BW-BODS Integration – Part 1

Hi All,

These days, BODS is playing a very important role in the SAP system landscape.

Many customers use BODS to pull data from Non-SAP systems to SAP BW.

These documents are primarily intended for BW consultants who would like to know more about the Integration, Modelling and Transport mechanism related to BODS.

In this part 1 document, we will go through how to integrate BW and BODS using RFC connection.(This topic has been explained many a times in SDN. For making 2nd and 3rd part more meaningful, I have included the integration as Part 1.

Part 2 will help you to understand how modelling is done in BODS with BW as the data target (http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-52550)

Part 3 will help you to understand the transport mechanism in BODS(http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-52808)

Environment:

BODS – Version is 14.0.3.273(Also BO and BODS are installed in the same server)

BW – BW7.3 (where BODS is now available in the source systems list in BW)

BODS/BO server is running on Windows platform and the BW OS is HP-UX and database is Oracle.

Step 1:

Login to RSA1 Source systems and create a new connection under BO Dataservices.

Please note that for all BW versions prior to 7.3, you will not see BODS as a source system.

In such case, you will have to depend on ‘External System’ source system type for creating the connection.

Right click on BODS and press create

Give the required credentials

Give the Logical system name(in this case – BODSPB1) and Source system name(description and in this case it is Logical system for SAP BODSPB1) .Type and release is not mandatory.

Give a Program id (in this case it is SAPBODSPB1) . This is a very important step.

Important point to be noted here is that when you give details for external source system in RSA1,better dont give the gateway host and gateway service in case if you are not 100% sure about it(in simple words, keeps them blank)

See discussion here –> http://scn.sap.com/thread/3247518

The system itself will manipulate it(default gateway value) with the program id, provided you give the same(case sensitive) in both the ends(BW and BODS)

Save and go back and give the required credentials..

Give credentials like BODS Repository, Job Server, Back ground BW user, Password and so on.

The same can be seen in SM59 also under TCP/IP connections.

Now BO Dataservices will have a connection names BODSPB1 under it.

Now log into BODS Management console and give the corresponding BW server details.

The required BW credentials can be obtained in the context menu of the BW server in the SAP Logon pad.

RFC Program id is the same one SAPBODSPB1(case sensitive) which we had given in BW side.

The user used here is of type Service User.

For RFC to work as expected, the status should be in STARTED state.

Check the RFC connection in SM59 by using Test Connection option.

The connection test should be successful.

There can be lot of issues which might come in between during the configuration,and it depends on the  landscape in which you work:

Anyways, please find some points which you can check if you encounter any issues in between.These were  some of the solutions that were given by experts when we were facing some challenges in integrating BW with BODS.

1) There can be a problem in the gateway; you need to contact your basis team for this issue.The gateway for BW might not have been opened to connect the BODS server, for checking this we need to ping the command telnet <hostname of BO server> 3300 in the BW server. If it’s not listening, then gateway is the culprit.

2) Change the gateway to its port number.Find the port number in the services file (windows\ststem32\drivers\etc\) of a machine with the sap GUI installed.There is a chance that your BODS server doesn’t have the sapGUI installed and doesn’t have the services file and thus can’t translate the gateway name to a port number. Installing the sapGUI may also fix an issue setting up the RFC but not being able to see it in the list of available RFC connections in the BODS console.

3) Check the SAP system number. The gateway service should SAPGWXX where XX is ur SAP system number.

Hope this was useful. 😉

Regards,

Prabhith