BO4 - WEBI Rich Client vs. BI launchpad - performance

[former_member272336]

Hi,

We plan to use BI launchpad where possible, some circumstances where data only exists in spreadsheets currently may need to make available WEBI Rich Client to some users.

From performance-angle which is likley to be better e.g webi rich client assume uses 32-bit exe on client machibe whereas launchpad assume will use 64-bir exe on server machines.

Any other thoughts on Webi rich client versus Bi launchpad?

Thanks

[former_member59613 · Accepted solution]

Hi Philip,

I know this is an older post, but I'm going to add a few thoughts just in case someone else stumbles on this and has the same questions.

1) Webi Rich Client is indeed 32-bit still.  This means it has less resources, specifically memory, available to it.  BI 4.x also uses JAVA more than XI 3.1 did for things such as the DSL Bridge and Charting.  This can mean that more is loaded as far as runtime libraries go and this reduces the resources you may have available for refreshing and rendering the reports.  So, in short, be careful and remember it is a 32-bit desktop client tool.  The 64-bit Applet Interface through BI Launchpad can handle much large volumes and is often a little quicker given it is run on a server instead of laptop.

2) Later versions of BI 4.0 and BI 4.1 offer improvements to the load time and performance of the Webi Rich Client.  Part of this is due to bugs that have been fixed and part is due to optimizations that have been made at the report and query processing engines.  Since WRC is a client application, you can always test upgrading it to a newer version to see if your reports benefit from later patch levels.

3) If your data only exists in a spreadsheet then you will likely want to use WRC.  There are other tools that may be useful for you though.  SAP Lumira is a good option for visualizations off of Excel data. 

My personal thought is that WRC is a development tool that should be used to developer reports off of smaller datasets.  Once a report is developed, it should then be published to the server to be run against production data on the 64-bit processing servers.

Hope this helps!

Jonathan

[andreasja_schneider · Accepted solution]

A few thougths from my side:

1. WRC is not only a  tool for developers (IT centric), but also a (desktop based) tool for any power user. Of course the power users could use SAP Lumira, but why not WRC as well...
2. I am wondering if there exists any announcement  if and when a 64-bit version of WRC will be available?
3. It would be nice if finally the SAP BI BusObjects client tools would not be required to be on the very same patch level as the SAP BI BusObjects platform (that's the way it is essentially with SAP BW & SAP BEx Analyzer as far as I am aware). I am wondering if there is any announcement/rodamp for this issue.

[former_member59613 · Accepted solution]

Hi Andreas,

Great point about the 64-bit WRC.  This is something I too have been hoping to see.  I'm not sure it is in the works but please vote up the idea here (on ideaPlace)

I know internally there is planning going on around BI 4.2 so I will use any chance I get to ensure a 64-bit client tool suite is considered as a priority.

As for the Client vs Server patch levels matching, I think this is more an issue of testing than support.  The # of combinations that would need to be tested to ensure stability and reliability is massive.  Sometimes a fix will require both server side and client side code changes and having mismatched versions can cause unexpected results and errors.

For example, if a bug is fixed for session timeouts but it requires a code update on both the WebiRichClient.exe and the CMS.exe, then you would require both of those to be at the same patch level.

I'm sure it could be done if extra logic was added to the code to do version checking and stuff, but that adds on overhead and can lead to performance hits.

I still agree that it would be awesome to have that though, just from a technical perspective, it seems like it would be difficult to implement.

I think for power users that use WRC as a stand-alone tool on their desktop this is less important though.

Thanks!

Jb

[former_member272336 · Accepted solution]

Thanks all for the useful insights.

[CdnConnection]

Philip,

    The only reason to deploy the WebI rich-client is if the user need off-line support or need to connect to external source like XLS, CSV or web services, otherwise you should be using WebI via BILauchPad..

WebI over the web and WebI rich-client have the same functionality, except for some of the key functionality I mentioned above.

Regards,

Ajay

[former_member272336]

Thanks for advice.

[Former Member]

Hello,

As a global approach for consulting and refreshing webi reports, it is recommended to use webi over Bi Launchpad or Web intelligence rich internet application which uses the 64 bit connection server and thus no limitation will be set on memory consumption of the webi processing server (2Gb limit on 32 bits platforms), whereas, for reports developpers, it is better to use the thin client as they will be able to use more available datasources, also, more powerful reporting features are available on the thin clients.
on the thin client too, the reports can be saved locally and not be accessed by the platform users untill developpers decide to make it available for use.

Regards,

Malek.

[former_member272336]

Thanks for advice.