SAP BusinessObjects
Errors after promoting BI4 reports with BEx query data sources
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)
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:
Posted in: Knowledge sharing, SAP BusinessObjects, SAP BWBook review: SAP HANA – An Introduction
One of the most anticipated SAP books of 2012 is finally here: SAP HANA – An Introduction published by SAP Press (who else). I had the pleasure to see both authors Bjarne Berg and Penny Silvia at last year’s European BI2011 event in Amsterdam. Looking back at their sessions this should be a quality book so my expectations were high.
My last attempt at diving into the HANA stuff was in August and didn’t end that well. After successfully setting up our Amazon/AWS HANA box and installing the tools I got stuck at SAP HANA Studio. So let’s see if this book will really show me how this thing works.
SAP HANA – An Introduction is divided into two parts: First the What, Why and When and second the How. The What, Why and When part, which takes about a third of the 400 book pages, is all about explaining things. What is in-memory computing, what is big data and how does the HANA solution look like. Here I got some answers to some basic questions that I still had on HANA. For example what would happen with the data in case of a power failure (since all of your data is loaded in-memory). Another thing nobody could explain to me was the concept of working with column-based storage of data versus row-based storage, which is illustrated very well in this book.
SAP HANA comes in two versions: A Standalone version and a version for SAP BW. The book not only covers the technical requirements and differences on both versions, but also the required skills you’ll need in your project team to implement HANA for each option. About 50 pages are dedicated to HANA use cases for both versions and provides guidelines on how to fit HANA into your business strategy.
Posted in: Books, New technology, SAP HANABook review: SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP BusinessObjects – The Comprehensive Guide
Let’s have a look at another SAP BI book that SAP Press released this year: SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP BusinessObjects – The Comprehensive Guide. SAP Press is on a great streak and later this year we can expect even more releases from them on HANA, Web Intelligence, ABAP for BW, SAP BusinessObjects Administration and Security.
But, let’s go back to the SAP BW/BO Comprehensive Guide. My first thought when I unwrapped this book was: “Wow, this one is FAT!” Look at it; almost 800 pages! Like most of the SAP Press books this one text-intensive with a 75/25 text to picture ratio so this would take some time to go cover to cover.
I got a bit worried when I scanned the topic list. This book discusses the whole (!) SAP Business Intelligence spectrum. This is SAP BW en SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform (including Data Services) for the backend, and for the frontend the BEx tools (Query Designer, Analyzer, Web Analyzer, Web Application Designer) and the complete SAP BusinessObjects portfolio (Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, Analysis, Dashboards, Explorer). Even BW Integrated Planning and SAP SEM-BCS have their own chapter. This is a whole lot of content to cover, even in a 800 pager.
They left the horrible BEx Report Designer (yes it still exists somewhere!) out of scope and at the time of writing Visual Intelligence and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio weren’t that far in development. HANA and SAP Mobile are mentioned a few times but not really discussed in detail. By the way this book is updated up to SAP BW 7.3 and SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0.
After reading it I feel a bit confused. It is not clear what the real purpose of this book is and what should be the right audience for this publication? Let me take you through it.
It starts of in the first part with an introduction to the business intelligence and its concepts (“What is BI, what is a Data Warehouse etc.) and introduces the BW and BI4.0 platforms and their features. This ‘overview’ part is written on a level that is understandable for newbies or managers without any knowledge of the SAP BI world they might be entering.
Posted in: Books, SAP BusinessObjects, SAP BWBI 2011 Amsterdam 7-9 June event
Next week SAP is coming to Holland with its BI 2011 event in Amsterdam and I will be attending together with a colleague for Interdobs. SAPInsider introduces this event as The most important event of the year for professionals that use and support SAP® solutions for reporting, business intelligence, and data management so I am pretty excited about what we are about to hear and learn.
This BI 2011 event is hosted with Financials 2011, GRC 2011 and HR 2011 and the conference will take place from June 7 until 9. After looking at the Tracks & Sessions and building my personal agenda at the BI 2011 website I guess the three most interesting topics for me will be:
- SAP HANA. I’ve read and heard a bit about this new technology which will be a big part of the future of SAP BI. Unfortunately only one complete session on HANA, but it is also discussed in a session on SAP BW 7.3.
- SAP BW 7.3, the latest upgrade for SAP BW 7. Two sessions: 1, 2.
- SAP HR reporting with SAP BW, since the client I work for at the moment has a SAP HR focussed SAP landscape and is positioning SAP BW as its main reporting environment. There will be two sessions discussing this: 1, 2.
These three topics, together with numerous export sessions and case studies on SAP BusinessObjects front-end tooling and the SAP BW back-end promise to make this a very cool event. I might decide to take the train from Eindhoven to Amsterdam instead of my car so I have some more time to write a few blogposts during these three days, but we’ll see about that next week.
