6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 1/43

Getting Started Newsletters Store

Products Services & Support About SCN Downloads

Industries Training & Education Partnership Developer Center

Lines of Business University Alliances Events & Webinars Innovation

Log On Join UsHi, Guest Search the Community

Activity Communications Actions

Brow se

BI Platform 255 Posts 1 … 3 4 5 6 7 … 17

PreviousNext

There seems to be a lot of talk recently around the user experience and usability across SAP suite of software

products. There is even a site dedicated to this topic...

https://experience.sap.com/

The focus seems to be on providing tools to make the end user's experience with dashboards, reports, mobile apps,

etc. more intuitive and friendly. A post titled Making Good on the UX Promise lists all sort of new things such as tools,

processes and personas to make this happen.

That is all well and good, but how about applying some of innovation and resources to make the tools we BI

administrators, universe designers, report designers, etc. use all the time? Rather than creating some new tool that

does something amazing how about fixing a tool like Promotion Management to be minimally functional? What's

wrong with it you ask? There is so much wrong with it is hard to quantify. Here are a few items...

When trying to add objects to be promoted there is no hourglass or indication that it is working while trying to

navigate folders. Same thing when sorting. Ideally, navigation would be near instantaneous so an hourglass

would not be necessary.

After scheduling a job the Status will be updated from "Running" to "Success", but the last run date and time

won't get updated for another few seconds.

Nearly every other screen in the Central Management Console the refresh button is near the upper right corner.

Within Promotion Management the refresh button is near the upper left corner.

It can be very slow. Promoting 15 reports from one environment to another took me about 45 minutes last week

and most of that time (75%) was just adding the objects.

Certainly none of these are major items. It would be frivolous and fruitless to open a support ticket about not getting

an hourglass while waiting for a process. However, collectively these items (among others) make for a tool this is

severely lacking in usability which doesn't inspire confidence in me. I know that Promotion Management is not a tool

that is going to be included in a salesperson slide deck for their next sales call, but that is no excuse for abandoning

good design and usability principles.

Anyone else experiencing frustrations with Promotion Manager? Don't tell me to upgrade to the latest service pack &

patch and maybe it will be better. We just updated to 4.1 SP01 Patch 2 ten days ago and these issues persist.

Thanks,

Noel Scheaffer

502 View s 5 Comments Tags: promotion_management

(Un)usability of Promotion Management

Posted by Noel Scheaffer Nov 12, 2013

Symptom Patching to SAP BI 4.1 will indeed break your Active Directory Single Sign On in one or two places if your Web

Application Server is Apache Tomcat.

Environment

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Suite 4.0

Warning: Patching your SAP BI 4.0 to SAP BI 4.1 willbreak your AD SSO!

Posted by Patrick Perrier Nov 8, 2013

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 2/43

Apache Tomcat

Solutions Don't worry, the solution(s) are simple!

1: Your .properties files

It is widely documented that when you patch, the content of the webapps folder will redeployed therefore all

customisations will be lost.

The solution is to of course either manually re-apply the changes you have made or better, from SAP BI 4.0 you can

save the updated .properties in a folder and they will get redeployed automatically.

See SAP Note 1615492

2: Your Apache Tomcat server.xml This one was a bit trickier! The problem is that manual authentication is still working and Silent SSO is working for

some of the users. The others receive a HTTP error.

Turns out patching from SAP BI 4.0 to SAP BI 4.0 will also install a new version of Apache Tomcat (From Tomcat 6 to

Tomcat 7). The installation folder is a bit different too:

Old Location: C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\Tomcat6\

New Location: C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\tomcat\

Doing so, the content of your server.xml has been lost. Simply edit the new server.xml and make sure to re-apply the

maxHttpHeaderSize="65536" value in the Connector Port.

More details about this: SAP Note 1631734

Hope it helps!

3104 View s 11 Comments

Tags: sso, update, upgrade, bi4.0, bi_platform, bi_4.0, patch, single_sign_on, active_directory, tomcat, bi4.1, bi_4.1,

server.xml, maxhttpheadersize

The openSAP program is running a BI 4 Platform course starting in November – registration is FREE!

Over the past year we have run a series of BI 4 Elite Enablement sessions around the world. These sessions were

created by experts in our CSA and development organizations. We are now offering this training in virtual format

via the open SAP platform so all customers globally can take the training – for FREE. This is not your standard

system administrator training. This training goes deeper into sizing, hardware, configuration, security and

administration. It's your BI 4 black belt!

Start: November 11, 2013, 9:00 am (CET)

Duration: 4 weeks (4-6 hours per week)

Final exam: December 6-17, 2013

Course language: English

URL to Register: https://open.sap.com/course/bifour1

432 View s 0 Comments

Last Call: The openSAP program is running a BI 4Platform course starting in November – registration isFREE!

Posted by Merlijn Ekkel Nov 8, 2013

Installing SAP BI 4.1 SP01 on Red Hat EnterpriseLinux 6.x Step-by-step

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 3/43

Hello SCN,

In this blog, I will go through the steps necessary to setup and install SAP BI 4.1 SP01 on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux

6.x system.

This will be a basic and default (full) installation of BI4.1 SP01 using the bundled Sybase SQL Anywhere

database and Tomcat 7.0 Application server.

