Enabling URL aliases in SAP URL iViews

INTRODUCTION

URL iViews

Mostly all projects in SAP Portal use iViews that retrieve content directly from a Web page.

A URL iView is a collection of Meta attributes, one of which is the URL to the information source. A built-in browser available in the URL iView Wizard and Editor enables you to navigate easily within a Web site in order to retrieve the URL of the source Web page to display in the iView.

There are some scenarios where URL iView’s are directly referring intranet link like a help link to SDN.( www.sdn.sap.com). For these the iView properties do not change on migration to different portal systems in landscape.

However there are scenarios where SAP Portal interacts with many different SAP systems like

• SAP Business Warehouse
• SAP Solman,
• SAP Governance Risk and Compliance solution ( GRC)
• SAP ECC and so on.

Users may use BW reports or launch other SAP systems using the links from SAP Portal.

For E.g. , URLs for the iView’s may start with

In above case the server names will change as per landscape and environments. They will be different for Development, Test and Production.

If the links are copied statically then there has to be manual action during migration of these iViews to change the URL for them.

Technical Solution:

To avoid the manual action and as a result any issue with that during migrations we can define URL aliases in Portal for all such backend systems.

Basis need to create http systems for all such backends and these systems should have proper parameters

1) Hostname – URL of the backend system

2) Port number – if any

3) Protocol- HTTPS

Once the httpsystems are configured the URL iViews need to be modified to get the URL from this system.

1.       System Creation

Basis needs to create Http Systems:

1) Go to System Administration- System Landscape and create systems with below parameters

A. Hostname – URL of the backend system

B. Port number – if any

C. Protocol- HTTPS

Once all backend systems are created you can check the httpsystems under System type.

2.  iViews Modification

Once the systems are tested for connection, we need to modify the iView properties :

1. System- Select the required HTTP system as per backend
2. Check the box “ Use system in URL”
3. URL has static content of URL which does not change with system landscape migrations

The URL will be called with the link as https://<SAB BW server name>/sap/bw/BEx at runtime.

3.   Migration :

During migration of iViews, Basis needs to create the systems in respective environments. There will be no manual action for iViews and they will point to corresponding backends as per landscape automatically using URL alias.

Conclusion

Thus we can have URL aliases for URL iViews to ensure no manual action for changing the iView’s during migrations and hence maintenance of iViews becomes easy.

Also in case the server names changes in future we just need to update the System alias for httpSystem and need not change all iViews using that server.