Lessons Learned: Upgrading from BO 4.0 SP4 to BO 4.1 SP4

We recently upgraded from BO 4.0 SP4 to BO 4.1 SP4. This was my first upgrade and I would have loved to find something like this on SCN (maybe there is and I just didn’t search hard enough). We all know 4.1 is old news, but I thought there might still be a few people who haven’t gone through the upgrade yet, so here goes:

We originally planned to go to SP3, but ran into a few bugs that were only fixed in SP4 at that time, so ended up at SP4.

1. Dashboard Design:

1.1

Our existing dashboards gave the following error (when launched in EP Portal):

” While trying to invoke the method java.lang.String.toUpperCase(java.util.Locale) of a null object loaded from local variable ‘memberCountLimitNull’ “

We used SAP Netweaver BW Connections. The errors were caused by BEx queries that had undergone some sort of “structure” change after the BW upgrade. We had about 5 connections in 2 dashboards that changed; each connection was a different case than the one before.

Solution: Delete and recreate the connections causing errors.

1.2

It was hard to find the connections that were causing the errors because another thing we picked up is that the connection preview did not work anymore. It gave the following error:

“Could not connect to BI Query. Make sure the request URL is valid and verify the network connection. “

We haven’t found a solution for this yet. We had to delete each connection one at a time, publish the dashboard and then check if there is one less error.

1.3

We also had another error in EP Portal when launcing the dashboards:

” Error while executing function module: BICS_PROV_GET_RESULT_SET “

Solution: This was caused due to timeouts in BW. We applied this note in BW 1980998 – GETWA_NOT_ASSIGNED during generic aggregation MIN/MAX

2. Client Tools:

2.1

We had the following logon errors with the client tools:

IDT – ” Communication error occured when trying to connevt to server xyz “

UDT – ” Cannot access the repository “

Webi RC – ” Logon failure due to an internal error “

Solution: From the CMC we manually configured the ports of the services. (By default they were set to auto assign)

2.2

In IDT we are also unable to create a relational connection to SAP ERP 6:

” Fail to create an instance of Job : com/businessobjects/i18n/locale/BoLocale “

Solution: This is a bug, it’s resolved in one of the patches.

3. Launchpad:

3.1

The Folder links did not work automatically. We configured the default folder URL (new feature in 4.1 SP3) by following this link:

Solution: Direct Links to Folders (4.1 SP3) (Comments)

3.2

We had an issue with scheduling Webi reports, they did not run for the dates we specified in the prompts, it was way out (more than a century). This was a big issue for us.

Solution: Upgrade to SP4. This was the main reason we went from SP3 to SP4.

3.3

Searching for documents on the BI Launchpad returned an error:

” An error occured while searching.: Unable to find servers in CMS xyz and cluster @xyz with kind pjs and service PlatformSearchService0CA. All such servers could be down or disabled by the administrator “

Solution: Recreate the index files on OS level then stop start the APS.

4. Webi:

4.1

We had a few Java issues with the Applet mode in the BI Launchpad. First error occured when we tried to create a new webi report in applet mode:

” Unspecified error ivoking method or accessing property “onChangeDocID” “

Solution: We had to upgrade our Java to version 7 update 51 or higher. 1933283 – Error: “Unspecified error invoking method or accessing property “onChangeDocID” ” when refreshing a new WebI report after choosing query elements

4.2

After doing the above, the users came across an error when using Applet mode:

” Web intelligence Applet cannot be loaded, please make sure you have installed a Java virtual machine. “

Solution: Something else we picked up is that if you run 64bit IE, you need to have installed 64bit Java. If you run 64bit IE, and you have 32bit Java installed, you get the error.

4.3

When refreshing a webi report (on a BEx Query) in HTML mode and filtering in the BEx prompts, we picked up that if you select a value and then decide to remove it from the selection, the blank selection is then automatically populated with [EMPTY_VALUE]. this causes the refresh to fail when you run the report:

” System xyz: Incorrect value “[EMPTY_VALUE]” for data scurce variable abc “

Solution: This is a bug. See this post for more info Webi BEx Query Prompt default [EMPTY_VALUE] when removing selected values BO4.1

4.4

Some of our existing Webi report variables were not calculating correct. This this was easy to spot in the charts.

Solution: Recreate the variables. Clear the entire formulae and recreate it.

4.5

Some of the existing reports were empty (no data).

Solution: Remove and readd the filters on the reports components

4.6

When refreshing an existing report or creating a new report based on a universe to BW, we had the following error:

” Database error: Unable to connect to SAP BW server Could not convert from 4103 codepage to 1100 codepagerc = 2048. “

Solution: This was due to using SSO to connect to BW. This is a bug. We created a system connection user and maintained the uthorizations from the CMC. See this note for more info (did not resolve our issue) 2037630 – Webi reports based off of SSO enabled universes fail with codepage conversion error

5. CMC:

5.1

Promotion manager was unable to connect to an upgraded system and so we were unable to promonte:

” Could not reach CMS xyz. Specify the correct host and port and and check for network issues “

Solution: Upgrade BO4.0 to BO4.1. Promotion Manager: Could not reach CMS

Summary:

There are a few more where these came from. So why upgrade? Was it worth it?

Absolutely! BO 4.1 is much more stable than BO 4.0. The added features also makes it well worth your while.

Hope there is someone out there who found this usefull.

Regards

Antonette 🙂