opentext information hub (ihub) 3.1 and 3.1...opentext information hub (ihub) 3.1.1 includes...

OpenText Information Hub (iHub) 3.1.1 meets the growing demand for analytics-powered applications that deliver data and empower employees and customers to take action. It includes a REST API and template-based embedding of custom visualizations that enable easier, faster integration of analytics in web and mobile applications without extensive coding. Its improved dashboard performance and flexible, powerful data security keep pace with current enterprise requirements and user expectations. These and other improvements, summarized in this Technical Summary of New Features, demonstrate how OpenText™ Analytics and Reporting helps to enable the digital world.

OpenText™ Information Hub (iHub) 3.1 and 3.1.1

Table of Contents

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

iHub Improvements in 3.1.1 Release . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Improved Dashboard Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Data Security Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Additional Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Features New to iHub 3.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

REST API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Custom Visualizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Enhanced Microsoft® PowerPoint® Emitter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Tree View Selector in Dashboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Supported Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

E N T E R P R I S E I N F O R M A T I O N M A N A G E M E N T 3

OPENTEXT™ INFORMATION HUB 3.1 AND 3.1.1

T E C H N I C A L S U M M A R Y O F N E W F E A T U R E S

Introduction

OpenText™ Information Hub (iHub) 3.1.1 includes enhancements that:

• Improve dashboard performance, thanks to changes in system resource management that allow more dashboards, and more complex dashboards, to operate superbly for larger numbers of users.

• Build upon iHub’s industry-leading data security with powerful, flexible Data Security Rules that give an organization’s security experts more and better tools to safeguard valuable data.

The features introduced in iHub 3.1 enable development teams to:

• Simplify the process of creating and deploying data driven apps by easily embedding reports, data visualizations, and other analytics content in mobile and web applications using a REST API. This enables businesses to deliver rich charts, dashboards and infographics to their mobile and desktop users.

• Incorporate data visualizations, charts and graphs from third-party libraries in their output. This Custom Visualizations function boosts productivity by reducing manual coding from days to hours.

This document describes these and other new capabilities in more detail.

iHub Improvements in 3.1.1 ReleaseImproved Dashboard Performance

Dashboards that combine interactive charts, crosstabs, formatted text and other content are readily available with iHub. Dashboards are popular as business users demand that interactive information be delivered to them quickly, efficiently, and visually. Leading technology analysts confirm that dashboards are among the most popular tools for businesses users who consume information from Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics systems.1

FIGURE 1

Multi-tab dashboards containing charts and interactive data visualizations are powered by iHub

1 See the Dresner Advisory Services Embedded Business Intelligence Market Study, p. 18 (http://www.actuate.com/info/dresnerwsta/); The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Business Intelligence Platforms, Q1 2015, p. 9 (http://www.actuate.com/info/web-q215-forrester-wave-enterprise-bi-platforms/); and Next Generation Analytics: Who, What, Where, and How from TDWI (http://tdwi.org/research/2015/02/next-generation-analytics-and-platforms-infographic.aspx)




To support the ongoing and growing importance of dashboards to business users, iHub 3.1.1 incorporates several improvements in dashboard system resource management to increase user scalability, memory efficiency, and overall dashboard generation speed. Improvements have been made in two areas:

• iHub 3.1.1 supports a larger number of concurrent sessions, meaning more gadgets can be executed in parallel on a single dashboard and more users can run dashboards simultaneously without impacting performance. Gadgets are the foundation of iHub Dashboards: A gadget is a self-contained data viewer that displays one interactive report, table, crosstab, chart, or other element. A single dashboard can consist of multiple components – including gadgets and data selectors – that communicate and interact with each other to deliver a unified view of aggregated data.

• Dashboard process handling in iHub supports multiple threads per process, resulting in improved dashboard performance. Dashboards now start up faster, receive data faster, and are more responsive to user input and interaction. In previous releases, maintaining performance levels when adding a large number of users required additional system resources. With iHub 3.1.1, overall system response time is less impacted by additional users, so performance is more predictable and more consistent from user to user. Software stability is also improved.

Improvements in these areas increase dashboard interactivity and enhance user experi-ence. Furthermore, dashboard performance and response time improvements extend to customer deployments in which multiple users operate their own unique dashboards and each of those dashboards includes multiple gadgets. Although every system configuration is unique and individual results will vary, laboratory testing of iHub 3.1.1 Dashboards measured a performance improvement of 5x or greater over earlier versions of iHub.

