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Author's profile photo Vishal Mour

SAP BI 4.2 SP05 : Triggering Schedule in BI Platform from BW – Part 1

DISCLAIMER

This document summarizes the planned enhancements in the next SAP BI 4.2 Support Package 5 in BIPlatform. As the SAP BI 4.2 SP5 content is still subject to change, please consider the below legal disclaimer statement:

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Overview

The idea here is to provide a tighter integration between SAP BW system and SAP BI Platform. With this integration, it will be possible to Trigger Report Schedule in SAP BusinessObejcts Platform based on “Data Load” event in BW. This approach provides an alternative of the existing File Based Event Scheduler specifically for reports based on BW data sources.

A new Event Type has been introduced in SAP BI Platform called as BW Events, which is available in CMC, Infoview and new BIL. From BW we have  introducing a new Process Type called as BOE Trigger Event.

Feature Availability *This list is tentative and subject to change*

These changes will be available from:

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.2 SP05 release.

From BW:

730 release – SP18

731 release – SP22

740 release – SP20 (Refer https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2517347 as shared by Moritz Kelm)

750 release – SP11

BW/4 HANA 1.00 – SP08

752 release – SP01

 

Details:

This is the first part of two part blog series.

In this blog I have done a walk through of Integration Steps between BW and BI Platform as well the BW event configuration and assignment in SAP BI Platform.

In the second blog I have done a walk through of the Process Type configuration in BW system.

 

Integration Steps:

Pre-requisite: X509 certificate based trusted authentication should be enabled for REST SDK. For more details on the you can refer BI Admin Guide 4.2 SP04 or refer below blog:

https://blogs.sap.com/2017/06/06/trusted-x509-authentication-support-in-sap-businessobjects-platform-rest-sdk-part-2/

1. Establishing Mutual Trust Between BOE and BW

Import BOE (WACS) server certificate in BW trust store (tx:strust)

Similarly import BW server certificate in BOE (WACS) server trust store.

WACS trust store should already be configured, details should be present under:

 

2. Create and Test: http Destination in ABAP

Go to transaction SM59 and mark the “HTTP connections to External Server” node and press create:

 

Enter details as shown below: WACS Server Host and https port and change to the “logon and security” tab:

Activate SSL and choose “DFAULT SSL Client (Standard)”:

If you execute connection test it will show success:

 

The success response indicates that the Trust connection has been established between BW and BI Platform.

Please Note: For SSL communication, SAP BI Platform uses version TLS 1.2/1.1. The same needs to be enabled in SAP BW system as well. Else due to cipher suite mismatch the connection might fail.

 

3. Create BW Event in CMC

New Event type called as BW Events is introduced.

Double click BW Events folder.

Create a new BW Event, provide the details and click ok.  You can also enable Alerts for this event.

The event will be created:

We can Create Multiple BW Events based on the requirement, ideally one for each Data Source such as Cube, DSO etc. on which your BI Platform report is created.

4. Assigning BW Event to Report

Right click report, and select Schedule. Goto Events -> BW events.

We should be able to see the list of BW events created under Available Events.

Select the right event and move it under Events to Wait for.

 

Set a recurrent schedule for the report.

 

5. Create a user in BOE

Logon to CMC -> Users and Groups. Create a new user having account name as BW system name.

In the below screenshot: W4D is the BW system name:

Assign appropriate Rights to this user. The user should be able to:

  • View BW Events
  • Trigger BW events

 

In the next blog we will look into how to configure Process Type in BW

Assigned Tags

      9 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Simon Kußmann
      Simon Kußmann

      Hi,

      earlier I read that the scheduling of AO workbooks requires a platform running on a windows server. Is it possible to use the scheduling on UNIX servers with 4.2 SP5?

      Thanks and best regards,

      Simon

      Author's profile photo Dave Bucher
      Dave Bucher

      It looks like OSS note 2517347 discusses this new capability.  This note itself cannot be implemented.  Does anyone know if this can be implemented thru OSS notes without upgrading to SP11?

      Author's profile photo Peter Michael von Schubert
      Peter Michael von Schubert

      Dear Vishal, first of all I am happy that this thread is available. But I have to say that the description generating the certificate was not usable for us. We tried it the way you described. But did not work. So we had to do it in an alternative way: Just creating SSL-Client PSE but requesting "Issuer Certificate" and importing the signature from BO-server (using openSSL). After we did this established RfC-connection works fine. And we had to activate "trust issuer certificate".

      Remark: we use BW 7.50 SP13, Kernel 753 Patch 227

      Maybe this will help others having same problems.

      Regards,
      Peter

      Author's profile photo Steven Verbesselt
      Steven Verbesselt

      Hi Peter,

       

      After following the blog it isn't working for us neither on Tomcat & WACS. The Trusted X509 Authentication to the WACS in a browser following the following the above blog is working fine.

      What do you mean  with "Just creating SSL-Client PSE but requesting “Issuer Certificate”"

      Where did you activate “trust issuer certificate”?

      Br

      Steven

      Author's profile photo Daniel Oppermann
      Daniel Oppermann

      Hi Vishal,

      thank you for this blog. We followed your description and were able to trigger events from a process chain. But now we are a facing a problem with Lumira Designer. If we try to create a new Document on the BI-Platform, we get the error "Failed to create document". It fails, because the WACS waits for a certifcate from the client. If we uncheck the flag "Enable Client Authentication" in the WACS-Properties, it is possible to create a new lumx-Document with Designer but we are not able trigger events from BW in BI anymore. Using X.509-Certificates for Logon with Lumira Designer at the BI is currently not a solution for us. Do you know any advice how we could solve this Problem?

      Best regards

      Daniel

       

      Author's profile photo Asen Kostadinov
      Asen Kostadinov

      Hi Vishal,

       

      Trying to follow your guide we reach to the point where we have to "Similarly import BW server certificate in BOE (WACS) server trust store."

      How should we achieve this?

      Using the keytool -import command and import the BW certificate in trustkeystore.jks?

      Would you please provide the steps for this?

      I do not find any other way of importing the BW certificate in WACS server trust store.

       

      Thank you

      Best Regards,

      Asen

      Author's profile photo Tilmann Starke
      Tilmann Starke

      Hi Vishal,

      good blog, thanks.

      I just want to mention one very important thing:

      If you are planning to trigger a SAP BO report again and again (for example during testing), you have to setup a "Daily" schedule with a very short time interval.

      I would recommend a recurrence "per minute" like this:

      Otherwise you will wonder why no trigger happens when you fire a SAP BW process chain again and again.

      Kind regards,

      Tilmann

      Author's profile photo Mel Waldner
      Mel Waldner

      Hi,

      Is it possible to create the BW RFC HTTP connection using credentials stored in the RFC, or must SSO be configured?

      Thanks,  Mel

       

      Author's profile photo BRUNO ASTORINO
      BRUNO ASTORINO

      Hello Vishal

      I have followed exactly ALL the steps of your blog. however in SAP BW transaction RSPC when I try to use my RFC (that is RC 200 with SSL enabled) it prompts for a  username and password and after if I try to suppress the prompt it leads to an error

      Enterprise authentication could not log you on. Please make sure your logon information is correct.(FWB 00008)

      can you address me to what could be wrong? the user I'm using is the same username created in BO. any hint?

      Bruno