User manual BUSINESS OBJECTS FINANCIAL CONSOLIDATION 7.5

[. . . ] SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Master Guide SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 7. 5 2009-08-20 Copyright © 2009 SAP® BusinessObjectsTM. SAP BusinessObjects and its logos, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports®, SAP BusinessObjects Rapid MartTM, SAP BusinessObjects Data InsightTM, SAP BusinessObjects Desktop IntelligenceTM, SAP BusinessObjects Rapid Marts®, SAP BusinessObjects Watchlist SecurityTM, SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence®, and Xcelsius® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects, an SAP company and/or affiliated companies in the United States and/or other countries. SAP® is a registered trademark of SAP AG in Germany and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. [. . . ] The software components are physically separated on the computers as follows: · · · · · A database server Three application servers Two HTTP servers A Terminal Services server The Windows, web, and Terminal Services computers Protocols Used in the SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Software Architecture The financial consolidation application uses the following protocols: · OLE DB 19 SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Overview · · · DCOM RDP ICA OLE DB is the standard for relaying data between an application and a data server such as a database engine. OLE DB is an upgraded object-oriented version of ODBC. OLE DB can be used to access all types of databases and can therefore support several RDBMS with the same product. It is one of the software modules belonging to MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components). DCOM is a network-distributed object protocol. It defines the remote procedure call that enables DLL objects to be run remotely over the network, regardless of their location. These objects can be located on the same computer as the client program or on another computer in the network. DCOM enables you to develop an object-oriented application to provide access to objects regardless of their exact location. In SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation, the application server can be on a standalone server, for example, as a local data-entry computer, or on a network server. This protocol enables you to manage user security and to define the different user accounts in the Windows domain. If the Windows domain is not used, you cannot manage user security using DCOM. You can, however, use the security module integrated in SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation. DCOM, which is a component of Windows, uses the IP, IPX and Net BEUI network protocols. Note: You can use only the IP network protocol with SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation. RDP is the Remote Desktop Protocol used by Windows Terminal Services to transfer the display to client workstations. ICA is the presentation services protocol used by Citrix MetaFrame. 20 SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Overview Hardware and software recommendations Support of platform virtualization tools Platform virtualization tools such as VmWare Server or VmWare ESX Server are supported. However, since this type of platform can significantly impact performance, you should carefully study the architecture that will be implemented and apply the following hardware recommendations for virtualized platforms. For example, if a dual-processor server with 2 GB of RAM is recommended, the virtual image must also have 2 processors and 2 GB of RAM. Furthermore, if several virtual images are hosted on the same physical server, performance may be considerably reduced. Note: A poorly estimated virtual architecture may significantly reduce the performance of BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation. 21 SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Overview Web client Category Minimum configuration Intel Pentium processor 400 MHz or a Pentium compatible processor 64 MB or more (depending on the operating system) 100 MB available disk space All of the following Operating System service packs available on January 31, 2009: Windows XP SP2 or SP3, 32 or 64-bit editions Windows Vista SP1, 32 or 64-bit editions Caution: Recommended configuration Processor Intel Pentium III 1 GHz or greater RAM 256 MB Disk space Operating system IA 64-bit (Itanium) versions are not supported 22 SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Overview Category Minimum configuration Internet Explorer 6 SP1 or SP2 Internet Explorer 7 Adobe Acrobat Reader 6 or higher Adobe Flash Player 10 or higher For the BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Excel Web Schedules module: Excel XP, Excel 2003 or Excel 2007 Caution: Recommended configuration Software components Internet Explorer 7 with the HTTP/1. 1 protocol If you are using Excel 2007 with EWS, Internet Explorer 7 is mandatory 23 SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Overview Category Minimum configuration Connection at 64 Kbps or greater dedicated to daily operations Connection at 32 Kbps for one-off operations By default, the HTTP flow is compressed and enables you to use a network connection of only 32 Kbps Recommended configuration Network connection An ADSL connection or equivalent can improve performance Note: Internet Explorer 6 SP1 cannot correctly manage the SSL V3 certificates. We therefore recommend that you use SSL V2 certificates or that you install Internet Explorer 6 SP2 on client computers. This does not affect other Internet Explorer versions. To find out more, see the Microsoft website: http ://support. microsoft. com/default. aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305217 Windows client Category Minimum configuration Intel Pentium processor 500 MHz or a Pentium compatible processor Recommended configuration Processor Intel Pentium 4 2 GHz or greater 24 SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Overview Category Minimum configuration 256 MB 3 GB available disk space for installing SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 1024 X 768 Recommended configuration 512 MB RAM Disk space Screen resolution 25 SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Overview Category Minimum configuration All the following Operating System service packs available on January 31, 2009: Windows XP SP2 or SP3, 32 or 64-bit editions Windows Vista SP1, 32 or 64-bit editions Recommended configuration Operating system Windows Server 2003 SP1, R2, SP2 Terminal Services, 32 or 64-bit editions Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services, 32 or 64-bit editions Caution: IA 64-bit (Itanium) versions are not supported 26 SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Overview Category Minimum configuration Internet Explorer 6 SP1 or SP2 Internet Explorer 7 Framework . NET 2. 0 Adobe Flash Player 10 Recommended configuration Software components If Excel Link is used: Excel 2002 (XP), Excel 2003, Excel 2007 SP1 Note: Internet Explorer 7 Excel Link Unicode is only supported in Excel 2007. Ethernet 10 MB/s Network connection WAN networks are not compatible with the Windows clients Note: In the case of complex configurations, the client computer's performance (RAM available and processor performance) can have a significant impact on the application's performance. 27 SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Overview Terminal Services client Category Minimum configuration Intel Pentium processor 150 MHz or a Pentium compatible processor 64 MB or more 30 MB available disk space for installing the Terminal Services client or Citrix MetaFrame ICA client Disk space or 100 MB available disk space for installing the Web browser, e. g. Internet Explorer Any client supported by Terminal Services or Citrix (such as Windows XP, Windows Vista) Connection modem 15 Kbps, WAN or LAN Recommended configuration Processor RAM Operating system Network connection 28 SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Overview Note: In addition to Windows 2003 Terminal Services, you can use complementary technology such as Citrix MetaFrame. [. . . ] 2 Pentium 4 Xeon 2. 8 GHz quad-processor servers, with 2 GB of RAM and 10 GB for RAID 1 for the HTTP servers. 1 Pentium 4 2. 8 GHz dual-processor server, with 2 GB of RAM and 18 GB for RAID 1 for the Windows Terminal Services server. · · · These 18 servers are linked by a network connection of 100 Mbps or greater. 59 Business Scenarios for SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Proposed Setup Case Study 4 · · 10 users entering data via the Web. Project team of 5 members at the Corporate HQ. Technical Requirements Given the number of users and collection sites, for this scenario, the size of the database has been set to approximately 10 GB. There will be a maximum of 5 users connected to the central database via Windows clients and 10 users via web clients. [. . . ]