{"id":1973,"date":"2013-08-13T10:02:21","date_gmt":"2013-08-13T14:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/?p=1973"},"modified":"2014-06-06T03:35:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-06T08:05:00","slug":"improve-sap-business-objects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/improve-sap-business-objects\/","title":{"rendered":"How to improve your Business Objects charts"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1975\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1975\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"1975\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/improve-sap-business-objects\/slide-5-sap-businessobjects-4-0-event-insight2\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"600,399\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;disaster, disguised as a &amp;#8220;dashboard&amp;#8221;&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2-300x199.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2.jpg\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1975\" src=\"http:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2.jpg\" alt=\"disaster, disguised as a &quot;dashboard&quot;\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2-160x106.jpg 160w, https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2-260x172.jpg 260w, https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2-360x239.jpg 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1975\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">disaster, disguised as a &#8220;dashboard&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/help.sap.com\/bobip\" target=\"_blank\">Business Objects<\/a>, SAP&#8217;s BI platform, is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.perceptualedge.com\/blog\/?p=727\" target=\"_blank\">notoriously bad for data visualization<\/a>. Somehow, <strong>it empowers the developers to make all the wrong decisions at the same time<\/strong> and create really ugly and unusable &#8220;dashboards&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Lately, I&#8217;ve seen my share of ugly bobip visualizations, like the one above. Which would seem ok but it commits the greatest of sins:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/en\/how-to-create-better-charts\/\" target=\"_blank\">unnecessary embellishment<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>To create better Business Objects visualizations you should try to avoid\u00a0&#8220;non data ink&#8221;, like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Unnecessary big numbers (100,000,000 could be abbreviated to 100M)<\/li>\n<li>Axis borders.<\/li>\n<li>Colored or gradient backgrounds.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Also, you could re-work your charts to remove:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Data point markers.<\/li>\n<li>Double vertical axis.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Also, surprisingly \u00e2\u20ac\u201cor not\u00e2\u20ac\u201c Business Objects lets you mix bars and lines to confuse the reader:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"2087\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/improve-sap-business-objects\/attachment\/188\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/188.png\" data-orig-size=\"642,513\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"188\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/188-300x239.png\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/188.png\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2087\" src=\"http:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/188.png\" alt=\"188\" width=\"642\" height=\"513\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/188.png 642w, https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/188-300x239.png 300w, https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/188-150x120.png 150w, https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/188-225x180.png 225w, https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/188-335x268.png 335w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 642px) 100vw, 642px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Lines in a chart are supposed to express continuity, cause and effect.<\/p>\n<p>In this case, the use of lines confuses the reader. There&#8217;s no logic in stating that a measurement in the leftmost products\u00a0influences the ones at the right.<\/p>\n<p>Unless you have a time measurement in the horizontal axis, you should avoid using lines mixed with bars.<\/p>\n<p>All this omissions and mistakes defies the purpose of the chart, which is to give a quick assessment of the situation. A professional product like Business Objects shouldn&#8217;t let you make those mistakes. But unfortunately it does and that&#8217;s why your charts suck.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/complexdiagrams.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Noah Iliinsky<\/a> addresses some of this charting &#8220;sins&#8221; in his famous talk &#8220;Data Viz: You&#8217;re Doin&#8217; it Wrong&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/i93iWza8sG8?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t doubt for a second that SAP&#8217;s BI Platform must be great for building data warehouses, but it&#8217;s notoriously poor as a tool for visualizing data. You would be better served by using bobip in the back-end and disguising it with Processing, D3js or <a href=\"http:\/\/selection.datavisualization.ch\/\" target=\"_blank\">some other library<\/a> to better show of the fruits of your hard work. In every Business Intelligence endeavor, charts are the visible face of the project. <strong>If your charts suck, your project sucks<\/strong>. Is as easy as that.<\/p>\n<p>As a developer, it also helps to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/en\/nterface-design\/\" target=\"_blank\">learn some design elements<\/a>\u00a0and even do some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00125MJYM\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=text-media-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00125MJYM\" target=\"_blank\">reading on the subject<\/a>. Remember: your charts and dashboard should be compelling enough to inspire and motivate the users to dive into the data.