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. 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
Thanks for sharing step by step document Vinay.
Thanks Prasad .
Thanks for sharing. This feature is long waited.
I get an error saying 'Select one of the installed language' when trying to connect to our BW system. Does anyone know how to fix this? We only have EN and DE installed as logon languages to our BW system
Hi Søren
Thanks. I have come across this note that tries to solve the same issue that you are facing.
Note 1947488: Select one of the installed languages error when logging on to the system …
Do have a look at that. Hopefully it solves your error.
Thanks
Vinay
Thanks for the note Vinay. Might be relevant but what is the default logon language that the SAP BW connector in PowerBI desktop uses? I am not able to specify language for login anywhere in the connector.
Hi Søren
I was looking at the Language setting in Power BI Desktop and came across this setting. Can you please check what is your current setting ?
Navigate to Options--> Data Load --> Locale
Hopefully this helps .
Thanks
Vinay
Hi Vinay,
My default was danish but tried switching to both english and german and it still gave the same error. Both are languages we have installed according to the note. I noticed that every time I restart PowerBI desktop it defaults to danish locale - guess it picks it up from Windows.
Hi Søren,
I was able to fix the same error by changing my local machine language(see link):
http://www.nextofwindows.com/how-to-change-the-default-language-for-windows-7-logon-screen
Hi Sölvi,
Thanks. It worked. I hope though that it will be implemented to change this within PowerBI desktop
Br
Søren
Thanks for sharing Vinay! I was able to connect to our SAP BW and I can see InfoCubes with chars and keyfigs. I'm not seeing any BEx queries, though.
Also I'm not able to see any navigational attributes. Can you confirm that these are not available yet?
Rg. Erwin
@vinay : do you have any idea where the power bi desktop connect hassle free to the sap bw system. as long as there are some issue while connection. getting the error message as displayed.
Hi Vinay,
When we are trying to connect but we are encountering this error as shown below. We have followed all the steps mentioned in the blog above -
Hi Vinay,
Could you please detail the way to select, download and install on my PC the right "librfc32.dll 64-bit version"
I have still the following Error :
Your help will be highly appreciated
Hi Rama,
I encounter now the same error as your's.
Have you find a way to resolve it ?
Hi Pierre,
Contact your basis team member and get the appropriate BW server name to be given, that may solve your issue.
Thanks
Prithvi
Hi Vinay,
Thanks for the step by step doc...on successful connection to BW, I could see list of infocubes and Bex queries....however my concern/observation is all Bex queries related to selected infocube OR all DSOs are not listed in the Navigator screen. Could locate only few DSOs/infocubes, inspite they are available in the backend/SAP BW.
Can you please share your comment on this...
Thanks
Prithvi
found the reason for this...it is displaying only those queries and data targets which are enabled to be accessible out of SAP.
Thanks
Prithvi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wko9F0nwzxY&feature=youtu.be
Hi All ,
I would like to know basis information usage of Power BI on Top of BW and HANA and SAP Business Object Cloud ( Cloud for analytics )
I Believe this product is not matured as long as connecting SAP BW and HANA. Since its doesn't support variable fully and security as this is on cloud.
There are some issue like FU_NOT_FOUND which I saw in the Power BI Forum on BW Connector which is not addressed so far ?
Will this be an Enterprise reporting ? Since its on cloud and How about the security profile and Authorization ? How many customers are using the Power BI ?
Similar Product SAP Business Objects Cloud ( Cloud for analytics ) comes with same user interface like Power BI also its connects to all the SAP Sources ( ERP , BW , HANA , success factor ) with Analytics and Planning model in built.
Did anyone performed the evaluation and testing on this different Product ?
Thanks for your valuable comments !
Hi,
I have windows 64 bit on my computer but running Power BI 32 bits, should I install the file librfc32.dll 32 bits ? The most recent version I found in the software download of SAP is "Support Package SAP KERNEL 6.10 32-BIT Windows Server on IA32 32bit #Database independent", is it the correct one to put in the folder C:\Windows\System32 ?
Thanks,
Marc
Hi Marc,
The latest version of Power BI does not rely on librfc32.dll.
Instead for you to use the BW connector, you need to have SAP Client tools installed in your computer.
If you have problems with the latest version of Power BI and still have SAP Client tools installed - make sure you have your dll files in correct folder (syswow64 or system32)
Hi Sölvi,
What is the SAP client tool you are referring to ? Do you speak about "SAP Data Services Client Tools 4.2 SP07" ?
I have the Power BI desktop version 2.38.4491.282, that I have installed yesterday, so I guess it's the last one.
