All of us, who’ve been around in SAP BW for a while, will recognize the picture below. The ‘good old’ meta data (repository) available within a SAP BW system and accessable via transaction RSA1

But how to access this repository from ‘outside’ SAP BW. Thus without RSA1 and via a (web) URL?

• First of all we need to know which URL to use to access our BW system. To find out which URL to use, transaction SMICM comes in handy. After executing SMICM, go to the ‘services’ information (via SHIFT+F1) and the following information will be shown

(For confidentiality purposes I’ve blurred/greyed out/removed some information in the above (and below) pictures)

• When the Host Name is not completely shown (via SMICM ->services), transaction SE37 offers a solution. Start SE37 and execute/test a function module called RSBB_URL_PREFIX_GET

• Input parameter I_HANDLERCLASS should be filled with the value CL_RSR_WWW_HTTP

• When executing the function module with the above mentioned input parameter value, the following output will be provided

• Output parameter E_URL_PREFIX (as marked with a red box in the picture above) will give you the entire/complete URL which can be used to access the BW system via a webbrowser.

Beware: The port number, in this case 8100, is not correct! The port number delivered by transaction SMICM, in this case 3299 (see the red box in the first picture), should be used

• Use the URL_PREFIX in combination with the SMICM port number to generate the following string:

http://ic**blur**.ics-eu**blur**.com:3299/SAP/BW/DOC/METADATA/?page=BW_O_TYPES&SystemID=BHDCLNT100

(**blur** : for confidentialty reasons I’ve removed parts of the URL)

(BW_O_TYPES: Enter this static text to receive an overview of active repository objects)

(BHDCLNT100: A concatenation of <systemID>, “CLNT” and  <clientnumber>)

• The following information will be shown when entering the above URL in a webbrowser

• When you’re not interested in the entire BW metadata repository, but, for example, in the metadata of a particular multiprovider, small adaptions have to be made to the URL. 

Let’s assume that I’m interested in the metadata of multiprovider MP_0039. In this case the following URL would do the trick

http://ic**blur**.ics-eu**blur**.com:3299/SAP/BW/DOC/METADATA/?page=BW_O_D&SystemID=BHDCLNT100&ClassID=MPRO&ID=MP_0039

• This URL can now be used to directly access the BW metadata from (almost) any webpage. For example when embedding SAP BW metadata within a sharepoint page

ps. As mentioned by Martin Maruskin : The service SAP/BW/DOC/METADATA needs to be activated in tcode SICF.

Execute transaction SICF. Navigate all the way down to SAP -> BW -> DOC -> METADATA, right click on METADATA and select activate