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I've looked at a few BI (well SAP, Business Objects, and Pentaho) implementations over the years, and one of the things that I have always found frustrating/off putting is what I consider the huge startup costs for such implementations. This has usually been characterised by expensive infrastructure implementations in both hardware and software coupled with the difficulty that most businesses have in visualising what data they need to have access to, and how it should be most effectively presented.
I've found this dilemma more accute in the Moodle world, as the so many of the customers involved are on a very tight to non-existent budget, yet their requirement to analyse Learning Managment System performance data is still there.
A year ago, I concluded that Pentaho was my first choice, for the twin reasons that it's OpenSource (specifically no license fees), and that it has sufficiently good data modelling tools to enable a suite of reports customised to Moodle to be delivered. While this reduces the cost of delivering a flexible reporting solution for Moodle, it still falls short on a couple of points:
(1) Most people who implement Moodle are not Data Warehousing, or Modelling experts so they are unlikely to be able to sufficiently accurately determine what their requirements are in advance (actually a common business problem, not unique to the Moodle community).
(2) Pentaho, while reasonably straight forward to install, is still another complex piece of software to host - a major barrier to entry for most Moodle implementations.
What I started looking for then, was a set of visualisation tools that could be integrated with Moodles PHP environment - atleast users would then be able to do more complex reporting and analysis. What I found exceeded my expectations, in the form of a Labs project from Google called Fusion Tables.
Fusion Tables is shaping up to be Business Intelligence reporting with the twist of collaborative, and Geo encoding capabilities. The basic mode is that CSV files of data can be uploaded into a flexible storage engine, datasets can be joined and merged, automatically Geo encoded, and then consumed through a good set of graphical presentation tools. Datasets can be shared and collaboratively edited.
As Luck would have it that this service is firstly free, and secondly exposed via an SQL-like API integrated with the standard Google OAuth mechanism. This makes it attractive as a generic data analysis and reporting tool for a low cost operating environment like Moodle and the education sector.
To test out the theory of all this, I've implemented 3 things:
* OAuth integration for Moodle including a site, and secret registry
* A generic Fusion Tables data proxy for Moodle
* A Gradebook export module that enables the export of the standard gradebook data to Fusion Tables
For the curious, this can be found at Gitorious - moodle2-oauth.
]]>Also, with help from Joachim, I've added a static function sapnwrfc_removefunction(<sysid>, <function name>) to the PHP connector that allows the removing of function definitions from the local cache. this is most useful when developing RFC applications in PHP, as you can modify your RFC definition without having to restart the web server everytime. This is available from version 0.09 here.
]]>For Moodle integration, Erlend Strømsvik of Ny Media AS, developed an authentication plugin, which I've made a number of changes to around configuration options, and Moodle session integration. This has now been documented and added to Moodle Contrib to give it better visibility to the Moodle community at large. Documentation is here and the contrib entry is here.
]]>Additionally, I've had some time to put together a proper cookbook style set of examples in the sapnwrfc-cookbook. These examples, while specifically for Perl, are almost identical for sapnwrfc for Python, Ruby, and PHP too.
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It's not easy getting it up and running (need to setup datasources, build Modrian schemas, design MDX queries, and then implement the xaction), but once you are there, there is so much potential. The ability to tune the queries interactively using the Pivot reporting engine, and the drill down features are excellent.
]]>Having just finished the Order to Cash cycle, and then followed it through on the Financial reporting. and cost account side, I'm finding that there is nothing missing that I would have expected to find from SAP - I'm excited, as I feel that OpenSource may have finally reached prime time in the ERP world.
Next up will be Compiere, which will have to go a long way to win me over I think.
Note: on reflection, I should add that this is in the context of SMB.
]]>So - what did I learn?
I spoke to the man who is developing the fastest car in the world
I learnt about solar powering my house
Where the Geek Community thinks we are headed in the current climate
Network Theory
Perl 5.10, and Perl 6
Section 92A
Software in Education
OpenSource advocacy, and how to go main stream
telecommuting
Programming the G1
Irish folk music
Werewolf
and many more things that escape me right now.
Many thanks to the organisers (Nat, Jenine, and Russell), and also to all the other people who attended and helped out, to make it a truly excellent event.
Download from: http://www.piersharding.com/download/php/sapnwrfc/
]]>This enables SAP authenticated logins, and the use of SAPs SSO via Logon Tickets.
The module is available at: http://www.piersharding.com/download/php/.
]]>Moodle is PHP based, so when it came to the question of integrating this with SAP, we had a stumbling block. The existing connector is a very good one, but it doesn't give full UNICODE support, and it doens't take advantage of the NetWeaver RFC SDK such as complex structures, and strings.
To this end I've written sapnwrfc for PHP.
You can download sapnwrfc from here.
Follow the INSTALL instructions, and here is a bit of a taster:
<?php
dl("sapnwrfc.so");
echo "sapnwrfc version: ".sapnwrfc_version()."\n";
echo "nw rfc sdk version: ".sapnwrfc_rfcversion()."\n";
$config = array('ashost' => 'ubuntu.local.net',
'sysnr' => "01",
'client' => "001",
'user' => 'developer',
'passwd' => 'developer',
'lang' => 'EN',
'trace' => '1' );
// we must have a valid connection
try {
$conn = new sapnwrfc($config);
$fds = $conn->function_lookup("STFC_DEEP_STRUCTURE");
$fdt = $conn->function_lookup("STFC_DEEP_TABLE");
$parms = array('IMPORTSTRUCT' => array('I' => 123, 'C' => 'AbCdEf', 'STR' => 'The quick brown fox ...'));
$results = $fds->invoke($parms);
var_dump($results);
$parms = array('IMPORT_TAB' => array(array('I' => 123, 'C' => 'AbCdEf', 'STR' => 'The quick brown fox ...')));
$results = $fdt->invoke($parms);
var_dump($results);
$conn->close();
}
catch (Exception $e) {
echo "Exception message: ".$e->getMessage();
throw new Exception('Assertion failed.');
}
sapnwrfc is a work in progress, so testing and feedback is welcome.
A discussion has been started in the forums here.
]]>The new SAP NetWeaver RFCSDK is now available for official download - this opens the way for supported next generation Open Source Connectors such as sapnwrfc for Perl, and sapnwrfc for Ruby.
You need to go to the SAP service Portal for Software downloads, and follow the path of: Download -> Support Packages and Patches -> Entry by Application Group -> Additional Components -> SAP NW RFC SDK -> SAP NW RFC SDK 7.10 -> SAP NW RFC SDK 7.10 .
There is an accompanying OSS note: 1025361.
Clearly - this is SAPs way forward in the RFC area of closely bound system integration, so all existing connectors (and 3rd party products) will eventually have to migrate to it.
This is also true of code that is based on the existing connectors for Perl and Ruby. For Perl - there will be a migration from SAP::Rfc -> sapnwrfc, and likewise for Ruby moving from saprfc -> sapnwrfc (The client side implementation for the new sapnwrfc connector for Python is nearly finished, with the same implications).
My thanks and congratulations go out to the SAP NW RFC Team (NW AS ABAP Connectivity) - through their efforts, and willingness to engage the community, they have made it possible for us frustrated hackers to have a little more fun :-)
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