SAP Lumira Designer can be used and started in the following modes:
- SAP Lumira Documents mode: This is the default mode that supports the creation of Lumira documents, which may contain any number of analysis applications, composites, MIME objects and/or offline datasets created with Lumira Discovery. This mode can handle both local documents and documents stored on the BI platform.
- SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform (Legacy): This mode supports the creation of analysis applications in the legacy format of Design Studio 1.6, which are stored on the BI platform. You can also open, edit and save analysis applications created with Design Studio 1.6 on the BI platform in this mode.
- Local Mode (Legacy): This mode supports the creation of analysis applications in the legacy format of Design Studio 1.6, which are stored on your local machine. You can also open, edit and save analysis applications created with Design Studio 1.6 on your local machine in this mode.
Entities
The design tool of SAP Lumira Designer enables application designers to create and edit applications. These applications are saved in an XML file format. Applications generally consist of user interface components (such as charts, crosstabs, buttons) and data source aliases.
Data Source and Data Source Alias
A data source alias represents an instance of a data source (for example, a BW query, or a SAP HANA data source) at runtime of the application. A single application can contain multiple instances of one data source. Every instance, for example, can apply its own filters on the same data source and thus represents its own subset of data. You can see the list of components and data source aliases used in an application in the outline view of the design tool.
Data Binding
To visualize data from a data source alias in a crosstab or chart, define a data binding in the design tool for these components. The data binding is simply a reference to the data source alias which provides the data. When the data of a data source alias changes (for example, a filter is applied at runtime), the system automatically updates all components that have a data binding to that data source alias. You can also see the data binding relationships between components and data source aliases in the outline view
User Interaction
Typically you create applications that not only visualize data but which also provide possibilities for the application user to interact with the data; for example, changing filters, selecting drill-down dimensions or branching into a details view for a selected set of aggregated data. To enable user interaction with the data, add the relevant UI components to the application. For example, you could provide a row of buttons above a crosstab and chart component to filter the visualized data by different criteria.
Eventing and Script API
UI components provide a set of specific events that the application user can execute on the component. For example, every button provides an on-click event. You can see a list of all available events of the component in the properties view of the design tool. Here, you can open the script editor and specify which actions should take place when the application user triggers the event. The script language is a subset of JavaScript and allows a sequence of script API method calls to be defined. The script API provides access at runtime to the application itself as well as to its components and data source aliases. Therefore, the application designer has flexible control of the application behavior by using event scripts.
Setting Properties in Design time and Run Time
Besides the events, components also offer a variety of other properties in the properties view of the design tool. Some properties are common for all or almost all components; the component name identifies the component within the application, for example, and the layout properties define the size and position of the component within the application. Other properties are specific and depend on the component type. In all cases, the property values displayed in the properties view define the initial state of the components at application startup time. At application runtime, you can enable modification of properties by executing event scripts, as almost all component properties are accessible through the script API.
Rendering Mode for Components
The “Main” part of the SAPUI5 library (also refered to as m-mode in the design tool) is the default rendering mode for analysis applications created with SAP Lumira Designer 2.0. The Main (m) part was developed having the mobile use case in focus; those components are therefore specialized for mobile devices. However, the usage of the SAP UI5 m library is not restricted to mobile scenarios; it also supports desktop applications. In order to adjust the visualization accordingly, there are two form factors for the m mode: the compact for the desktop and the cozy form factor with more spacing and padding for mobile use cases.