Migration/Upgrade Made Easy – SAP BO XI 3.1 web intelligence reports to BI 4.0
By: Rense Varughese
Target Audience
This document would help SAP Business Objects administrators/developers easily migrate/upgrade SAP BO XI 3.1 web intelligence reports to the BI 4.0/4.1 platform.
It avoids the use of Upgrade Management Tool especially when you are not looking at migrating the entire content of BO XI 3.1 to BI 4.0/4.1.
Objective
Upgrade Management Tool is often seen as a cumbersome approach to moving content from the XI environment to the new BI 4.0/4.1 platform. Also, UDT has its restrictions for allowing complete/incremental upgrade for the Windows and Unix BO server environments. This approach will save you a lot of time and effort if your source and target BO servers are on the Unix platform, no incremental upgrade with UDT is possible and/or you are looking at migrating only a few reports.
Solution
The below steps would help you bring the .wid file from BO XI 3.1 to BI 4.0 platform
1. Open the ‘Web Intelligence Rich Client’ from your BO XI 3.1 client tools.
2. Import the web intelligence document you wish to have in your target BI 4.0 platform from the CMS.
3. Save the document into your local machine with the two options checked – ‘Save for all users’ and ‘Remove document security’. This is the most important step here as it would now de-link this .wid file from the BO XI 3.1 CMS.
4. Now open the ‘Web Intelligence Rich Client’ from your BI 4.0 client tools and login with your BI 4.0 user credentials.
5. Browse to the location where you saved the .wid document in Step 3 and open it.
7. Change the source of this report to another universe/Bex connection.
6. Export it to the BI 4.0 repository. The report is now linked to your BI 4.0 CMS repository.
The above steps can also be followed for .unv files using Universe Designer in BO XI 3.1 and Universe Design Tool in BI 4.0.
IMPORTANT: In this method of moving objects, you always have to make sure that all necessary source objects are already available in the target environment. Only then will you be able to map all objects after ‘change source’. The underlying source should be migrated prior to the report. For example, if you are using .UNV to connect to BEx query in BOXI 3.1 and wish to use the new BICS functionality in BI 4.0, you do not need to bring in the .UNV but make sure to have the BEx query + OLAP connection available so that the webi report will have all or at least most of the source objects to identify when you do a ‘change source’. Wherein you find unresolved objects or ‘????’ shown in variables, you will have to manually assign the object.
Hi - Sorry to say but I am not agree with this approach. Reasons behind this.
1. This is not SAP recommended approach.
2. You must upgrade all the components associated with the reports.
3. Just opening the reports in 4.0 Env and apply the change source will not confirmed that you have actually upgraded the report.
4. What about the underlying source , if its .UNV its always advised to convert to .UNX
5. For any upgrade process it is advised to follow the SAP recommended approach and use the Upgrade Management Tool.
Hi Rohan,
Thanks for your comments. Please find below my answers.
1. TRUE. However, as you know, necessity is the mother of all inventions. We have a LINUX environment for our BO platforms and needed to migrate a few reports from BOXI 3.1 to BI 4.0. SAP recommends a full upgrade for all LINUX based BO paltforms (since LINUX -> LINUX incremental is not available, another way is incremental LINUX to WINDOWS and then full WINDOWS to LINUX ). For this, have the neither the time nor the resources.
2 & 3 . TRUE. In this method of moving objects, you always have to make sure that all necessary source objects are already available in the target environment. Only then will you be able to map all objects after 'change source'. I think I will now add a disclaimer in this document that there are going to be changes required after this method but it would be FAR FAR less than a full upgrade or in case of very complex web intelligence reports building one right from scratch!
4. TRUE. The underlying source should be migrated prior to the report. For example, if you are using .UNV to connect to BEx query in BOXI 3.1 and wish to use the new BICS functionality in BI 4.0, you do not need to bring in the .UNV but make sure to have the BEx query + OLAP connection available so that the webi report will have all or at least most of the source objects to identify when you do a 'change source'. Wherein you find unresolved objects or '????' shown in variables, you will have to manually assign the object.