I Have SAP GUI and SAP Business explorer installed.
But make sure you have these DLLs in system32 and syswow64:
These files should already be in one of these folders.
I have also SAP GUI and SAP business explorer installed, but I have only the files icudt34.dll, icuin34.dll and icuuc34.dll in the folder syswow64, not the other files. Do you know how I can get them ? I'm surprised to not have the same files than you even if I have both SAP GUI and SAP business explorer.
Talk to the SAP Basis guys in your company, they can download these files from the sap download center
My basis team was able to download SAP NW RFC SDK 7.20 -> Windows on x64 64bit, then I extracted the files from this SAR package and I pasted the 9 files you mentioned but I still have an error saying that there is a connection error. It's in french, but if I translate, it says "Access to SAP Business Warehouse needs installation of SAP client tools, especially the most recent version of SAP Netweaver RFC. For more information, check Use the SAP BW Connector in Power BI Desktop | Microsoft Power BI
I get this error message after entering my SAP BW system, user ID and password.
Marc,
I am getting the similar Connection issue, even though I have all the files in my System 32 directory.
Why do we need them in both directories? and not only System32?
Only files icudt34.dll, icuin34.dll and icuuc34.dll are in the SYSWOW64 Folder (they were always there).
I added all the files listed above in the System32 Folder. Power BI is using them, as I no longer get the error I used to get. But now I am getting an RFCOpenConnection Failure - Password and Name is correct.
If you are upgrading from the version of PowerBI where BW-connectivity was a "preview" feature, you need to REMOVE the reference to the old LIBRFC32.DLL in your PATH environment variable.
What we did is:
1. Downloaded SAP NW RFC SDK 7.20 - Patch 40 from SAP Support (Search for SAP NW RFC SDK).
2. Expanded the SAR file to create the nwrfcsdk folder which contains all the files you need.
3. Copied the nwrfcsdk folder to C:\Program Files\sap (because these are 64-bit libraries).
3. Updated the PATH environment variable to include C:\Program Files\sap\nwrfcsdk\lib
4. Removed LIBRFC32.DLL from C:\windows\system32 (clean up the previous version).
And then we could get PowerBI to connect to our BW.
Hope this is helpful.
Hi Corey,
I'm not upgrading the version of Power BI, I have installed the last one directly.
Where do you define the PATH environment variable in Power BI ? I don't find it in the options.
Marc
Hi Mark. You don't have to define the PATH environment variable in PowerBI anywhere. You define it on your PC.
On and Windows 7 PC:
Right-click Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings
Click on "Environment variables"
Under System Variables at the bottom, find the variable "PATH". The PATH is usually a long list of directories. At the end of the list, add the location of the nwrfcsdk folder.
e,.g. C:\Program Files\sap\nwrfcsdk\lib
PowerBI will automatically search the PATH on your PC to find the libraries it needs.
Hope that helps!
Hi Corey,
Thanks for your help, I was able to change the variable on my laptop. Then I still got the error, but after 1 week and multiple restart, I was able to connect Power BI to SAP BW.
What I noticed is that Power BI doesn't display all the info providers of SAP BW and doesn't display the key of the field value but the text, is there any option to display all the info providers and to display the key instead of the text ? By example, I selected an info provider, selected the field material group and it does display the text of the value "MRO spare parts" instead of displaying the key 8034.
Marc
Hi Vinay, Marc, Corey, Solvi,
I am getting the following error, even though Name and Password is correct. Please help.
Note: I am connecting via VPN. Does that makes a difference?
Thanks
We gave up trying to connect BW to Power BI; it seems far too complicated for an Enterprise level product. In contrast Qlik & Tableau were able to connect to our BW system without any complexity at all just via the SAP GUI.
To request SSO in Power BI here is the link to vote : https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/15908233-single-sign-on-for-connection-to-sap-bw
Hello,
The "SAP Business Warehouse Connector" feature is not available in my Power BI Desktop.
Is it because I'm using the free version and not the premium one?
Please let me know if I'm missing something
Thank you
ALex
Hi,
SAP Business Warehouse connector preview feature is missing for me too. I am using "2.44.4675.521 64-bit (March 2017)" version.
Thanks
Srini
Hi Sirini,
In the March 2017 version, SAP BW connector is no longer a preview feature. If you select Get Data > More you will find the option to connect to SAP Business Warehouse.
David
Hi every one
I am using Power BI Report server and using power Bi connection with SAP BW i have build a report which i have uploaded onto the report server but when i am checking data source connection it is giving the below error.
is any one have any idea on this.
Karan Sehjpal