This blog assumes that you're installing from scratch and that no pre-existing BI products have been installed

previously.

This is also documented in the wiki area for future reference: here

For more complex configurations and installations please refer to the SCN PATTERN BOOKS

*Note: Fedora, CentOS or other distributions which are not explicity RHEL are not supported.

Resources:

Red Hat Software Downloads

SAP BI Software Downloads

SAP BI 4.1 Product Documentation

SAP BI 4.1 Supported Platforms (PAM)

Prerequisites:

General

Only 64-bit Operating systems are supported

Installation target must have adequate disk space ~20gb (will require much more to account for applying

patches and SP's).

Temporary filesystem space ~2gb

Create a user account and group under which the BI4.1 SP01 software will run. This account does not require

root privileges

Locale: Configure a supported UTF-8 locale by setting LC_ALL and LANG environment variables.

Example:

export LANG=en_US.utf8

export LC_ALL=en_US.utf8

ulimit settings must be set to unlimited by using the ulimit command or editing /etc/security/limits.conf manually.

read, write and execute permission to the installation target destination directory

For a complete list of requirements and a Final Checklist please reference:

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform 4.1 Support Package 1 Installation Guide for Unix

Prerequisite Red Hat libraries:

Before installing on Red Hat Linux, you must ensure all the required libraries are installed. Ensure you have root

access, then use the Yum software installation tool to run the following commands:

yum install compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-69.el6.i686

yum install compat-libstdc++-33.i686

yum install compat-libstdc++-33-3.x86_x64

yum install glibc.i686

yum install libstdc++.i686

yum install libX11-1.3-2.el6.i686

*Note:

Failure to apply these prerequisite libraries can cause instability in the BI4.1 environment.

Please reference these KBA articles to learn more about the consquences:

1692724 - Cannot open Shared object file: No such file or directory

1692679 - Bad ELF interpreter: No such file or directory

Posted by Brian Thomas Nov 6, 2013

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 4/43

1692695 - Error while loading shared libraries: libX11.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

1875824 - LDAP Plugin missing from CMC on Red Hat Operating systems

Difficulties installing via YUM? See:

1972307 - Error: Protected multilib versions when installing BI4 prerequisite libraries

Checking PrerequisitesChecking to see if these libraries are installed is quick and simple using the following commands:

cat /etc/redhat-release

ulimit

locale

rpm -qa compat-libstdc++*

rpm -qa glibc

rpm -qa libstdc++

rpm -qa libX11

The output should be similar to this:

Running Setup

To launch setup, navigate to the media for BI4.1 SP01 and execute ./setup.sh

Installation screens:

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 5/43

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 6/43

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 7/43

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 8/43

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 9/43

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 10/43

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 11/43

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 12/43

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 13/43

Troubleshooting

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 14/43

Survey ScriptWhen troubleshooting BI 4.1 installation issues on linux it is essential to download Doug's survey.sh script. This will

examine several different dimensions of your Redhat system and save the analysis to an HTML file. This will also

include the installation logfiles for examination. This makes identifying a problem in a linux environment very easy.

The survey script can be found attached to this KBA:

1681036 - Using the survey script to assist support

Installation logsDuring setip, installer will create a subfolder in /tmp to contain the setupengine.log until the installation is completed.

Once setup has completed, these logs will be moved to the ./InstallData directory of your installation target folder

(example: /home/boeuser/BI41/InstallData/ ).

Reviewing the setupengine.log post-instal is essential to understand what may have occured. The survey script

above makes this easy by collecting the logfile for you.

Common IssuesMost installation issues are due to missing prerequisites wether these are the configuration steps listed above, or

missing libraries. In some cases its found that the library installed may be for the incorrect architechure (i686 vs.

x86_x64).

Other issues can be caused by the installer finding 3rd party products and libraries via the LD_LIBRARY_PATH or

LIBPATH. Removing these extra entries from these environment variables may be necessary.

SAP KBA SearchAny error messages that you will encounter during the installer or identify in the setupengine.log may already

documented by SAP Product Support.

SAP BI KBA SEARCH

4803 View s 15 Comments

Tags: businessobjects, business_intelligence_(businessobjects), business_intelligence, bi_platform, 4.1,

sap_businessobjects_business_intelligence_platform_4.0

One of the most important tasks of a BI Administrator is to ensure that regular backups are being performed.

This is normally done for disaster recovery purposes, but should be also done for other reasons of which the most

important is forensic analysis.

An example of this would be when a deployment is about to be upgraded. Performing an extraordinary backup, that

is specially labeled and stored, it will be possible to analyze the differences between the affected parts (settings,

documents, connections, etc.) before and after the upgrade in case problems arise.

On the other hand, if the old content is overwritten, the investigation will be almost impossible, because the

comparative analysis is lacking important elements.

Another important aspect of problem prevention is to use the Versioning features of Promotion Management (formerly

called Life Cycle Management).

A scenario where one would be happy to have a Version management in plan, is when for unexpected changes

happen at document or universe level.

For example: if accidental changes are done in a Universe and this is published back to the BI Platform, reports may

stop working.

With accidental changes we mean both man-made and also those that can come by system failure (i.e. corrupted file

or metadata)

In that case the BI Admin would simply have to roll-back the universe level and things would go back to normality.