Data Security Rules

iHub 3.1.1 enhances the multi-layered, industry-leading data security of iHub with new Data Security Rules. Data Security Rules can be assigned to categories, columns, or a combination of the two in data models, and apply both to data sources that access live data, and to data stores that access cached data.

Data Security Rules are reusable, declarative, efficient, and flexible. These examples demonstrate these strengths:

• Data Security Rules are confined in data design files. A data file generated from a data design file contains the data security rules of the data design file at the time the data file is generated.

• A user must meet all of the requirements of every Data Security Rule applied to the data in order to access the data. If a Data Security Rule combines security IDs and data values, the user must meet both requirements. It is possible to create and assign a Data Security Rule that uses multiple security IDs.

• A Data Security Rule can use columns from any category or data set in the model, and be assigned to any category in the model. If a rule assigned to a category uses columns from a different category or data set, the joins between the linked data sets are used to enforce the rule.

• Data Security Rules can be reassigned and applied to another category or categories, and one category can use multiple rules. Because rules are tied to the data design, they can only be reused within a single project.




Data Security Rule Manager

Data Security Rules are created, edited, and deleted using the new Data Security Rule Manager. The Expression builder in iHub makes rule creation flexible, because IT teams don’t have to write security statements in code; instead they use the builder to create a declarative expression of the code they need. Either JavaScript or EasyScript can be used to write data security rules expressions, but only expressions written in JavaScript can check security IDs. Changes made to one Data Security Rule apply wherever that rule is assigned, so IT teams don’t need to make changes multiple times or in multiple locations.

The Data Security Rule Manager offers two views of rule assignments: a list of rules assigned to each category, and list of categories assigned to each rule. Data Security Rules supersede existing access control lists.

FIGURE 2

The Data Security Rule Expression Builder is used to create, edit and assign Data Security Rules.

FIGURE 3

Data Security Rule assignments can be viewed by Rules (left) or by Categories (right).




Additional Improvements

In addition to Dashboard and security improvements, iHub 3.1.1 includes many other enhancements, including:

• Sample Designs and Application Examples: The iHub 3.1.1installation package includes dozens of samples and examples to inspire developers and illustrate best practices for working with the product. These include four complete sample applications, a sample dashboard, and a large collection of sample reports that showcase a variety of iHub capabilities.

• New Trial Edition: A trial edition of iHub is now available. This full-featured product enables IT leaders and their teams to experiment with iHub for 45 days at no cost or obligation.

• Comparison Calculations: Interactive Crosstabs in iHub now enable users to compare values in rows or columns and display the difference. Computed values in rows can also be compared. Comparisons can be created, modified, or removed with a few clicks.

• Painless upgrades: Upgrading to iHub 3.1.1 is now handled through an intuitive GUI installer. Upon installing iHub 3.1.1, the user is asked whether an existing installation is being upgraded or a new installation is being created. If the installation is an upgrade, all content, configurations and settings are preserved. The improved installer, which can upgrade from iHub 3.0 and 3.1, is available for Windows platforms only.

• Keystore Password Utility: A utility in iHub 3.1.1 now enables system administrators to update the keystore password used by iHub. This is useful when an administrator wants to use a new keystore with a different password, or wants to update the password in the existing keystore.

• Sample Integration Code: Because integration is a key strength of iHub 3.1.1, the product now includes links to sample code demonstrating how to use the iHub integration framework. For developer productivity, these links are built directly into the product rather than being embedded in documentation.

FIGURE 4

Comparisons in Interactive Crosstabs are built using an intuitive dialog box.




Features New to iHub 3.1 REST API

API implementations and usage have grown tremendously over the last decade, partly because of enhancements to integration standards, such as REST (Representational State Transfer). REST APIs are lightweight and make it very easy to embed functionality into mobile and web applications, and the iHub REST API is no exception. It enables simple Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations using JSON responses over HTTP. The REST API standard separates the data from the visualization, resulting in better code modularization and agility and improved application response due to efficient network traffic.

Working with the iHub REST API

The REST API provides access to iHub encyclopedia data, data in reports and data models, and report generation and management services. You can use the REST API to deliver analytic content and data from iHub to any mobile or web application. Using the REST API, you can:

• Retrieve data from an iHub document or iHub Data Object for integration into an application

• Integrate data visualizations into applications, in conjunction with the existing iHub JavaScript API (JSAPI)

• Generate new visualization documents based on user interaction with your application

• Convert visualizations into AdobeTM PDF or MicrosoftTM Excel for distribution

• Schedule the generation of new visualizations for later retrieval

• Upload files to and download files from iHub

• Retrieve iHub Encyclopedia contents

Additionally, an administrator using REST API can:

• Create and modify users and user groups

• Control access to files and data by assigning user and group privileges

iHub comes with several sample applications that demonstrate best practices for using the REST API.

