How to fix error when the OLAP connection gets deleted
Applies to:
SAP BI Analytic. Business Intelligence Tools | BI & Analytics | SAP
Summary
This Document describes how to fix the error which occurs when the developer accidentally deletes the connection.
Author : Lakshminarasimhan Narasimhamurthy
Company : Electronic Government Authority, Ras Al Khaimah
Created on : 04/SEP/2015
Author Bio
Lakshminarasimhan Narasimhamurthy is BW certified and ABAP certified consultant and worked on multiple implementation, development and support project’s within India and outside of India in SAP BW, BI and ABAP. He has worked for fortune 500 clients like Nestle, Warner Bros, General Electric. He is strong in HANA modeling and strong in BO/BI tools like WEBI, Dashboard, IDT, Lumira.
Scenario –
We have a report created over an OLAP connection and by mistake another developer has deleted this OLAP connection. This document gives solution to handle such case.
Step by step approach –
We have an OLAP connection inside the folder “Lakshminarasimhan”.
The OLAP connection is pointing to the BEx.
This BEx query is going to be the DataSource for our WEBI.
Note –
OLAP connection can point to
- Individual BEx query
(or)
- Infoprovider ( All BEx queries within the Infoprovider are available for reporting)
(or)
- BW server ( All BEx queries of all Infoproviders can be accessed)
I have created a simple WEBI document given below.
The report shows the difference between the case registration date and the case judgment date which gives the time take to give the judgment.
The query is executing fine. Now another developer has deleted the OLAP connection by mistake and the report throws the below error.
First Error, when the user tries to refresh the report –
Second error, when we go to the WEBI report in the design mode and then edit the WEBI with data and then “Data Access” —– “Edit”
Now we try to check if the BEx query has been deleted or the BEx query “Allow external access” check box has been removed etc, finally we identify that the OLAP connection is missing. Now we create a new connection to the BEx query. In WEBI we have an option “Change Source” .
Select “Specify a new data source” and then select the BEx query,all the mappings will be tested by the system. The system checks if all the characteristics and key figures used in the WEBI are existing in BEx query with same technical name and description.
If suppose a key figure is missing in the BEx query but being used in the WEBI report then we will have the below message for the particular key figure being highlighted with yellow tool tip
You can reinsert the missing key figure and then try the same process again. Now all of the mappings are done and successful.
The report is working fine again.
Other references —
BI Platform Analytics | Business Intelligence | SAP
Thanks to my colleague’s Balu Renganathan and Gowri Shankar.
BO should not allow deleting used OLAP connection in the first place.
What if deleted OLAP connection was used in 100+ reports? I use 'Change Source' technique quite frequently to consolidate back end BEx queries and it is not the speediest, especially with BEx. It could take days to repair affected reports.
Another issue with deleted OLAP connections is that there is no way easy determining which BO reports were affected by deleted OLAP unless scheduled report fails or user reports report failure.
Problem with instructions above is that it only works for WEBI report. Crystal does not offer similar functionality of 'Change Source'
Please vote for the enhancement request that would prevent this from happening in the first place.
Allow listing all the reports in BO that uses a specific Bex Query and/or OLAP connection : View Idea
Thanks for your comments. Yes you idea make sense and I have voted in it favor.