The worst scenario would be when there is no previous copy of the universe, in that case there could be delays,

stress and disruption to the reporting activities.

Last but not least is the need for tracking down changes that are done at any level of the BI deployment.

When support needs to investigate problems, it is important to understand what kind of changes have been done

recently.

Because the extraordinary backups are closely tied to the change management process, I want to spend some words

to explain what I would do if I was a BI Administrator in such sense. I would keep a log book where I would record any

significant change to the BI deployment or to the elements that it is connected to (Databases, Servers etc.). Here too,

Tips on Extraordinary Backup and ChangeManagement Strategies

Posted by Simone Caneparo Nov 5, 2013

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 15/43

if any problem shows up and needs investigation, who troubleshoots should be able to identify possible causes and

discard those that are not pertinent to the problem.

In conclusion, the advice is to :

1. Perform regular backups, i.e. :

- Every Day (or every N hours, if needed)

- Weekly

- Monthly

- [Quarterly, etc.]

- Yearly

2. Keep a reasonable amount of backup copies

i.e.: last 7 days, last 4 weeks, last N months, all years

3. Perform extraordinary backups immediately before any major change:

- Patch installation

- SP installation

- Version Upgrade

- Database upgrades and/or migrations

- Server migration

- any other major change one can think of…

4. Label and keep the backup copy for a reasonable time

i.e.: until the next upgrade or change

5. Use the Versioning feature

6. Record all changes in a logbook:

- BI Settings (Server Parameters, Config. Files, etc. - if asked by Support, write down the incident number )

- Universe Structure

- Connection

- Database

- Server settings

- Server upgrades (software, hardware, patches etc.)

- any other important change that may occur…

Hopefully the above indications will save some stress and time to those who at today have not considered this vital

aspect in BI Administration.

These are my personal opinion based on experience, if you have suggestions or corrections you are welcome to

express them in the comments section.

PS: For more information on Backup, Restore and Versioning, please read the Business Intelligence Platform

Administrator Guide chapters 12,13,14 (for BI4.0 SP8) available at http://help.sap.com/boall_en

1895 View s 2 Comments

Tags: bi, backup, security, bi4_upgrade, business_intelligence, best_practices, disaster_recovery, disaster_prevention

There is much confusion within the market place around the correct update process for updating from BI4.0 to BI4.1.

The situation is made worse by common misunderstandings resulting in huge amounts of unnecessary “update

effort”. This is in addition to BI4 repositories becoming corrupt and all the pain of sorting that out.

Sadly there are two tiny, but pretty significant documentation “bugs” which exacerbate the confusion.

This blog will address these common misunderstandings. We’ll also talk about those very important documentation

‘bugs’. But first let’s start with how you should update from BI4.0 to BI4.1

BI4.0 to BI4.1 strongly recommended update process

The update to BI4.1 from BI4.0 is the same process as applying a Support Pack. I.e. just apply the ‘patch’ software

to update from BI4.0 to BI4.1. There is no need to install BI4.1 on a new machine, nor is there a need to move, or copy

content from one repository to another. Indeed it’s vital that the CMS System Repository database is updated as part

of the update process.

Doing a full install for updating from BI4.0 to BI4.1?Think again...

Posted by Matthew Shaw Nov 5, 2013

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 16/43

You can update from any version of BI4.0 to any Support Pack version on BI4.1 directly. There is absolutely no need to

go ‘via’ any particular version (unlike XI3 Service Pack updates). I’ve created KBA 1909881 note to explain in more

detail.

Misconception: To save disk space a full install is needed

Many organisations perform a full installation of the ‘next’ product version to avoid too much disk space being

consumed. However a full installation is not needed to recover disk space consumed by installing Patches or Support

Packs over and over again.

Older Patches and Support Packs can simply be uninstalled. Select the ‘older’ product version from ‘Programs and

Features’ and select ‘uninstall’. The installer will very cleverly remove the old product from the cache saving disk

space. How cool is that! Don’t remove the original base install as that will remove the entire product.

Misconception: Full install is needed for new features

Unfortunately the BI4.1 update, BI4.1 SP1 update and BI4.1 Patch update documentation will have you incorrectly

believe this. The following sentences in those guides are not correct:

If you want to use of the expanded set of ERP Drivers availab le in this release, you will need to perform a full

install.

And

You must do a full installation to get the new features

We’re sorry for the confusion and we’re busy correcting the guide for the next release.

When the update is applied, only the existing software components are updated. All new features for those existing

components will be updated. Any new components available will not be installed. To install new components, simply

modify the original base installation and select the new components to install. The patch installer even provides a

friendly reminder to do just this at the end of the update.

The list of additional components between BI4.0 SP2 and BI4.1 SP1 is:

1. Servers – Platform Services – Sybase SQL Anywhere Database

2. Servers – Platform Services – RESTful Web Service

3. Servers – Platform Services – Insight to Action Service

4. Developer Tools – SAP BusinessObjects Semantic Layer Java SDK

5. Database Access – DataDirect ODBC

6. Database Access – SAP HANA

7. Database Access – SAPBW64

8. Database Access – SAPERP

9. Database Access – XML WebServices

10. Database Access – OData

11. Database Access – Hadoop HIVE

12. Database Access – dbase

Tip!