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Business Objects, SAP&#8217;s BI platform, is notoriously bad for data visualization. Somehow, it empowers the developers to make all the wrong decisions at the same time and create really ugly and unusable &#8220;dashboards&#8221;. Lately, I&#8217;ve seen my share of ugly bobip visualizations, like the one above. Which would seem ok but it commits the greatest&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/improve-sap-business-objects\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How to improve your Business Objects charts<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[197],"class_list":["post-1973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-projectmanagement-en","tag-visualization","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tlzy-vP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1939,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/drawing-the-world-by-hand\/","url_meta":{"origin":1973,"position":0},"title":"Drawing the world by hand","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"02\/04\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"At Lucerne's Gletschergarten,\u00a0among old maps, models and reliefs of the Swiss Alps, we'll find an expo from Ueli L\u00c3\u00a4uppi, a local cartographer that makes hand drawings and colorings of maps using a particular projection that highlights a thorough representation of the mountains. Moreover, L\u00c3\u00a4uppi has moved his studio to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Best of&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Best of","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/bestof\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/pluviosidad.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/pluviosidad.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/pluviosidad.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2139,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/interactive-visualizations-javascript\/","url_meta":{"origin":1973,"position":1},"title":"Creating interactive visualizations of large datasets using JavaScript","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"09\/04\/2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Crossfilter is a JavaScript library initially designed by Square to explore large multivariate datasets in a web browser. It basically allows you to create sorted indexes and feed them to a charting library like D3, and enable the user to filter by clicking and dragging, even when sifting through 200.000\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Project Mgmt.&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Project Mgmt.","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/projectmanagement-en\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1979,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/como-mejorar-tus-graficos-de-business-objects\/","url_meta":{"origin":1973,"position":2},"title":"C\u00c3\u00b3mo mejorar tus gr\u00c3\u00a1ficos de Business Objects","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"16\/08\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Business Objects, la plataforma de Inteligencia de Negocios de SAP, es\u00a0realmente p\u00c3\u00a9sima para la visualizaci\u00c3\u00b3n de datos.\u00a0De alguna manera, logra que los desarrolladores tomen todas las malas decisiones posibles al mismo tiempo y crea unos cuadros de mandos (si pueden llamarse as\u00c3\u00ad) realmente feos e inutilizables. Recientemente he visto varias\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Control de Proyectos&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Control de Proyectos","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/controldeproyectos\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"disaster, disguised as a ","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1884,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/how-to-create-better-charts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1973,"position":3},"title":"How to create better charts","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"10\/11\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"We're often tempted to include some kind of accessorizing effect in our charts without knowing that deep down we're making them impossible to interpret and thus ruining their purpose. A typical case is the 3D pie chart. Many people, including executives, have a certain likeness for 3D charts. Somehow they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Best of&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Best of","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/bestof\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Tufte-Chartjunk.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Tufte-Chartjunk.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Tufte-Chartjunk.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Tufte-Chartjunk.png?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2152,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/hello-p5js\/","url_meta":{"origin":1973,"position":4},"title":"Having fun coding with p5.js","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"01\/06\/2015","format":false,"excerpt":"p5.js is an effort to port the ideas and concepts of the Processing programming language to JavaScript. Even though there's already processing.js \u2013which transcodes Processing code into JavaScript\u2013, p5.js is built with extensibility in mind, trough plugins, and instead of writing Processing code to be transcoded, you write pure JavaScript.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Software Dev.&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Software Dev.","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/software-development-en-en\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"p5js","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/p5js.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/p5js.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/p5js.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/p5js.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1893,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/nterface-design\/","url_meta":{"origin":1973,"position":5},"title":"Stop punishing your users and learn some design fundamentals","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"14\/01\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how bad in-house enterprise applications look and behave: clashing color combinations, buttons that don't respond to clicks, messy forms, elements that look like links but aren't, inconsistent non-standard controls, no user feedback whatsoever, ugly reports, you know the drill. It's even\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Best of&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Best of","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/bestof\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"usability_testing","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/usability_testing.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}