Xcelsius vs Dashboard Manager

SAP BI BusinessObjects provides two separate tools for interactive visualizations and dashboarding: XCelsius and Dashboard manager. This article indicates the major differences between them.

SAP BI Crystal Xcelsius (SAP Dashboard Design and SAP Presentation Design) is an innovative technology for creating highly visual and interactive analytics in the form of flash files (in the .SWF format). This content can be easily embedded into the web, presentations, spreadsheets and text documents. While these interactive analytics are often more impressive visually, they are similar in concept to those offered in Dashboard Manager.

Dashboard Manager provides more than a visual presentation of the data. It provides a layout component to display other Business Intelligence content such as Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence analytics, and more. Additionally, Dashboard Manager has a rules engine for alerting, packaged security and administration capabilities, collaboration, scheduling, etc.

Main differences between Dashboard Manager and Xcelsius

Crystal Xcelsius Dashboard Manager
  • Business user interface - tight integration with Excel
  • Advanced visual components
  • Export to .ppt, PDF, e-mail
  • Visual what-if analysis
  • Ease of Excel at design-time
  • Pre-Built dashboards templates and skins
  • XML/Web-services connectivity
  • What-If
  • Bi-Directional data flow (survey)
  • Alerts apply to all components
  • Parameterized compound analytics
  • Viewers - players and animation
  • Off line analysis
  • Layout any content within dashboard
  • Drill with context to detailed data
  • Integration query and analysis
  • Powerful OLAP analysis
  • Rules engine (alerting)
  • Metrics engine (time-series analysis)
  • Broad package connectivity
  • Managed security, scheduling, collaboration
  • 100% web-based dashboard designer
  • Analytic engines (add-ons) (predictive, sets, process)
  • Platform support (WIN, UNIX, Linux)
  • Enterprise Scalability