If you’re connecting to BW using the ‘old’ UNV BAPI connectivity, then you’ll benefit from installing SAPBW64

for improved data retrieval performance. See KBA 1930558 for more details. This note also shows the user

interface for modifying the original base installation and selecting new components.

Why is installing a ‘full’ install such a bad idea for updating?

Due to one or both of the above misconceptions, many organisations install a ‘full’ installation on another machine

and then either ‘move’ the content to it, or they re-point the new ‘full’ installation to the ‘old’ existing repository.

There are two main reasons these workflows are such a bad idea:

1) Misconception: Best way to move entire Repository content in one go, is

with Promotion Management Moving the complete content between two BI4 repositories in one go is not easy if you use the wrong tool. Many

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 17/43

attempt to use Promotion Management but struggle since it’s simply not designed for this task.

Promotion Management is intended for a relatively small number of objects at a time since the primary use case for

Promotion Management is to promote 'developed' content from Development into Test and then Production. The tool

for example doesn’t promote the following because these items fall outside of that use-case:

Users (that only have a 3rd party alias) and all their favourite/inbox content

Setup of 3rd Party authentication

Promotion Jobs themselves

Authentication setup/settings

Server group to server relationships

Servers

Tenants

Applications (or application Settings)

License Keys

These are already good reasons not to use Promotion Management since manual effort is required to ‘recreate

all these’, additionally:

Since Promotion Management is a web based tool when a large number of objects are defined within a

Promotion Management Job ‘web timeouts’ occur creating or managing the job.

The ‘Check_out’ folder used for the integration with the Version Management System requires a little planning.

See KBA 1802390

For the overwhelming majority it’s quite unnecessary to perform a ‘full’ installation, but for those that do and need to

move the complete contents between two repositories it’s actually so much easier if the correct method and tool is

used: Copy the CMS Repository database and FRS file system and point the ‘other’ installation at the copied content.

You need to be sure you’re using the same Operating System, ‘install path’ and exactly the same product version. For

very thorough and detailed steps you can follow the instructions within the Administration Guide Chapter 14 “Copying

your Business Intelligence platform deployment”. We’d prefer for you to use a firewall to stop the two installations

from clustering with each other but if you can’t, use the workaround in KBA 1275068 with caution (I really don’t want to

promote removing rows from the CMS database but it is a good workaround!)

There are plans to improve the performance for creating and importing Promotion Jobs containing a large number of

objects in BI4.1 Support Pack 2. We’ll have more details on that nearer the time. The recommendation now and for

the future, is to use the LCM command line interface to create and import large jobs, since there will be no web based

timeouts. However the recommendation will remain that Promotion Management should not be used to copy the

entire contents from one repository to another, or use it as a sole backup mechanism.

2) Misconception: Repointing a newer Product Version to an older Repository

version is valid

The best way to explain a commonly misunderstood workflow is by example: Let’s say you have installed BI 4.0

Support Pack 6 and all your content is held within it. You’ve installed BI 4.1 Support Pack 1 on a completely new

machine which you want to ‘migrate’ content to. You then stop the BI4.0 machine (Step 1) and point the BI4.1 machine

at the CMS database (and FRS file-store) the BI4.0 machine used to use (Step 2).

However this workflow is not supported and you’ll run in a whole manner of issues, including but not limited to:

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 18/43

HTTP 500 and 'null' pointer exception when logging into Central Management Console for the first time

CMS process does not start

"?????? dummy ?????" placeholders appear within the User Interface rather than the correct name

Missing Applications, Application Settings, Security rights, icons

'Old' Applications, Application Settings, Security rights do not work as expected and cause various errors.

Why? Because when you update to a new version (Minor or Support Pack level) you not only update the software on

the disk, but you also update the repository with ‘default objects’ (called DFOs). These DFO’s define ‘object types’

such as a ‘folder’, ‘user’, ‘application’ and just about anything the BI Platform hosts. Many ‘got away’ with this workflow

in XI3.1, but this only because there were hardly any new or updated ‘default objects’ introduced in Service Packs in

XI3, unlike BI4.

I’ve created KBA 1882363 to explain this in more detail with resolutions.

Feel free to post your feedback here or via Twitter (@MattShaw_on_BI); I’d very much welcome questions/comments

to ensure a smooth update to BI4.1.

10005 View s 96 Comments Tags: bi4, bi4_upgrade, business_intelligence, bi_platform, upgradebobj

Installing SAP BusinessObjects 4.1 Server on Windows 7

Open file product.seed.xml under

"51046778\DATA_UNITS\BusinessObjectsServer_win\dunit\product.businessobjects64-4.0-core-32" using text editor.

