BI4.1: Creating a universe on top of a Web Service

[Former Member]

New with BI 4.1 is the possibility of creating a universe on top of a Web Service. In this blog post I would like to show you how to create your first universe based on a Web Service. For this example I am using a Web Service that takes as Input two currencies and delivers as output the actual conversion rate.

In order to create a universe with all its components, you can take advantage of the new "Universal Wizard" that was introduced in BI 4.1:

You can re-use one of your existing projects or create a new one, I choose to create a new project:

After entering a name for the local project ( e.g. "_WebService") hit next.

The wizard will start guiding you now with the creation of a connection. In order to create a connection to a Web Service, you need to select Relational data source:

Enter now the name of the connection (e.g. "WebService1_Connection")

You are asked now to select a driver, select here the Web Service Connector in the category Generic:

In the following screen you enter Web Service Description (WSDL) in the Web Service URL box:

Now you can test the connection and hit Finish.

The Universal Wizard proceeds now seamlessly into the process of creating a Data Foundation. Enter a name (e.g. WebService1_DataFoundation) for the Data Foundation and click Next:

Select the table from the Web Service and hit Next:

The Universal Wizard proceeds at this point seamlessly into the process of creating a Business Layer (im starting to really like this wizard!). Enter a name (e.g. WebService1_BusinessLayer) and hit Finish:

Because this Web Service takes two inputs, the Edit Input Columns dialog appears. For now I am not binding the input columns to a parameter, simply because we do not have any parameters at this point in time. Go ahead and hit OK:

By now, the Universal Creation Wizard has finished its task by creating all basic objects that a universe needs. In our case, the web service has two mandatory inputs, so we need to take care about those in order to get some data back from the web service. 

I have a list of world currencies in a CSV file, so I am creating two parameters in the Data Foundation that will get their List Of Values from the CSV file:

Go to the data foundation and right-click on the table, hit Edit Input Columns:

And map the newly created parameters in the Data Foundation with the Web Service input parameters:

After mapping the parameters you are good to go!

Now lets create a test query in the business layer and enter two currencies:

the conversion rate is delivered by the Web Service (nice!): 

You could use this Information in your BI reports and e.g. offer your users the possibility of changing the currency dynamically. Now image the amount of Web Services available in the Internet and how you can enrich your BI Reports.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this blog.