Microsoft Power BI and SAP BW Data Warehouse Connectivity step by step

Microsoft Power BI and SAP BW Data Warehouse Connectivity step by step:

On March 24, 2016, Microsoft Power BI team did a commendable job by releasing the preview of the functionality to connect to SAP BW Data Warehouse Cube directly from within Power BI Desktop. We were successful in Connecting to the SAP BW Data Warehouse and this document basically gives a step by step demo of connecting to SAP BW since this is a new feature.

Prerequisites:

1. Before going further in this document please make sure that you have downloaded and installed the most recent version of Microsoft Power BI Desktop tool from Here (Version: 2.33.4337.281 64-bit (March, 2016)   )

2.Make Sure to activate the new preview feature by navigating to Menu–> Options –> Preview Features  and checking the SAP BusinessWarehouse Connector option as shown below.

3.  Download the most Recent version of librfc32.dll 64-bit version from Support Packages and Patches | SAP Support Portal , take your Basis Admin’s help.Place the file in your systems C:\Windows\System32 location .

4.  Download the latest Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 from here

5. Make sure that Your Basis Administrator has disabled the Single Sign On option for your user account and enabled the Logon using Username/Password option.

Step: 1 Click on the Get Data option and browse to below Location

Database –> SAP Business Warehouse Server

                                                                Figure 1

Step: 2

Provide the Server credentials of your SAP BW system that you are going to log in. If you are not aware of the details, contact your Basis Administrator.

                                                            Figure 2

Step: 3

The system prompts for the User name and Password. Provide the SAP BW server login details provided to you by Basis Administrator (See Prerequisite # 2 above)

                                                          Figure 3

Step: 4

Once the logon credentials are verified, we get the Navigator as below and can access all the Cubes (Essentially the BEx Queries underneath)

                                                                 Figure 4

You can select the Key Figures and Characteristics from the Cube/BEx Query and start building your Dashboards/Reports now.

Side Notes:

1. 1. Accessing the Data Source Credentials:

Currently the system asks for the Login Credentials only once at the time of login and then saves them to the Data Source as Settings. You can follow the below steps to go and edit the settings.

i) Navigate to the Data Source Settings from the menu as shown in below screenshot

                                                       Figure 5

ii) Search for your SAP BW server name in the Data source settings and select the Edit option.

  As shown above (Figure 6), the Data Source setting has two settings.

Credentials: Clicking the Edit button on the Credentials screen gives you the option to change the User name and Password as shown below.

Privacy Level: Which has the below options

Once you have changed the settings press done and close the window and reconnect to the Server again to providing the server details to access the SAP Cube with new credentials

Issues yet to be resolved:

        1)    The current version does not provide any option to enable the Single- Sign on for logging in to SAP BW system, which                    may hinder in the complete adoption of this feature as most organizations have Single- Sign on as a policy.

        2)    The Credential option is a very basic one and can have more options similar to the Web Data source Settings option as                   shown below :

Hope this document will be helpful .Any comments, suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

Vinay