Then modify the "AllowedSuffix" value into Workstation (line 1520):

<prerequisite id="getWindowsVersionPreReq 2"

description="#prereq.WindowsServerVersionPreReqText#"

reason="#prereq.WindowsServerVersionPreReqNotOkText#" type="error">

<action id="CompareVersion">

<arg name="maxVersion" value=""/>

<arg name="minVersion" value="6.0"/>

<arg name="VersionNeedToCompare" value="[$os.version]"/>

<arg name="Property" value="Windows2008Above"/>

<arg name="AllowedSuffix" value="Workstation"/>

</action>

<condition property="Windows2008Above" value="1"/>

</prerequisite>

Installing SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 4.1 on Windows 7

Open file product.seed.xml under "51046788_4\51046788_\DATA_UNITS\Explorer_win\dunit\product.explorer-4.0-

core-32" using text editor. Then modify the "AllowedSuffix" value into Workstation (line 154):

<prerequisite id="getWindowsVersionPreReq 2"

description="#prereq.WindowsServerVersionPreReqText#"

reason="#prereq.WindowsServerVersionPreReqNotOkText#" type="error">

<action id="CompareVersion">

<arg name="maxVersion" value=""/>

<arg name="minVersion" value="6.0"/>

<arg name="VersionNeedToCompare" value="[$os.version]"/>

<arg name="Property" value="Windows2008Above"/>

<arg name="AllowedSuffix" value="Workstation"/>

</action>

<condition property="Windows2008Above" value="1"/>

</prerequisite>

credit to: SAKIMAN from http://www.forumtopics.com/busobj/viewtopic.php?

t=209291&sid=06e14e8005546042dd3536b2c761a39e

Installing SAP BusinessObjects 4.1 on Windows 7 (forevaluation purpose)

Posted by Teuku Faruq Oct 30, 2013

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 19/43

4535 View s 5 Comments Tags: bi4, business_intelligence_(businessobjects), explorer, bobj, bi_platform

As you may already know, SAP Business Objects 3.1 (SP5 and higher) and 4.1 uses the SAP Sybase SQL Anywhere

12.0.1 embedded database for its default CMS and Audit databases. When you install BOBJ, the installation of SQLA

happens automatically and you only need to define standard credentials to log in to the database, such as

administrator user name/password.

One thing the default BOBJ installation does not do is install the SQL Anywhere administration tools; however, you

can still get them using one of two methods:

1. The BOBJ 3.1 installation media includes a file called "SA1201_Client.exe" (Windows) and

"sa12_client_linux_x86.x64.1201_3152_l10n.tar.gz" (Linux) inside the folder "SAW". Execute (Windows) or

extract/execute (Linux) this file to install the SQL Anywhere Client, which includes the administration tools.

2. Download the SQL Anywhere Client from here: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-35857. You need to do this if

using BOBJ 4.1.

There are three database administration tools provided to manage the database:

Sybase Central: the main tool to create/view/edit database objects, such as tables, views, stored procedures,

etc.

Interactive SQL: a query editor to execute ad-hoc queries.

SQL Anywhere Console: a monitoring tool to display database connections, properties, server messages, etc.

The most useful tool is Sybase Central since that's what you use to define events and maintenance plans for CMS

and Audit database validation and backups. It's all wizard-based so creating those management tasks is a breeze. If

you're in for a challenge, you can always create your events using pure SQL, in which case Interactive SQL is your

friend... but if you're a GUI person like me, stick to Sybase Central :-)

4463 View s 11 Comments Tags: sql_anyw here, cms_database

Database Administration Tools for SQL AnywhereCMS and Audit DBs

Posted by Jose Ramos Oct 28, 2013

Hi,

It's recently come to my attention that our BI Platform 4.1 installer is causing some worries to a few Windows

customers. This concerns the BI 4.1 SP01 upgrade, for both the in-place update patch or side by side installation.

The installer doesn't seem to flag all the necessary pre-requisites, missing hotfix updates to windows distributables.

The missing piece can be found here: "Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package MFC

Security Update x86 and x64 executables".

This problem gives various symptoms, better described by the follow knowledge-base articles:

Note 1930857 - CMS failed to start after applying BI 4.1 patch. Error in Install logs.

Note 1925761 - Error when starting the CCM. Crystal and Dashboards Servers don't start in the CMC.

In brief, the solution is to rollback the update; add in these missing 3rd party components, then reinstall the upgrade

again. After this the environment is recovered.

For information, the following errors are captured installation logs:

ERROR: An unexpected internal error occurred. The CMS failed to start: CreateProcess error=14001, The

application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application

event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail. (FWM 23026)

& also in the Event Viewer's log:

Activation context generation failed for "E:\APPS\BI4\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI

4.0\win64_x64\SvcMgr.exe". Dependent Assembly

Microsoft.VC80.CRT,processorArchitecture="amd64",publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="win32",version="8.0.50727.6195"

could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis.

*upgrade info* BI 4.1 SP01 on Windows - missinginstallation prerequisites: Microsoft RedistributablePackage

Posted by Henry Banks Oct 28, 2013

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 20/43

I hope this information is of use to the community!

Regards,

H

5447 View s 24 Comments Tags: bi, w indow s, upgrade, missing, installation, prerequisite, 4.1, redistributable, hotf ix

Hello Techies,

Continuing with my blog on visualization objects exploration, here is the one for objects used in

Monitoring application. Let us see what I explored so far for monitoring application.