5. already answered in point 1.
Rense,
I also VERY much dis-agree with approach. It will NOT work when:
1. More than ONE data source
2. If you are using Merged Dimensions, they will break
3. If you have created any variables using any of these Objects, they will also break.
You need to bring the UNX, Connections and WebI as a set. Many times when WebI does see the original source it could also break. In case when you use BICS you will need to bring the BICS connection and WebI as a set using Promotion Manager, this is used when going BI 4.x to BI 4.
If you the UMT from BI 4.1 w/ SP1, it works MUCH MUCH better.
Regards,
Ajay
Hi Ajay,
Please refer to my comments on Rohan's post.
KR,
Rense
How can we say that the method does not consume much time. Is it possible to open ; for e.g., 50 Files and ensure that all this process is performed and then moved to 4.0?
It definitely is very much time consuming from administrators perspective
not to mention this approach removes any possibility of CUID persistence between environments for future migrations or synchronization's.
This works for one time, couple reports approach and doesn't work if you have to move 100+ reports.
p.s.
UMT works very well for webi reports.
On *nix deployments simply use Import Wizard to generate biar files with just the stuff needed, then CLI UMT tool to import those into BI4.x and there you get simple incremental upgrade where you cannot have full GUI UMT.
Hi Denis,
Hence in the objective section I had mentioned 'you are looking at migrating only a few reports'.
Since I have *nix platform, will try to implement your suggestion. Thanks!
Even if you really want to migrate reports in this manner, what would be the feasibilty factor considering the security factor, right changes , folder structure etc.
In this context each time a new report has to be exported to a folder which should be existing in the sytem. Now what would be done if the folder itself is non-existant
But could you explain how and why should it affect CUID persistence?
For this method, I would be working totally on the rich client and would export it to the platform after or even in between making the different adjustments with the source.
So this report would be treated just like any other new webi report.
KR,
Rense
when you import document into WRC from CMS1 and then export it to CMS2 , CUID changes.
Hi Rense,
I require to migrate BO 3.1 to BO 4.1 using java.
Is there any possible way to do this?
e.g Converting BO 3.1 to RDL (Report Defination Language) format and then from RDL to BO 4.1 format.
I am a JAVA developer but a newbie to BO report; so sorry if above does not make a sense.
some rebean.jar libraries do allow java code to extract data from BO.
Can you please advice/help to clear my doubts?
Suraj,
You should raise your question as discussion after you have searched SCN for answers first as your question was answered many times already.
If you can't find the answers, then state more clearly what you are migrating exactly.
Upgrade guide also should be studied first.
Good Morning Denis,
My objective is to migrate BO 3.1 reports to BO 4.1 reports using JAVA.
Hence, I wanted to know if above is possible, using any open source libraries like rebean.wi.jar etc.
And if at all its possible then what approach should i adhere to:
1. Is it possible to convert data from BO 3.1 xsd to RDL and then from RDL to BO 4.1 ?
2. or Direct mapping of BO 3.1 XSD to BO 4.1 XSD can be done?
It would be very helpful if someone can guide me on this.
( As you mentioned, if this topic has been discussed previously; I will try and search SCN as well 🙂 )
What do you mean "My objective is to migrate BO 3.1 reports to BO 4.1 reports using JAVA" ??
BO4.1 already has all the tools to migrate reports. You want to write your own Java tool that will migrate reports ?
And what kind of reports are we talking about here ?
Yes Denis,
I want a JAVA tool to migrate from BO 3.1 to BO 4.1.
So I wanted to know if using java if its possible to migrate Webi reports from 3.1 to 4.1.
UMT is a java tool to migrate reports. It comes with Bi4.x for free and described in Upgrade Guide.
This is the wrong approach.
Case-in-point, here is a customer doing the same mistake, and the evidence of its detrimental knock-on effects: http://scn.sap.com/thread/3457627
Hi Henry,
I would say this approach works since the customer has already been using these reports for 2 quarter-closings without the errors mentioned in your SCN thread.
Br,
Rense