What’s New? Desktop Intelligence!

I was reading the What’s New in SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.1 document last night and stumbled across this great new feature on page 22.

Desktop Intelligence is an integrated query, reporting, and analysis solution for business professionals that allows you to to access the data in your corporate databases directly from your desktop and present and analyze this information in a Desktop Intelligence document.

Desktop Intelligence makes it easy to access this data, because you work in familiar business terms and non technical database terms like SQL. Once you have used Desktop Intelligence to access data, you can present information in reports as tables, or as sophisticated dynamic documents with drillable charts.

Desktop Intelligence lets you access data from a wide range of sources. You can access data from a number of sources:

• Universes
• Personal data files
• Stored procedures
• Freehand SQL server
• XML data provider
• VBA data provider

Now remember kids, Desktop Intelligence is not coming back.

Ever.

We mean it.

Oh, look! Here is the Desktop Intelligence Report Compatibility Pack (see related article, Desktop Intelligence, Back for a Limited Time)! Quelle surprise!

Seriously, there is no Desktop Intelligence 4.1. What the Report Compatibility Pack provides is the ability to use Desktop Intelligence XI 3.1 in a limited way with BI 4.1 to ease migration to the new platform. Only Desktop Intelligence Service Pack 6 Fix Pack 6.1 or higher will interact with BI 4.1.

While the product description above was undoubtedly lifted from an old Desktop Intelligence manual, seeing it in the “What’s New” guide made me laugh. I hope it made you laugh, too.

Resources

• SAP BI 4.1, Compatibility Pack for Deski Likely Ready in Fall, by Courtney Bjorlin/ASUG News (updated June 28, 2012)

Will your organization adopt the Desktop Intelligence Report Compatibility Pack? Finally convert its remaining Desktop Intelligence documents to Web Intelligence using the Report Conversion Tool 4.1? Was Desktop Intelligence retired long ago? Or never adopted in the first place?