Queries for Probes

To list the available Probes SELECT SI_ID, SI_NAME, SI_CLASSNAME FROM CI_INFOOBJECTS WHERE SI_KIND='MON.PROBE'

AND SI_INSTANCE=0 Probes can be categorized as below based on their functionality as below

1. Diagnostics

2. Health

3. Hybrid

To list the Diagnostic Probes SELECT SI_ID,SI_NAME,SI_CLASSNAME FROM CI_INFOOBJECTS WHERE SI_KIND='MON.PROBE'

AND SI_PROBE_TYPE='DIAG' AND SI_INSTANCE=0

To list the Hybrid Probes SELECT SI_ID,SI_NAME,SI_CLASSNAME FROM CI_INFOOBJECTS WHERE SI_KIND='MON.PROBE'

AND SI_PROBE_TYPE='HYBRID' AND SI_INSTANCE=0 To list the Number of instances generated for probes (SI_CHILDREN)

SELECT SI_NAME,SI_CHILDREN FROM CI_INFOOBJECTS WHERE SI_KIND='MON.PROBE' AND

SI_INSTANCE=0 To list the Last Execution time and Run time of the probe

SELECT SI_ID,SI_NAME,SI_EXECTIME,SI_LAST_RUN_TIME FROM CI_INFOOBJECTS

WHERE SI_KIND='MON.PROBE' AND SI_INSTANCE=0

Queries for Watches

To get the list of Watches SELECT * FROM CI_APPOBJECTS WHERE SI_KIND= 'MON.ManagedEntityStatus'

To get the Caution and Danger rule of the watch SELECT SI_NAME,SI_AMBER_CONDITION, SI_RED_CONDITION FROM CI_APPOBJECTS

WHERE SI_KIND= 'MON.ManagedEntityStatus' AND SI_NAME='CentralManagementServer Watch'

BusinessObjects Query builder – Exploring MonitoringObjects

Posted by Manikandan Elumalai Oct 24, 2013

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 21/43

To get the Throttle and Notification settings of Caution and Danger rules of each watch

SELECT SI_NAME,SI_AMBER_THROTTLING_DETAILS, SI_RED_THROTTLING_DETAILS,

SI_NOTIFICATION_SETTINGS, SI_EMAIL_ENABLED_FOR_RED,SI_EMAIL_ENABLED_FOR_AMBER

FROM CI_APPOBJECTS WHERE SI_KIND= 'MON.ManagedEntityStatus' Hope this would be useful for those who are searching for monitoring application metadata.

Query Builder Blog series

Basics

BusinessObjects Query builder - Basics

BusinessObjects Query builder – Best practices & Usability

Sample Queries

BusinessObjects Query builder queries

BusinessObjects Query builder queries - Part II

BusinessObjects Query builder queries - Part III

BusinessObjects Query builder queries - Part IV

BusinessObjects Query builder – Exploring Visualization Objects

Use cases

BusinessObjects Environment assessment using Query builder

BusinessObjects Environment Cleanup using Query builder

BusinessObjects Query builder – What's New in BI 4.0

1902 View s 1 Comments Tags: query_builder

As Daylight Savings Time is about to come to an end, the more proactive system administrators are bound to start

wondering, "How will this affect me?"

To help answer this question, please visit this blog post from Joshua Kuhn. As you'll see, provided your patch

level isn't more than a couple years old, there's no need to fear DST.

That said, I will add one more (very minor) DST-related issue to the list, even though it will actually go away on its own

when we revert to standard time:

Described under Knowledge Base Article 1827233, the issue is with LifeCycle Manager scheduled jobs' timestamps

-- their run times are reported as being an hour later than their actual run times. The jobs still run at the correct times,

it is a display issue only. It's also been resolved for some time, since SAP BI 4.0 Patch 3.4 and Support Package 04,

and within all codestreams for SAP BI 4.1.

Beyond those, I'm here to reassure you that DST is a regular consideration in regression testing for all versions of

SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI and SAP Business Intelligence Platform -- and that I've done a ton of my own

sanity testing (in XI 3.1 SP6, BI 4.0 SP07, and in BI 4.1) as well, and am happy to report no new issues.

So, enjoy that extra hour of sleep!

-Mike

641 View s 5 Comments

Daylight Savings Time

Posted by Michael Richards Oct 23, 2013

Installation of SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.1 SP1

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.1 SP01 step bystep installation instructions

Posted by Vignesh Haridoss Oct 22, 2013

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 22/43

System level check:

To install the SAP BO BI platform 4.1 SP1 following minimum Hardware & Software requirements are to be

considered.

Server Memory Size (RAM) 8GB

Minimum Server Core 4 core

Disk Space 15GB (only server install space)

Operating System Windows Server 2008 x64 and above

Java version 6 and above

Windows Installer 3.5 and above

Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 and above

Step by step installation procedure for installing SBOP BI 4.1 SP1

1. Run the Setup.exe from the extracted BI software dump (folder name as per SMP “51046778”)

2. Installer takes some time to initialize so be patient. Choose the setup language as English and click “OK”.

3. Installer checks the pre-requisites and displays its status.

Microsoft .Net Framework is missing in our server. Hence the status is failed. You can continue to

install the BI 4.1 since it is optional (i.e., you can install the optional software after BI 4.1 installation). Click

“Next” to continue.

Note: Without fulfilling the Critical type pre-requisites you cannot proceed further.

4. Click “Next” to continue.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 23/43

5. Accept the license agreement and click “Next”.

6. Enter the product key provided by the SAP then click “Next” to continue.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 24/43

7. Choose the required language packages for the BI Platform “English” being the default.

8. Select the type of installation to continue. Choose “Custom/Expand” to customize the features of BI platform. Click

“Next”.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 25/43

9. Provide the installation directory for the BI Platform. The default path is “C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP Business

Objects\”.