REST API High-Level Architecture

The REST API is a resource extension that gets installed with iHub. It uses universal resource identifiers to convey user requests to the iHub system. The REST API service is built into and deployed as part of iHub, and can also be deployed as a dedicated service for applications requiring high scalability.

FIGURE 5

REST API Tiered Architecture




API Sandbox and Documentation

The iHub REST API documentation is delivered in an interactive format with a test sandbox and documentation technology from Swagger. This provides a complete framework for describing, producing, consuming, and visualizing REST web services. Using the docu-mentation, developers can understand and experiment with the API without having to set up and install an iHub server.

Using the sandbox UI, users can enter the parameters and options for the API call of interest, and the sandbox returns the syntax of the REST API call (in the form of a URL), as well as the response body in the form of a JSON object. Figures 6 and 7 show the process for a REST call to authenticate a user. The username (demo) and password (Demo1234) can be entered as parameters and the response type can be chosen, then the sandbox returns a response to the authentication request.

FIGURE 6

Example of a REST API sandbox request for authenticating a user

FIGURE 7

Example of a REST API sandbox response for authenticating a user. The sandbox authenticates the user and returns an authentication token for use within the session.




Custom Visualizations

Effective data visualizations help users find valuable insights in their data. iHub has many built-in data visualizations, including charts, maps and gadgets. The new Custom Visualiza-tion function in iHub 3.1 takes the product’s data visualization capabilities a step farther by allowing developers to integrate third-party visualizations from external JavaScript libraries – including heat maps, treemaps, and word clouds – into an application with minimal coding.

This is accomplished by making iHub Data Objects available for consumption by third-party visualizations, and by providing iHub capabilities (like Print and Export) for these visualizations. Figure 8 shows two examples of visualizations from external libraries.

FIGURE 8

Two of the many Custom Visualizations available in iHub: Zoomable Circle Packing from D3.js and Heat Map from HighCharts.

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FIGURE 9

The Custom Visualization Editor in OpenText Analytics Designer is accessed via the Report Items selection on the Palette. A pop-up displays a list of included sample templates.

How Custom Visualizations are Built

OpenText™ Analytics Designer (formerly called BIRT Designer Professional), the free companion designer for iHub, offers a new Report Items selection on the Palette called “Custom Visualization.” The graphical builder for Custom Visualization uses the same interface as other Report items to select, group, sort and filter data before binding it to the properties of the custom visualization. The developer can build and test the external visualization using the built-in IDE or with JSFiddle, a popular online JavaScript IDE.

The Custom Visualization feature provides an extensive list of sample templates for popular visualizations such as Google Maps™, heat map, and word cloud from various JavaScript libraries into an application. Rich and visually appealing visualizations can be easily added from JavaScript visualization libraries, including D3.js, Google Maps, and Highcharts using these sample templates.

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Enhanced Microsoft® PowerPoint® Emitter

Business presentations that include visualizations to support data analysis are easier to understand. The powerful emitters in iHub allow users to export reports as native, editable Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. This functionality improves users’ produc-tivity and empowers them to jumpstart presentations with content and layouts created in iHub. PowerPoint users can add new slides that have the same look and feel as a current presentation, or add data visualizations and additional information to existing slides. Tables, text, page layouts and other report items are exported from iHub as native PowerPoint components for ease of editing.

Tree View Selector in Dashboards

A Tree View Data Selector gadget allows hierarchical presentation of information like geographical data (e.g. Country, State, and City), time measurements (e.g. Year, Month, and Date), and other such information. This selector makes efficient use of dashboard screen space, leaving maximum room for content. The Tree View Data Selector allows the user to expand or collapse items to reveal or hide sub-items. The user is able to make multiple selections at various levels and clear them with one click. Once the user is done selecting, the selections can filter the data and refresh all the linked visualizations on the dashboard.

Supported ProductsiHub includes support for the latest browsers, operating systems and databases. See the Supported Products document for more information.

http://developer.actuate.com/resources/supported-products/ihub/birt-ihub3-1-1/

FIGURE 10

Dashboard Tree View Data Selector gadget for selecting locations

http://developer.actuate.com/resources/supported-products/ihub/birt-ihub3-1-1/

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