Closing the Gap between JDE World and E1 Reporting

By John Lambrianakos, VP, Marketing and Product Development, Cetova Corp

Introduction
Hello again, everybody. We all know that it’s tough saying goodbye to old friends, especially the super loyal friends – the ones
that never let you down, no matter what the circumstances. Well, that’s precisely how I, and many other users, feel about JD
Edwards (JDE) World software … and for good reason. Read what Oracle writes about JDE World vis-à-vis reliability and cost:

Reliability
With a greater than 99 percent software quality and 99.7 percent system availability, JD Edwards World applications
set the industry standard for software reliability.

Total Cost of Ownership

No dedicated IT staff is required. JD Edwards World applications function as a synchronized whole and are tightly
integrated and pre-bundled on a single database, reducing implementation cost and complexity.

The value set forth by JDE World is well demonstrated in how it places the non-technical end-user in an excellent, though
admittedly imperfect, position to access enterprise data for reporting and analysis. Modern (post-1996) IT strategy ushered in
the client-server version of JDE, originally known as OneWorld B7.3, then OneWorld Xe, and now, EnterpriseOne (E1). For all of
E1’s configurability, it has taken a step back in regard to providing the non-technical end-user’s visibility into JDE enterprise data.

The goal of this whitepaper is to assist the non-technical JD Edwards end-user in closing the ERP reporting and analysis gap
that typically arises after migrating from JDE World to JDE E1. First, I will review the Reporting and Analysis alternatives offered
by JDE World and JDE E1; much of this content should be quite familiar to you current JDE World users. I will then describe the
Reporting and Analysis gaps that are commonly faced when migrating from JDE World to JDE E1. Finally, I will set forth some
suggestions for closing this gap.

Reporting and Analysis in JDE World

As a JDE World user, you have three native reporting and analysis tools at your disposal. Let’s go ahead to see how these tools
facilitate visibility into JDE enterprise data for the non-technical end-user.

DREAMWriter
You all know what I’m talking about – Simple Income Statement, Trial Balance by Account, Open AP Summary, and so on.
These reports are actually programs, written by our friends at JDE, and placed on menus with a big old happy-faced front-end,
known as DREAMWriter (Data Record Extraction And Management Writer) to you JDE World folks. This batch version front-
end allows regular, non-technical users to control program logic and format (Processing Options), Data Selection, and Data
Sequencing.

These ―pushbutton‖ reports are super-easy to use, hence the nickname. However, the reports are largely static; you get what
you get, and nothing more without development.

World Writer
JDE came up with a godsend known as World Writer; a super-simple, super-useful, super-secure, and highly available front-end
to IBM SQL400. I love World Writer; it makes ad hoc reporting a total breeze, even for the non-technical end-user.

Technically speaking, World Writer is a Relational Analysis tool; it allows you to select records from ERP tables, just as you
would through a tool like Microsoft Access. Envision a simple data dump with sorting, totaling, and formatting.

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Closing the Gap between JDE World and E1 Reporting
By John Lambrianakos, VP, Marketing and Product Development, Cetova Corp

FASTR and STAR

What about more traditional pro forma reporting? I’m referring, of course, to those period-end, standard month-end financial
statements and schedules. JDE World fills that space with FASTR (Financial Analysis Spreadsheet Tool for Reporting) and its
Fixed Assets counterpart, STAR (Spreadsheet Tool for Asset Reporting). With FASTR, you can define Column Specifications
using Business Unit (F0006) and Account (F0901) Master Category Codes and Ledger Types to perform basic roll-ups. You can
also define Business Unit Structures in JDE World to achieve the same end. However, FASTR, like all JDE World applications,
is a not GUI tool, does not lend itself to any sort of dynamic pivoting, and accesses only the JDE General Ledger Account
Balance (F0902) table. That said, despite their narrow scope of usage, FASTR and STAR are two excellent tools.

Let’s move on to see what’s available in terms of Reporting and Analysis in JDE EnterpriseOne.

Reporting and Analysis in JDE EnterpriseOne

The reporting and analysis landscape in JDE E1 is a bit starker than in JDE World.

Of course, E1 offers many useful canned reports that span the entire suite of modules. In fact, the E1 push-button reports are,
by and large, exact duplicates of the JDE World versions.

Easy-to-use ad hoc reporting is virtually non-existent in JDE E1. There is no equivalent of World Writer, which is truly a robust
and user-friendly front-end to SQL. Instead, JDE E1 offers, depending upon your version, either UTB (Universal Table Browser)
or Data Browser, which are decent tools, but are somewhat limited in their functionality and flexibility, and are definitely not
reporting solutions. So, if you need visibility into your tables, you’re at the mercy of IT. I’ll get into this in the next section, The
Reporting and Analysis Gap in JDE Migration.