10. Select the required features you want to install.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 26/43

Note:

Default Web Application server is Tomcat 7.0

Default Integrated Database is Sybase SQL Anywhere Database (Till BI 4.0 SP6, integrated Database for BI

Platform was MS SQL Server 2008 R2).

Click on “Disk Cost” to know the disk space will be occupied by the BI features after installation. Click “Next” to

continue.

11. Select the deployment type during install. There are two types

New BI deployment – to install the new BI platform

Expand BI deployment – used in clustering of BI platform

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 27/43

Choose “Start a new SAP BusinessObjects BI platform deployment” and click “Next”.

12. Provide a name for SIA Node and its port number. Default port number is 6410. Click Next.

13. Enter a port number for CMS. Default port number is 6400.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 28/43

14. Provide a password for the Administrator account and cluster key for BI Platform.

Administrator is the default BI platform account used to control and maintain the Server. Cluster key

is used to add a BI server to the existing server. These are encrypted and stored in the CMS and you

cannot retrieve it later if you forgot. Hence please store it somewhere safe. Also refrain from using special

characters (!,@,#,$,%, ,̂&,*) in administrator password and cluster key.

15. Provide the port number for Sybase SQL Anywhere and its “dba” account password. Since integrated DB is

Sybase you need to set the password for the CMS DB. Default port number of Sybase SQL Anywhere is 2638.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 29/43

16. Set the port number of Tomcat (Web Application server) for Connection, Shutdown and Redirect ports. Default

ports are

Connection Port - 8080

Shutdown Port - 8005

Redirect Port - 8443

17. Set the HTTP listening port for WACS and RESTFul Web Services. Default port for them is 6405.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 30/43

18. Provide the Subversion Repository details such as port number and repository password. Default port number is

3690.

19. Enable or disable the Solution Manager Diagnostics (SMD) Agent and Introscope Enterprise Manager. You can

able to enable these features after installation also. Hence you are skipping the configuration.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 31/43

20. Now click “Next” to start the installation.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 32/43

21. Installation may take hours based on your system configuration. Normally it would take max of 2hrs. It is better to

monitor the installation to observe the errors. You can look the setup engine log regularly to confirm that there are no

errors. The log would be in the following location.

<Inst_dir:\InstallData\logs\YYYY.MM.DD.HH.MM.SS\setupengine.txt>

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 33/43

22. SAP Business Objects BI Platform 4.1 SP01 has been successfully installed in your server. You can view the logs

to verify the installation.

7727 View s 6 Comments Tags: bi4.1, bi_platform_4.1, bi4.1_installation

Dear BI Community,

I’m really pleased to announce that BI 4 has arrived on the openSAP platform!

New openSAP course! "BI 4 Platform Innovation andImplementation" - Register today for Free!

Posted by Henry Banks Oct 18, 2013

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 34/43

Whether you’re an experienced Administrator preparing your project for a new implementation, or simply interested in

BI best-practices – this course will help you prepare for a successful deployment.

“BI 4 Platform Innovation and Implementation” is the latest openSAP course starting November 11th.

During this course, participants will have the opportunity to practice hands-on exercises in their own Amazon cloud-

based BI4.1 SP01 system.

This course will focus on the skills required to successfully install, configure, upgrade, and optimize the SAP®

BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence (BI) platform.

James Rapp and I cover the following topics during the training:

Week 1: Introduction, Architecture & Sizing

Week 2: Installation, Upgrade & Promotion

Week 3: Troubleshooting & Authentication

Week 4: Performance Optimization

Week 5: Final Exam

openSAP is based on the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) format which consists of weekly video lectures,

weekly assignments, discussion forums and a final exam.

Why not sign-up for the latest openSAP course “BI 4 Platform Innovation and Implementation” today, and put your

knowledge to work instantly!

Here's the registraton link https://open.sap.com/course/bifour1

I'm looking forward to seeing you there!

Regards,

H

p.s. *a little background information*

The first openSAP course concentrated on SAP HANA development. We saw almost 10 000 participants successfully

complete the course and receiving a graded record of achievement!

Feedback from participants has proven that the openSAP format works by enabling rapid up-skilling, cross-

collaboration between students, and learning real ‘under the hood’ topics.

3740 View s 26 Comments

This past week SAP’s Nadine Engler conducted the Selection Call BusinessObjects BI Platform for Customer

Connection.

The recording is available here: https://sap.emea.pgiconnect.com/p1ywlf6dgaj/

Things are subject to change, and legal disclaimer applies.

The purpose of this call was to review which of the requests submitted, which ones have been selected

Derek Wang was also a part of the call, as the SAP BI Platform Product Owner.

Influencing the Future of the BI Platform - CustomerConnection Selection Call Summary

Posted by Tammy Powlas Oct 13, 2013

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 35/43

Figure 1: Source: SAP

Figure 1 shows the stage of the BI Platform customer connection – the “select” phase.

Figure 2: Source: SAP

Figure 2 shows that 5 subscribers are needed for an improvement to be considered. The improvement

must be able to be deployed by support packages

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 36/43

Figure 3: Source: SAP

Figure 3 shows the BI Platform Customer Connection was initiated by France user group and it includes participants

from users worldwide

Of the 78 improvement requests submitted, 34 met the threshold

Figure 4: Source: SAP

Figure 4 shows items that were out of scope. SAP said ,any of them were for SAP BusinessObjects Web

Intelligence and other BI clients, and as such, SAP cannot accept them. Customers are encouraged to request a

Customer Connection for Web Intelligence next year.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 37/43

Figure 5: Source: SAP

Figure 5 violates design rules, so it is out of scope.

