Errors after promoting BI4 reports with BEx query data sources

Posted by Xavier Hacking

Transporting (or promoting) objects in the SAP BusinessObjects BI4 environment is still a bit weird for those (like me) originally coming from the SAP BW world. The Lifecycle Manager (LCM) webapp somehow doesn’t feel as robust as the Transport Management System in SAP, but in the end it does the same thing of course.

This week a colleague ran into some errors after promoting his new Web Intelligence and Crystal Reports from our BI4 development environment to the production environment. His reports were created on SAP BW BEx query data sources.

Update: We finally figured out how to work with Override Settings for OLAP Connections to solve this issue. Check the blog post here.

First let’s have a look at the Web Intelligence report. After the promotion he was able to open the Web Intelligence report, but when refreshing the data the following errors appeared:

Errors when trying to refresh the current report.

The universe generation using the resource id has failed. (WIS 00000)

webi_change_datasource_1

webi_change_datasource_2

The solution to this issue is quite easy but you just have to know this somehow I guess: You have to manually reconnect each SAP BW BEx query with the Web Intelligence report.

Yes, this just feels odd. We are used to the Transport Management System to take care of these things. Also I think it’s a bit strange to standard having to edit reports in a production environment, just to make them work. On the other hand, if you only have one BI4 environment on top of multiple SAP BW environments, it might be useful to have the ability to change the data sources of a report to connect to a different system.

Anyway, to fix this just follow the next easy steps:

1. Open the report and go to Design mode. Go to the Data Access tab and select the Tools submenu. Here you see the option Change Source. By the way make sure that you are running the Rich Internet Application (JAVA) version since the Web version doesn’t show this option! You can check and change this in the BI Launchpad preferences for Web Intelligence menu (top right).

webi_change_datasource_3

2. After selecting your query a wizard will appear in which you can specify a new data source.

webi_change_datasource_4

3. Browse to your BEx query.

webi_change_datasource_5

4. The next screen shows a proposed object mapping. This should normally show only green lines because the BEx queries should have the same configuration on the several SAP BW environments.

webi_change_datasource_6

5. After clicking Finish the report will refresh. Don’t forget to save the report or you’ll have to do this again the next time you want to run the report!

webi_change_datasource_7

 

When opening the Crystal Reports report in BI Launchpad after promotion something similar happens:

The viewer could not process an event. The data source is invalid.

Invalid CMS Query. Check if the connection exists in the CMS.

crsytal_reports_data_source_1

The solution here luckily is not as hidden as in the Web Intelligence case. Follow the steps below.

1. Open Crystal Reports for Enterprise, connect to BI4 environment and open the report. On opening a pop-up will be shown telling you that the data source used in this report can no longer be found on the server. Click the link.

crsytal_reports_data_source_2

2. In the wizard screen you’ll see the ‘old’ data source on the left. On the right you have to select a new target data source. First select a connection and browse to your BEx query.

crsytal_reports_data_source_3

3. After selection the wizard will try to map all fields. You can manually map fields with the Map button.

crsytal_reports_data_source_4

4. Again, don’t forget to save your report.

Thanks,

Xavier

HackingSAP.com - Jan 28, 2013 | Knowledge sharing, SAP BusinessObjects, SAP BW
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9 comments

  1. Ronald Konijnenburg
    January 28, 2013

    Hi Xavier, good write up! I remember this nonsens happening. This total lack of integration keeps amazing me.

    Reply
  2. Jesús
    June 27, 2013

    Hi Xavier, thank you for share this! I get here because I was searching for a way to promote a dashboard (SP5) based on BEx Query. I try to do with the “Promotion Manager” but it returns me an error when I try to promote the connection with the Dashboard. Is any way to do this? Or I’ve got to redo all the querys environment by environment as you do with the Crystal and Webi report? Thank you so much. Regards

    Reply
  3. Devon
    August 19, 2014

    Thanks Xavier,
    Great help!!!
    I have an additional issue in the WebI report, after I press “Finish” Button, it turns grey… and no changes done. do u know how we can solve this?

    Reply
    • Xavier Hacking
      August 19, 2014

      Hi Devon,

      I actually have no idea. Does this happen every time? Seems like it ‘hangs’…

      Reply
  4. Ron Macy
    March 2, 2015

    We have Crystal Reports 2011 connecting to bex queries. Using Set Datasource Location the bex query name can be seen and selected, but there is no data under the query. There are no fields available to which to map the old fields. Any ideas about this?

    Thanks,

    Reply
  5. Ron Macy
    March 2, 2015

    I should have mentioned I am trying to connect to SAP BW Hana where the bex queries don’t have underlying data.

    Reply
  6. Ely Tier
    March 1, 2016

    Hi Xavier,
    I have been passed a crystal report which probably hasn’t been used for a while. And the universe has had some changes along the way. And now when the report is ran it is throwing an error (Error code:0 [CRWEB00000119]
    When I open the crystal report on the builder it presents me with a mapping screen showing the items that it cannot find. But the problem is the Map button is greyed out. And when I close the window the objects on the design panel totally gets removed (thereby a blank layout remains). Have you encountered something similar and what is the workaround? Thanks!
    Ely

    PS We’re using crystal report enterprise and querying against a universe

    Reply
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    July 17, 2019

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  8. nesli
    November 23, 2021

    I couldn’t solve the problem for a long time: import/export a Webi-report from one BO-Server to another.
    Until I came across this page. It worked. Thank you very much

    Reply

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