BI annotator allows allows business objects (BI) users to relate and combine text data to structured data from a database/datawarehouse. Both text and relational data are exposed to business users via a single SAP BusinessObjects semantic layer (or universe) and directly consumed by BusinessObjects XI R2 reports..

Relating external text data and corporate data adds tremendous value to business intelligence applications by increasing the contextual information available to users for making their business decisions. Examples include combining farm lot crop yields with local temperature data feeds, combining company revenues by geography with US government demographic data feeds, or integrating ERP manufacturing information with a hand created sales forecast from an Excel spreadsheet. Managing mixed data access through the BusinessObjects XI R2 BI platform increases the reliability, security, and audit-ability of the resulting BI solution. The seamless integration of relational and text data will allow users to create reports analytics and dashboards that provide a 360 degree view of their business.

How can BI annotator helps with Business Intelligence solutions?

BI annotator integrates text data feeds with relational data sources by indexing business dimension values and parsing the text to generate a relationships star schema that maps the individual text items to the dimensional values in a database/data warehouse.

The text-to-dimensions relationships are maintained in a 'Coordinates' table. This 'Coordinates' table created and populated by the BI Annotator at index time maintains the relationships between the dimensions of interest in a given universe and the text items. This 'Coordinates' table contains joint data that allows easy end user integration of the relational and text data. It flexibly relates the text to the various dimensions of the universe.

The Physical View of BI annotator's architecture is shown here:

Enjoy!

We hope you use this prototype to discover how integrating text data via a universe can change the way people consume information. Please give us feedback to make sure we know how you're using this and what else you would like to see it do in the future. And remember, this is a prototype only and NOT for use in production environments.

And remember, this is a prototype only and NOT for use in production environments.