldown - pivot like functionality).Considering the price of Cognos etc. An SME can't even dream of getting Congns AFAIK
2) Report Scheduling / Subscription functionality can be invoked to send reports to a set of users (data driven) to deliver reports. Subscriptions can be delivered to custom locations such as an SFTP, by writing .Net code.
3) Using Report Models, end user can drag and drop columns and develop customized reports
To Note:
1) It can get trickier once you develop really complex graphical/dashboard kind reports - which involve few charts and small tables to be displayed in A4. Report Designer (the tool we use to design reports) and Web display use different rendering engines. So it is better if you deploy the reports often and see how they look, if you develop complex graphical reports
2) If you write custom functionality, you may have to change the XML configuration files(RSReportServer.Config etc). If there is any problem in the edit, ReportServer service may stop. So be careful to back up before doing anything custom
Cognos with an Oracle backend is what we use. We also use spotfire for visualization on top of cognos.
I'm the CTO at Windward and I do believe that Windward Reports is by far both the easiest to use and you can do more with it than any other reporting - and both traits are for the same reason, you design your reports in Word, Excel, & PowerPoint.
As to the generated reports, it's fast, it's rock solid, and incorporating it into your program can be as little as 3 lines of code.
We use Crystal Reports where I work. It has quite a few limitations, and we find ourselves doing almost all of the logic in Database procedures and Views.
One limitation to note is that Crystal Reports does not allow multiple layered sub-reports. In other words, you cannot have a sub-report inside a sub-report.