SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Suite 4.1 SP03 (SP3) Released
Announcement
You can download this update from the SAP Marketplace as a Full Install Package or Support Package.
What’s New?
Well to be honest… not much…
There are few Web Intelligence features and others but nothing exciting. Except perhaps the (too) long (and much) awaited Kill Session! It took so long, it must have been through a multi-million dollars development cycle. Most of you will appreciate this new feature, especially those of you with Concurrent Users (CALs).
See this good article covering the subject from: Kill Session in BI4.1 SP3
This alternative solution could also be useful: How to Delete Stale BI4 User Sessions with biUserSessionKillScript
Sources:
- Official Document: http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/sbo41/en/sbo41_whats_new_en.pdf
- SCN: SAP BusinessObjects BI4.1 SP3 What’s New
Supported Platform (Product Availability Matrix)
This is the main raison why I was awaiting for this Support Package. So many technologies weren’t supported with SP02 it was becoming a problem. Those of you for example with MS SQL 2012 SP1, IE 11, Oracle 12c, etc will know what I’m talking about.
Well there are some good and unfortunately bad news. Here is a short selection which will make a difference for me and most:
New in SP03:
- Oracle 12c (Universe)
- Microsoft SQL Server 2014 (Universe) – to be released on April 1st 2014
- Internet Explorer 11
- SharePoint 2013
Missing in SP03:
- Oracle 12c (System and Audit databases)
- Microsoft SQL Server 2014 (System and Audit databases) – to be released on April 1st 2014
- Tomcat 8 (could be because it’s still in BETA)
Anything else critically missing for you?
Source: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1 Supported Platforms (PAM)
Documentation
- SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.1 SP03 Install Guide, SAP Note 1981402
- SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite 4.1 SP03 Release Restrictions, SAP Note 1981454
- SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.1 SP03 Fixed Issues, SAP Note 1981455
- SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.1 SP03 Update Guide
- Other Resources: BI Platform
Forward Fit Plan
The SBOP Forward Fit Plan has not been updated yet but it appears SAP BI 4.1 SP03 includes the following Updates
- SAP BI 4.0 SP08 Patch 8.1
- SAP BI 4.0 SP08 Patch 8.2
- SAP BI 4.1 SP02 Patch 2.1
It is therefore missing as of today SAP BI 4.1 SP02 Patch 2.2, 2.3, 2.4. That’s a lot… All of those scheduled for SAP BI 4.1 SP03 Patch 3.1.
Source: SBOP Forward Fit Plan
First Impressions
We’ll be doing running tests over the next few days. I’ll post some comments if necessary. Personally I’ll be waiting for SAP BI 4.1 SP03 Patch 3.1 before installing this on site to make sure I’m covering as much fixes as possible.
On Friday, there were Updates ONLY
Now, there are FULL-PACKAGE installs for any of the tools & clients for new "greenfield" deployments.
Glad to see that SAP does that ASAP when they release a Service Pack.
Indeed. It was the same for SP02. On the release date it was UPDATES only.
Couple of days later it was then available as FULL PACKAGE.
Really good as in the past full packages would be every couple of SPs...
What makes you read that Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1 is missing? This is incorrect, SQL 2012 and its service packs are supported.
Tomcat 8 is still in beta stage, why do you consider that a critical miss?
Hi Greg, thanks for the comments.
Re Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1, it is not mentioned explicitly in the PAM. For other products, the PAM clearly mentions which SP version of which product is supported.
I know you work for SAP, are you saying to us all that Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1 is supported for both the System Database AND Reporting?
Yes, you are misunderstanding the PAM. where you see SP's listed it is a case of minimum required. SP's on a database are generally supported by reference.
Thanks for the explanation. I'll upgrade my MS SQL 2012 Server, test and update this article after results.
We have been running on SQL Server 2012 SP1 with 4.1 SP02 for audit, CMC and universe databases for a couple of months and have not had any issues with it.
Excellent news, thank you!
I'll update this article straight away!
Spent the last few evenings patching our Sandbox server up to SP3 from baseline SP2.
Each package (*even just the desktop tools like CR4E) takes a number of hours to run.
One place that it can hang for over 60 minutes is here...
Maybe it is just because our Sandbox is a VM...but would be interested in hearing anyone else's experience with patch-times (unzip - to - completed).
Thanks,
Mark
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Hi Mark,
Thanks for sharing.
Same here, it took a very long time... Over 2 hours.
I have English and 2 other languages though.
For me it was on a 4 Cores Hyper-V server which performs ok ish normally.
How many previous installations have been conducted on your server...? Do you install clients and platform on the same box...?
We install everything as it is a "Sandbox" environment...
Wondering if that is why it HANGS for so long at the Install Manifest part of each package...?
I would expect that many organizations have a similar "Sandbox" process.
Just tested this myself and yes, it took 6 hours to upgrade from 4.1 Sp2 🙁 .
I did it last Saturday - I think it took around 4+ hours...client side was much faster.
since I found once 50 gig in the installation logs I started to uninstall old patches to get space freed up - it takes about 15 Minutes for the setup to start after checking all the dependencies.... I have server and clients on my sandbox 😉