Figure 6: Source: SAP

Figure 6 lists requests that were deemed too big to be considered for inclusion in the customer connect.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 38/43

Figure 7: Source: SAP

Figure 7 shows the requests that have work arounds. As an example, 10617 – have capability in BI4.1 and customer

may not realize it exists, said Derek Wang.

Figure 8: Source: SAP

Figure 8 shows waterfall chart multi color support is coming to 4.1 SP2

Figure 9: Source: SAP

Figure 9 shows items released Targeted for 4.1 SP3 – end of March 2014

Figure 10: Source: SAP

Figure 10 is a summary of all the improvement requests for BI Platform.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 39/43

Figure 11: Source: SAP

Figure 11 shows the next steps. SAP said this is a short timeframe

At the end of delivery phase will present how it looks

Go to http://www.sapimprovementfinder.com to find improvements when they are available

Related Links:

Final Call - Customer Connect for BusinessObjects BI Platform – Don’t let an idea languish because of

4 votes

Customer Connection for the BI BusinessObjects Platform - See how you can influence SAP

Influencing via Customer Connection to Enable the Installed Base – Web Intelligence

Are you ready to influence SAP’s BI Platform solution? In more than one way…

At SAP d-code (formerly SAP TechEd) Las Vegas, add EA111 ASUG BusinessObjects BI Platform

Influence Council to your agenda

893 View s 4 Comments

Tags: teched, sapmentors, sapmentor, asug, sap_teched, w eb_intelligence, business_intelligence, bi_platform

John Mrozek of the SAP Strategic Engagements team provided this webcast on BI Admin Best Practices &

troubleshooting to ASUG. Surveys of ASUG members showed this was the top requested webcast. Note that so

much material was covered in this webcast I have to split it up in different parts.

Part one covered the system configuration wizard BI4.1 Admin Best Practices – System Configuration Wizard -

ASUG Webcast, Part 1

This blog covers Monitoring and some general suggestions. This will be in multiple parts.

Monitoring

John said he is amazed at how many people do not implement monitoring. When you first look at it, it appears

intimidating but if you read manuals you will understand how to do it.

BI4.1 Admin Best Practices – Part 2 Monitoring- ASUGWebcast

Posted by Tammy Powlas Oct 10, 2013

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 40/43

Figure 1: Source: SAP

John said this is like looking at the dashboard of your car; he said a good admin has this and monitors daily, with

different alerts. It should notify you if things are not good. You should monitor daily

Figure 2: Source: SAP

Server health is in Figure 2. The Server Status will tell you if failing or not.

Figure 3: Source: SAP

Look at setting in Figure 3 but if you forget to acknowledge and then it you get pinged unnecessarily on a Saturday.

He said you don’t want an annoying "seatbelt alert".

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 41/43

Figure 4: Source: SAP

By default is uses a Derby database which is OK if you have a small system. The Derby database need to be

manually refreshed.

He said to move to the audit database, as it is more robust for backup and failover.

General Suggestions

Figure 5: Source: SAP

When doing promotion management and you have recurring jobs and you move it over – look at object and calculate

dependencies. A schedule maybe brought over without its dependencies and you get some failed instances.

Figure 5 shows failed instances. To work around this, disable adaptive job server when promote recurring job.

Figure 6: Source: SAP

Figure 6 shows something obvious but John said you would be amazed how many people are not doing this. He said

to look at the admin guide and backup what is shown in Figure 6.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 42/43

Figure 7: Source: SAP

Figure 7 shows Hot backup. What happened before this feature, you start the backup, and user is doing actions and

now you have an inconsistent system. This feature takes a snapshot in time for the backup. Maximum duration is

higher than the maximum number you have.

Figure 8: Source: SAP

John said Figure 8 seems obvious: people run out of database space. You can have some corrupt records in

database and lead to problems which are difficult to diagnose. He suggested enable auto grow. “Do not corrupt your

database by running out of space”.

To be continued…

Subset of Question & AnswerQ: How does monitoring dashboard would affect the system performance?

A: 5 to 10% - not sure; depends on watches set up - suggest it up and test out

________________________________________________________________

Q: Is the Hot backup and HOT restore is recommended for BI 4.1? I remember that, from BI4.0 Hot backup is ok, but

never heard about HOT Restore? Please advise?

A: Definitively recommended.

If you are an ASUG member, ASUG is having a webcast dedicated to BI4.1 Monitoring and Auditing on November 12 -

register here.

Related Links:

BI4.1 System Configuration Wizard

BI4.1 System Configuration Wizard - Video

BI4.1 Admin Best Practices – System Configuration Wizard - ASUG Webcast, Part 1

Admin Guide

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=60 43/43

Follow SCNSite Index Contact Us SAP Help Portal

Privacy Terms of Use Legal Disclosure Copyright

1274 View s 0 Comments Tags: sapmentors, sapmentor, business_intelligence, bi_platform, bi41, bi_monitoring

1 … 3 4 5 6 7 … 17

PreviousNext