business objects

(1) A broad category of business processes that are modeled as objects. A business object can be as large as an entire order processing system or a small process within an information system. See object-oriented programming.

(2) (Business Objects) A San Jose-based company acquired by SAP in 2007 for its leadership in business intelligence and decision support tools. Business Objects was founded in France in 1990 by Bernard Liautaud and Denis Payre and was the first to integrate query, reporting and OLAP into one product that shields users from the complexities of making a query. In this context, the word "objects" does not refer to object-oriented programming as in definition #1 above, but to "business items." See SAP.

BusinessObjects (One Word)
Business Objects' products were always branded as one word and fall under the SAP BusinessObjects umbrella. Its flagship software is a suite of query, reporting and analysis tools that runs under Windows and Unix. It provides access to a wide variety of databases, including Oracle, INFORMIX and DB2. As data are extracted from the database, they are stored as multidimensional OLAP cubes that can be easily sliced and diced into different views. See OLAP.

The Semantic Layer
BusinessObjects uses a patented semantic layer that shields users from the complexities of table names and relationships. Once the semantic layer has been defined, users work with familiar "business objects" such as product, customer and revenue.

A BusinessObjects Query

To perform a query, users drag and drop the object icons into the "Results" and "Conditions" windows. (Image courtesy of SAP.)

Slicing and Dicing

The Slice and Dice Panel can rearrange the view. After dragging and dropping different icons, BusinessObjects displays the new perspective. "Section" shows the sequence and report titles, and "Block Structure" shows the data wanted in the report. (Image courtesy of SAP.)