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former_member182521
Active Contributor

I have noticed so many questions flowing around BusinessObjects Audit reporting and Metadata reporting for a quite long time in SCN. The intention of this blog is to explain the basics and the major difference between each of them.

To start with an introduction, Auditing is predominantly used to get the statistics about the BusinessObjects deployment by providing more insights on usage metrics of the system where as metadata reporting is used to get the real-time information about what is available in BusinessObjects repository.

Some of the metrics from Audit database

  • Who is the more active user in my BusinessObjects environment?
  • What is the major user activity (create/modify/refresh/delete) carried out on reports over a week?
  • What are the frequently failing scheduled reports?

Metrics which you can get from CMS database using Query builder (Metadata reporting)

  • What is the total number of users in the system and who are all the members of a particular group?
  • What is the value set at server parameter called “Maximum Character Stream Size”?
  • What are the reports associated with a particular corporate category?

The below table could help you to distinguish the major differences

CategoryAudit reportingMetadata reporting
Nature of dataThe information stored in Audit tables is historical in nature.Repository tables contains real-time information about BI contents which is transactional (No history) in nature.
ConfigurationAudit database configuration is not mandatory during installation. We can continue to use the system even without auditing and It can be configured as on when it is required.It is mandatory to Configure the CMS database during installation without which installation will not succeed.
Direct SQL accessData available with in Audit tables can be queried directly using traditional SQL.Direct access to CMS tables is not recommended as they are encrypted. We need to use Query builder to get the required information.
Universe and reportsOut of box and As-Is sample of universe & reports are available in BO 3.x and BI 4.x respectivelyWe need to develop the universe and associated reports from the scratch based on the requirement.
Information availabilityData available within Audit tables is not real-time and is based on the parameter - “CMS Polling interval” Data available in CMS tables are real-time in nature and they get updated as soon as the BI content gets added/modified/deleted.
Data retention  and purgingWe can purge data available within Audit tables based on their ageNot possible. But the inconsistencies between CMS database and FRS can be removed using Repository Diagnostics Tool.


Hope this blog is interesting.


References


BusinessObjects Query builder - Basics

BusinessObjects Auditing - Considerations & Enabling

BusinessObjects Auditing - What is changed in BO 4.0?

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