1. What is the use of BusinessObjects Data Services?

BusinessObjects Data Services provides a graphical interface that allows you to easily create jobs that extract data from heterogeneous sources, transform that data to meet the business requirements of your organization, and load the data into a single location.

2. Define the terms Job, Workflow, and Dataflow

A job is the smallest unit of work that you can schedule independently for execution.
A work flow defines the decision-making process for executing data flows.
Data flows extract, transform, and load data. Everything having to do with data, including reading sources, transforming data, and loading targets, occurs inside a data flow.

3. What is a transform?

A transform enables you to control how datasets change in a data flow.

4. What is a real time Job?

Real-time jobs “extract” data from the body of the real-time message received and from any secondary sources used in the job.

5. What are the steps included in Data integration process?

Stage data in an operational datastore, data warehouse, or data mart.
Update staged data in batch or real-time modes.
Create a single environment for developing, testing, and deploying the entire data integration platform.
Manage a single metadata repository to capture the relationships between different extraction and access methods and provide integrated lineage and impact analysis.

6. What are Memory Datastores?

Data Services also allows you to create a database datastore using Memory as the Database type. Memory Datastores are designed to enhance the processing performance of data flows executing in real-time jobs.

7. Define Data Services components.

Data Services includes the following standard components:

Designer
Repository
Job Server
Engines
Access Server
Adapters
Real-time Services
Address Server
Cleansing Packages, Dictionaries, and Directories
Management Console [sociallocker]

8. When would you use a global variable instead of a local variable?

When the variable will need to be used multiple times within a job.
When you want to reduce the development time required for passing values between job components.
When you need to create a dependency between job level global variable name and job components.

9. What does a lookup function do? How do the different variations of the lookup function differ?

All lookup functions return one row for each row in the source. They differ in how they choose which of several matching rows to return.

10. What is online and offline mode?

If you want a universe to be accessible in offline mode, you must first ensure that the universe has been opened at least once in online mode and that it has been saved with the Save for All Users check box selected in the Save Universe As box.

To make Offline mode available:

Mode Description

Online Default mode of operation for Designer when you are working in an environment with a repository.

Offline Mode of operation for Designer when you are not connected to a repository.

• Only available if you have previously connected in online mode.

• In offline mode you can open universes that are stored on your local computer only if those universes have been opened previously in online mode.

11. What are Cleansing Packages?

These are packages that enhance the ability of Data Cleanse to accurately process various forms of global data by including language-specific reference data and parsing rules.

12. How to create hierarchies in BO?

A hierarchy, which the Designer sets up when creating the universe, consists of dimension objects ranked from “less detailed” to “more detailed”. The objects that belong to hierarchies are the ones you can use to define the scope of analysis.

13. What is Data Cleanse?

The Data Cleanse transform identifies and isolates specific parts of mixed data, and standardizes your data based on information stored in the parsing dictionary, business rules defined in the rule file, and expressions defined in the pattern file.

READ ON SAP ERP INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

14. What is the difference between Dictionary and Directory?

Directories provide information on addresses from postal authorities. Dictionary files are used to identify, parse, and standardize data such as names, titles, and firm data.

15. What are file formats?

A file format is a set of properties describing the structure of a flat-file (ASCII). File formats describe the metadata structure. File format objects can describe files in:

Delimited format — Characters such as commas or tabs separate each field.
Fixed width format — The column width is specified by the user.
SAP ERP and R/3 format.

16. Give some examples of how data can be enhanced through the data cleanse transform, and describe the benefit of those enhancements.

Enhancement Benefit
Determine gender distributions and target
Gender Codes marketing campaigns
Provide fields for improving matching
Match Standards results

17. What are the types of connections we use when connecting to the database?

There are three types of connections namely: – Secured, Shared, and Personal.

A secured connection is used to centralize and control access to sensitive or critical data. It is the safest type of connection for protecting access to data.

A shared connection is used to access common resources such as universes or documents. Several users can thus use it.

A personal connection is specific to one user and can be used only from the computer on which it was created.

18. What is repository? List the types of repositories.

The DataServices repository is a set of tables that holds user-created and predefined system objects, source and target metadata, and transformation rules. There are 3 types of repositories.