SAP BI4: Override OLAP Connections in Promotion Management

Posted by Xavier Hacking

The Promotion Management corner in the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform CMC is still a bit of a strange place for us coming from the SAP BW world. I really like the fact that you can use a single promotion job to promote a report again and again after each change. In SAP BW that would require a new transport every time. But, something as the Overrides Settings is still a difficult to get through and set up. The official admin guide for the BI4 platform mentions it briefly, but does not explain it good enough.

Until we had this configured we had to manually reconnect each SAP BW BEx Query in a promoted Webi report. I wrote about this annoying situation before.

With an override setting on an OLAP Connection to a SAP BW system, we can make the connection change (or better: override) its settings when promoted, so it connects to the right source system. Say we have two SAP BusinessObjects Platforms (BOTest and BOProd) and two SAP BW systems (BWTest and BWProd). We want the OLAP Connection on the BOTest environment to connect with the BWTest system. The connection on the BOProd environment should connect to the BWProd system. So if we promote a Webi document that uses this OLAP Connection from BOTest to BOProd, the Webi should load data from BWProd after refreshing it on the BOProd environment.

Now, how can we set up this override thing?

1. Log in to the CMC of the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform that acts as the ‘source’ (where you want to promote from).

2. Make sure you have an OLAP Connection set up on your SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform. You can create this in OLAP Connections.

3. Go to Promotion Management.

4. Go to Settings | Manage Systems. Make sure the right system is tagged as Origin. If not, select the system and click the Origin button to change this. Click Close.

5. Go to Override Settings. Log off from the current system and login to the Origin system.

6. Select Scan | Start to scan the system for connection overrides.

7. A list of connections appears. Change the status of the OLAP Connection you want to override into Active and click Save.

8. Select the connection and click Promote Overrides.

9. Log in to the destination system and click Promote.

10. Now back in the Overrides window log off from the origin system and login to the destination system. As you will see the override you just promoted is available here. Make sure its status is set to Active.

11. Select the connection and click the Edit button.

12. Here you should enter the connection details for the production SAP BW system. Click DONE and Save to finish.

13. Now you can test the setup by creating a promotion job with the OLAP Connection and a Webi report that uses this connection. After promotion the Webi should grab its data from the SAP BW production system.

By the way after promoting the connection once you don’t have to add it again in other promotion jobs.

HackingSAP.com - Nov 13, 2014 | Knowledge sharing, SAP BusinessObjects

19 comments

Balaji
April 27, 2015
hi Xavier,

Nice Article with step-by-step snap-shot.
just want to understand ,
1.As per your point no:7,Database Type:CommonConnection and CCIS.DataConnection, i have this two options, which one i need to select here?
2.Source and Destination BW connection name is same,this will create any problem?
Reply
kgalaletso Mphuthi
July 8, 2015
Nice Article. very Useful 🙂
Thank you
Reply
patricia
September 21, 2015
Hello Xavier,

Great article!

The subsitution of connection presupposes that the connections have the same name . Correct? In accordance with good practice , the connections must have the same name to facilitate migration . Is it right to think so ?

Very Tks!
Reply
- Xavier Hacking
  September 22, 2015
  Hi Patricia,
  
  Well it should be the same ‘technical’ Connection object. You’ll have to promote the Connection object itself also from DEV to PROD once.
  
  Cheers,
  Xavier
  Reply
Yoav
August 14, 2016
Hi Xavier
The connection override works as expected ,I noticed one problematic behavior :
After i override for example BD to BP in production ,BD is also visible in the list of connections
I don’t want users to see or use BD in BP,but when trying to change the rights to BD (nobody can view it ) – when the reports are opened in Webi there is an error massage : you don’t have right for BD connection ,seems like even after the override was done it uses the BD connection ….
Did you ever came across this issue ?

Thanks

Yoav
Reply
- Xavier Hacking
  August 15, 2016
  Hi Yoav,
  
  Not sure if I understand your situation. So you have a connection called BD, which you override with the production connectivity settings. Then in BOBJ Production, this connection BD should still be visible, only now with some changed settings.
  