JDE E1 enables traditional, pro forma reporting through ERW (Enterprise Report Writer). At one point, Crystal Reports was
packaged with JDE E1, but is no longer supported by JDE as of this whitepaper. Unlike FASTR, ERW can operate over any file,
as opposed to only the F0902, or the F1202 in STAR. Given their fundamental gaps in ease-of-use, performance, and
deployment, these ―native‖ tools do not really compete with best of breed, third-party business intelligence and pro forma
reporting tools. In my experience, organizations with means typically look to replace or at least supplement ERW with more
efficient solutions.

Let me emphasize that ERW is very powerful, and can do anything that FASTR, STAR and World Writer do. However, ERW is
a developer’s tool; it is not designed for the accountant or the data analyst. The equivalent JDE E1 reporting tasks are
considerably more difficult, as you’re not merely selecting columns through preformatted screens like in JDE World. The report
writer must select or create the appropriate views, and then arrange the required fields on the report. You need totals,
groupings, and sub-totals? Well, these require dedicated sections within the report. Ultimately, any company migrating to JDE
E1 must understand that report writing has, for better or worse, evolved into more of a development effort. Even with an army of
developers, reports simply cannot be turned around quickly due to the complex JDE E1 report writing environment and change
management requirements. I’ve worked at clients where even the simplest of ERW reporting requests may require in excess of
two weeks for deployment.

So, let’s move on to see how the non-technical JDE end-user is left holding the bag after migrating from JDE World to
EnterpriseOne.

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Closing the Gap between JDE World and E1 Reporting
By John Lambrianakos, VP, Marketing and Product Development, Cetova Corp

The Reporting and Analysis Gap in JDE Migration

I’d venture to say that companies implementing JDE E1 as their first JDE solution are better off than those migrating from JDE
World to E1. Why? Very simply, the E1 user new to JDE won’t be faced with a major functionality gap that will transform his or
her self-sufficiency into dependence upon IT.
As a JDE World user, you had a native and robust relational analysis tool in World Writer for ad hoc reporting. With World
Writer, you could query any table in the JDE database, including custom tables (e.g. F55xxxx). This query functionality included
Table Joins, Custom Column Calculations, Casting and Converting, Custom Column Headings, and so on. Furthermore, the
user could send World Writer output to an iSeries spooled file, PC text file, or a dynamically created table on the iSeries. While
there were areas in which World Writer could be improve, overall it was a very competent tool.

Unfortunately, migrating to JDE E1 cost the end-user about 90% of this Relational Analysis functionality. With UTB and Data
Browser, you have basic SELECT functionality without Table Joins, Calculations, or any of the other fancy bells and whistles
offered by World Writer. In fact, until E1 8.12 introduced Data Browser, you couldn’t even export the query results to MS Excel.

Let’s move on to traditional, pro forma reporting. As previously stated, FASTR and STAR work over only two sets of measures,
F0902 and F1202 balances, and are therefore narrow in scope. And yes, FASTR and STAR are tedious green-screen
applications. You bet. However, these tools allow you to easily slice and dice your numbers based on all sorts of JDE Master
Data, such as Business Unit Category Codes, Equipment Codes, all components of the F0902 index (i.e. Company, Fiscal Year,
and Ledger Type), etc.

What does JDE E1 give you in terms of native, pro forma reporting? Well, JDE E1 offers ERW. Unfortunately, while ERW is a
very powerful and robust tool, it is, in the final analysis, a developer’s tool. Even the JDE World super-user, who is intimate with
the database and develops World Writer reports with the greatest of ease, will be relegated to submitting reporting requests to IT
for development in ERW.

Finally, anyone familiar with JDE World knows how easy it is to create a new version of a World Writer, FASTR, STAR, or
DREAMWriter report, and then share it with colleagues. Not so much the case in JDE E1. Historically, report deployment in JDE
E1 was an epic nightmare, totally removed from the end user’s hands. While JDE has made some improvements in this area, it
is still far from perfect.

Finally, let’s move on to see how we can close the reporting and analysis gap that remains after migrating to JDE E1 from World.

Closing the Reporting and Analysis Gap

I’d like to think that those of us with a continuous improvement mindset would conscientiously object to migrating from JDE World
to E1 without taking measures to ensure continuity with regard to reporting and analysis. Ease of reporting and analysis is a
significant component of overall ERP usability, and there is no better way to prohibit solution adoption than by migrating to a less
usable tool. In order to facilitate a smooth transition from JDE World to E1, a company must replace the functionality of FASTR,
STAR, and World Writer. So, assuming that a major SQL deployment is out of the picture, the obvious solution is to close the
gap with a third party reporting and analysis tool. Actually, Oracle has retrofitted its own suite of reporting and BI tools to
address the JDE E1 reporting problem. However, even a partial implementation of OBIEE (Oracle Business Intelligence Suite—
Enterprise Edition Plus) can represent a significant time and money investment.

