Dashboards Backward Compatibility

Applies to:

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0 SP4, SP6. For more information, visit the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards homepage.

Summary

This article describes the steps to make the dashboard files built with latest version of BusinessObjects Dashboards compatible with older version or to an older service pack within same version. The content in this article is intended for all those developers in Dashboards space who are dealing with the backward compatibility issue facing error message when opening files built on latest versions on the version of dashboards client they have one local machine. Steps in this article take an example of making Dashboards 4.0 SP6 XLF file to a Dashboards 4.0 SP4 compatible.

Author: Mallikarjuna Chary Narayandas

Company: Gyansys Inc.

Created on: September 14, 2013

Author Bio

The author has worked on several SAP BusinessObjects projects and has experience on using all the SAPBusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform tools. Author has experienceon working with SAPBusinessObjects mobile including designing and accessing BusinessObjects content (Web Intelligence Reports, Crystal Reports, Dashboards, Analysis and Information Spaces) through IPad / IPhone / Android.

Introduction

This article describes the steps to make the dashboard files built with latest version of BusinessObjects Dashboards compatible with older version or to an older service pack within same version. The content in this article is intended for all those developers in Dashboards space who are dealing with the backward compatibility issue facing error message when opening files built on latest versions on the version of dashboards client they have one local machine. Steps in this article take an example of making Dashboards 4.0 SP6 XLF file to a Dashboards 4.0 SP4 compatible.

As some of us already know, any dashboard that was built on latest version than your local client version cannot be opened straightway from your machine as it throws error message as below due to backward compatibility problems. Below steps help us in making the file compatible to the version we use on our local machine, so that we can access the same for our activities without having to upgrade to version of dashboards on which the file was built.

Steps to make XLF file version compatible:

• Import latest SP6 XLF files to your system through Dashboards 4.0 SP6 Client tools or if you have the SP6 file shared by someone through email and you have issues opening it with your Dashboards Client tools version, first thing to do would be saving it to local disk and  then follow the steps below.

• Duplicate all the XLF file(s) into another folder, so that original file stays as is and conversion can be done/tried on duplicate copy to avoid loss due to any file corruptions etc. during the process.

• Convert SP6 XLF file to ZIP file using F2/Rename and changing the file name from .xlf extension to .zip extension

    

• Open the ZIP file and copy document.xml to any folder outside the zip file so it can be edited

    

• Right Click on document.xml and choose Edit option and update the tag version=”x.x” in the file to the version dashboard file has to be revert to. (Update the version from 6.2 to 6.1 to deal with conversion of SP6 to SP4 within 4.0 versions of dashboards. If the conversion is form BO 4.0 SP6 to Xcelsius 2008 SP3 version number would be updated as 6.2 to 5.3 etc.

          Note: document.xml to be edited has to be outside the zip folder.

    

    

• Once version update is done, Copy the edited document.xml back into the ZIP file and overwrite the existing one in ZIP file.

• Convert ZIP file to XLF file using F2 key or Right Click>Rename and change the file name from .zip extension to .xlf extension making it backward compatible.

• Open the .XLF file with your local client version you should not see any error now, if you have done the above process correctly with appropriate version numbers.

References and Related Content 

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards

Space: SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards | SCN

For more information, visit  SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Disclaimer and Liability Notice  

This document may discuss sample coding or other information that does not include SAP official interfaces and therefore is not supported by SAP. Changes made based on this information are not supported and can be overwritten during an upgrade.SAP will not be held liable for any damages caused by using or misusing the information, code or methods suggested in this document and anyone using these methods does so at his/her own risk.SAP offers no guarantees and assumes no responsibility or liability of any type with respect to the content of this technical article or code sample, including any liability resulting from incompatibility between the content within this document and the materials and services offered by SAP. You agree that you will not hold, or seek to hold, SAP responsible or liable with respect to the content of this document