  Regards,
  Xavier
  Reply
  - Yoav
    August 16, 2016
    Hi Xavier, thanks for your reply
    Let me clarify:
    In BD server I have a BD1 connection which overrides to BP1 in the BP server.
    The override works as expected in BP server, what I find very strange is two things:
    
    1. Under the OLAP connections in BP server I can now see BD1 connection as well (if you don’t mark dependencies in the promotion Job the BD1 connection isn’t transferred as well and the override doesn’t work!)
    2. If I don’t grant users to view on demand BD1 in BP server ,they get a security right error –you don’t have rights to BD1
    So My real question would be : do you need to check the dependencies of the reports in the connection BD1 in BD server when you create the transport ?
    Because the override is very clear, but the dependencies implications isn’t …
    Hope it’s clear
    
    Thanks again
    Yoav
    Reply
Yoav
November 30, 2016
Hi,

Is there a way to avoid this entire process and do the following :

1.Move the reports ,not their connections to the target BI server

2.enable them to automatically inherit the local OLAP connection

I tried so different scenarios and as oppose to relational /Universe landscape it doesn’t work that way (with universe the report simply inherits the universe local connection)

Thanks

Yoav
Reply
Yoav
June 7, 2017
Bottom line is that promotion jon has no solution to a situation you have several BW connections you need to move from BOD to BOP and unify them all into the connection you are using in BOP
override will work,but you will see the connections you moved from BOD as they are using different name,that’s the biggest weakness of this process,you are bound to use the same connection name

In my case ,i have several BW dev systems hosted in my BOD server so I can’t use same naming convention across servers

It’s a pitty you can only define the override settings of the connection but not the name as well
Reply
Aneeque Hassan
July 6, 2017
Thanks for this. This article has helped me more than once ;).
Reply
Calvin Shipman
June 13, 2018
In actuality, we always found the override as a nice feature but unnecessary.
We strip developers from authorizations to create connections and leave that to the Admins.
Like our colleagues mentioned, DEV should never be exposed in Prod.
Our methodology, which works for 99% of connections, is that you create the connections always in DEV, then you promote, insuring the CUID is what is being transported. You change the name and connection in QA (so BD1 (system conn) becomes BQ1 (system conn), changing to connect to the BW MSG server (best practice for load balancing), and eventually to Prod BP1 performing the same task.

Then all you are EVER promoting is report objects, all development must be governed to use the BI layer for connections, otherwise you end up with non-standard conventions and settings in your connections.

Promotions work like this for ALL BW and HANA sources just fine this way.

SQL and ORA rdbms connections work the same, I will have to confirm with FHSQL reports as I have seen them continue to throw these errors.

And coming from the BI side in comparison to the NW side… (TMS does have some advantages), but I will take LCM over TMS any day, especially with the ability to rollback bad jobs, TMS only has a forward fix solution.
Reply
- Calvin Shipman
  June 13, 2018
  To add:
  Override was designed for mapping connections that were of different CUID, not the same CUID. If the CUID is the same, once you establish that connection object on all systems, and simply change the name/server/credentials, the reports will continue to work, as ALL they are looking at is the connection (if it is BW/OLAP) if it is universe, the reports point to the universe, in which the universe performs the same as the OLAP connections and point to the connection via CUID.
  Override is nice when you are changing connection CUID’s on the fly during promotion. if they CUID is the same the Override is unnecessary.
  Reply
  - Jayant
    November 29, 2019
    Thanks.
    Reply
- Leandro
  September 25, 2021
  Calvi, I tried to do this but when I try to modify the OLAP Connection I get this error:
  “Failed to update the connection. Verify that you have administrative rights for the Business Objects system and try again.”
  
  Also when I’m modifiying a report and I try to change the data source (Data Access –> Tools –> Change Source –> Specify a new data source)
  The connections I promoted don’t appear in the list. I can only selected the one I created in the same enviorment.
  
  Could you help me with this? Thanks!
  Reply
Balaji
April 27, 2015
hi Xavier,

Nice Article with step-by-step snap-shot.
just want to understand ,
1.As per your point no:7,Database Type:CommonConnection and CCIS.DataConnection, i have this two options, which one i need to select here?
2.Source and Destination BW connection name is same,this will create any problem?
Reply
Xavier Hacking
April 27, 2015
Hi Balaji,

You need to select the connection that you want to override. And yes, the connection name can (and will) be the same.

Cheers,
Xavier
Reply
Balaji
April 28, 2015
hi Xavier,

thanks for your response, how override will work if the DEV System and Test system available in the different Landscape, can we export the webi reports without or with connection through BIAR option? how we can keep the existing connection for this moved reports? Need your inputs/guidance here
Reply
Xavier Hacking
April 28, 2015
Hi Balaji,

I don’t have an answer for that as I just don’t know. Did you try posting this on SCN?

Cheers,
Xavier
Reply
Balaji
April 29, 2015
hi Xavier,

okie sure I will do the same, thanks for your response.
Reply