Enabling additional features in BI Platform after 4.2 upgrade

[shankarsgs]

SAP BI Platform 4.2 brought along lot of additional features with its release. Additional drivers for Apache Spark, Recycle Bin, BI Commenting solution and the new Admin cockpit are few to mention. If you have missed the awesome presentation from SAP, read http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-68333

If you are doing a fresh install, you would be presented a screen where you get to choose the features you would need. But upgrade does not work the same way. Some of the features comes built in which will be installed as applications or activated as web applications when the upgrade redeploys the new applications. By default SAP Upgrade installers will update only the existing features that you have enabled to ensure stability in the system.

So what you would need to do if you need to activate the new features? Read on to find out.

Active new features

For features that does not come bundled and require additional step, you would need to enable them manually. This involves the server going down during the phase, so treat it as maintenance downtime.

• Navigate to the “Program and features” applet from the Control panel. You can also use the shortcut to directly launch it from the run with the command “appwiz.cpl”.

• You will find individual entries for the SAP BI Platform base along with patch updates installed. Update install will be append with “update”

     This is similar for the BI Platform Add-ons like Design Studio and Lumira

• Right click on the base entry and select “Uninstall/Change”. Do not worry as it would not uninstall the platform.

• It would take some time depending on the system and you would see the Installer Setup running with three options. Select modify and proceed to Next

• Select your preferred language. It would usually show the languages that you had selected when you installed the base version. Continue with the next screen.

• The next screen is where our focus should be. It lists the set of features that are already present in the system. You also get an option to select the features that you need.

The unchecked box represent the features that are not installed and the checked box represent the features that are already installed. Select the features you would need to install (i.e. Apache Spark).

Click on next to proceed for the installation. The setup detects existing installation and like any upgrade it would take some time for the feature to get installed.

Once the installation is completed. You can now start using the feature that you had enabled.