Lifecycle Management

The LCM console is a web-based tool (within CMC) that allows the management of different versions of BI resources, dependencies, and a mechanism to roll back to a previous state. The LCM console is a standard functionality with the standard installation of SAP BusinessObjects BI. It helps administrators and developers to package their developments in transportable groups of objects and detects the dependencies of objects that need to be transported to other objects, which aren't manually added to the transport. The console comes as both a web interface and as a command-line tool and comes with a wide range of functionality to support the tasks related to software management. It establishes procedures for governing the entire life cycle of an object within the scope of the BI platform. If an object needs other objects to work correctly in the target environment, LCM allows it to analyze which other objects are necessary to make the object work in the destination. This functionality offers a considerable improvement in both speed and quality, compared to a manual object collection process. Several objects are gathered in a definition of a promotion job, which includes not only what is transported, but also when and where the objects are transported.

To manage complex implementations of SAP BusinessObjects BI, it is necessary to implement a solution for the LCM of the objects created and managed in SAP BusinessObjects BI. There are three phases in LCM—development, testing, and production. Examples of LCM objects are SAP Crystal Reports documents, folders, connections, and Universe.