Moving right along, there exist primarily two classes of reporting tools: Relational Analysis tools and BI/OLAP tools. There are
benefits and drawbacks to each.

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Closing the Gap between JDE World and E1 Reporting
By John Lambrianakos, VP, Marketing and Product Development, Cetova Corp

Real-time Relational Analysis tools match, and often exceed, the functionality provided by World Writer. However, the real-time
benefit adversely impacts the performance of the underlying database. Sometimes, this performance hit is an acceptable trade-
off in achieving real-time access to the data. Typically, however, you want to avoid using real time tools against larger data sets.
If you have one-hundred-million records in your F0911 table, it may not a good idea to grant real-time access to the user
community. Furthermore, real-time tools are typically constrained with regards to report formatting. While most tools provide

some basic pivoting and roll-up functionality, it’s no match for the equivalent functionality offered by true BI tools. For example,
imagine trying to replicate a FASTR report in World Writer; this would not be easy even with addition functionality. Reporting that
approaches Multidimensional Analysis requires complex SQL that can be processor-intensive. Despite these limitations, many
companies remain attracted to this type of reporting solution due to the benefits of real-time data access.

If you are interested in real-time Relational Analysis, you’ll need a tool that provides visibility over the entire JDE database,
including custom tables. With regard to functionality, table joining, through some sort of wizard, is a bare minimum. Ideally, you
want the ability to create custom views; execute if statements; create new columns based upon calculations over other columns;
and easily sort and generate the associated totals and subtotals. In addition, look for a tool that provides the ability to aggregate
data (group by statements) and pivot the results.

BI/OLAP tools, on the other hand, allow for more advanced reporting, do not adversely affect the JDE servers, and execute
reports instantaneously. BI/OLAP queries perform better than their Relational counterparts do. Companies can confidently
rollout BI solutions to its business users without any fear of bringing JDE to its knees, and therefore interrupting normal business
operations. The speed and flexibility of BI/OLAP solutions make them an attractive choice. However, the major drawback to
BI/OLAP tools is the obligatory data synchronization and refresh needed to maintain the most current data.

Finally, robust Relational and BI/OLAP tools should offer three key features, which, in my opinion, are critical to rapid
implementation and wide user adoption. First, report development should be facilitated through an intuitive interface. Second,
you want the ability to publish reporting output in a variety of formats (e.g. MS Excel, MS SharePoint, Adobe Acrobat, HTML,
etc.) and destinations (e.g. MS Outlook, shared network drive, etc.). Third, the tool should be pre-integrated with JDE, so that all
the hard work performed in setting up Security and the Data Dictionary doesn’t go to waste.

So, for the non-technical JDE end-user, I’ll set forth the following major takeaway: Don’t migrate from JDE World to JDE E1
without lobbying for a third-party reporting and analysis solution, especially if you rely heavily upon World Writer and FASTR.
You need to maintain continuity in both your pro-forma and ad-hoc reporting and analysis processes, which is difficult to achieve
when the native JDE E1 tools are either too simplistic (e.g. UTB and Data Browser) or too complicated (e.g. ERW and Crystal).

Oh, and if you haven’t already figured it out, Cetova’s suite of Corporate Performance Management Tools are well suited to
closing this JDE World-to-E1 Reporting and Analysis gap. Just ask our clients!

Thank you for reading, folks; I look forward to getting emails with feedback, comments, suggestions, and so forth. Please email
me at jlambrianakos@cetova.com

Next Whitepaper Preview

After reading this whitepaper, you should now have some idea of the functionality that is critical to robust Multidimensional and
and Relational Reporting and Analysis tools. So, please look forward to my next piece, which will discuss best practices for pre-
implementation homework. My goal will be to help you maximize your Multidimensional Analysis ROI.

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Closing the Gap between JDE World and E1 Reporting
By John Lambrianakos, VP, Marketing and Product Development, Cetova Corp

In the meanwhile, I invite you to read two of my previous whitepapers, ―Helping Non-Technical JDE End-Users Choose the
Proper Reporting Tool,‖ and, ―Must-Have Multidimensional and Relational Analysis Functionality,‖ to better understand
the types of available functionality.

Download all Cetova whitepapers at http://www.cetova.com/download-whitepaper.php.

About the Author

John Lambrianakos (jlambrianakos@cetova.com) is the VP of Marketing and Product Development at Cetova Corp. John has
been working with JD Edwards since 1991, both as a consultant for GL Associates and IBM Global Services, and, in industry as
a Finance Manager at Tiffany & Co. John received his BA in Economics from Vassar College in 1991, and his MBA from the
University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business, in 1995.

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