Technical Articles
SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 SP07 (SAP BI 4.2 SP7) Released!
Source: Webi4Me
Announcement:
SAP BusinessObjects 4.2 SP07 Released on
March 4th, 2019!
Here we go again! I’m happy to announce today the latest Service Pack aka Support Package for SAP BI 4.2 – version 14.2.7.3069.
Released just a day late from the planned Maintenance Schedule.
Source: Maintenance Schedule
What was released?
The usual suspects were released for a fresh Installation or Support Package:
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP07 Server
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP07 Client Tools
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP07 Live Office
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP07 Integration for SharePoint
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP07 NET SDK Runtime
- SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (Xcelsius) 4.2 SP07
- SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 4.2 SP07
- SAP Crystal Server 2016 SP07
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP07 Crystal Reports for Enterprise
- SAP Crystal Reports 2016 SP07
Previous SAP BI 4.2 Support Pack releases:
- December 2017: SAP BI 4.2 SP05
- July 2018: SAP BI 4.2 SP06
Download Location
These packages are available from Software Downloads:
- Installation:
Download: link
- Support Package:
Download: link
Installing / Upgrading – How did it go?
- Fresh Install
Installing on my Microsoft Azure Cloud VM Type: Standard B4ms (4 vcpus, 16 GB memory) took 1h 20 minutes.
- Upgrade
After downloading couple of files over 6GB+ in size, patching from SAP BI 4.2 SP06 to SP07 on my Amazon Web Services (AWS) Type: t2.xlarge (4 vcpus, 16 GB memory) took xyz minutes (in progress).
Note: Apache Tomcat was upgraded from version 8.5.13 to 8.5.32.
Note 1: I’ll let you know soon how I did my full and automated regression testing using 360Bind.
What’s New?
There is a lot of very good stuff released with Support Package 7 and the usual great blogs, videos, white papers, etc have been released already.
My favorites, everything for the Fiori BILaunchpad of course!
- What’s New in Web Intelligence and Semantic Layer:
SAP BI 4x: What’s New in Web Intelligence and Semantic Layer by Christian AH-SOON
SAP BI 4.2 SP7: What’s New In Web Intelligence and Semantic Layer by Christian AH-SOON
Web Intelligence Requests Released in SAP BI 4.2 SP7 (SAP Influence web site)
Semantic Layer Requests Released in SAP BI 4.2 SP7 (SAP Influence web site)
- What’s New in BIPlatform:
SAP BI 4.2 SP07 : What’s New in BIPlatform by Ashok Rajashekar
- Few webinars have made it out also:
What’s New in Web Intelligence and Semantic Layer by 360Suite and Gregory BOTTICCHIO on YouTube
What’s New in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4 2 SP07 by 360Suite and Maheshwar Singh (SAP) on YouTube
- More from SAP:
- LinkedIn Community:
Documentation
The usual documents have been made available on the SAP Help Portal:
- Fixed Issues
Update 05/03/2017: Fixed Issues
- SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.2 SP07 Installation Guide
- More Documents
BI Platform (SAP Help Portal)
SAP Analytics (SAP Help Portal)
Product Availability Matrix (Supported Platform)
Release to Customer (RTC):13.11.2015
General Availability (GA):08.03.2016
End of Mainstream Maintenance:31.12.2022
End of Priority One Support Phase:31.12.2024
- URLs:
SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 Supported Platforms (PAM)
Product Availability Matrix | SAP Support Portal
- Main additions:
OS:
Windows Server 2019
Oracle Linux 7.5
AIX 7.2 TL2
Browsers:
Microsoft EdgeHTML 17.x
Mozilla Firefox ESR 60.X
Safari 12
CMS Repository+Audit DB:
Oracle 18c
MySQL AB 8.0
Relational Data Sources:
MySQL 8.0
Postgre SQL 10
OLAP Data Sources:
Microsoft MSAS (Analysis Services) 2017
HANA:
SAP BW/4 HANA 1.0 SP09
Important:
Expiry of SAP BI 4.1 (Mainstream Maintenance) on 31/12/2018 (PAM)
Also the expiry of SAP BI 4.2 SP04 in November 2018: BI 4.2 Support Pack End of Life Dates
Maintenance Schedule – What’s Next?
- SAP BI 4.2 SP06:
Week 4 (January): SAP BI 4.2 SP06 – Patch 5
Week 10 (March): SAP BI 4.2 SP06 – Patch 6
Week 16 (April): SAP BI 4.2 SP06 – Patch 7
- SAP BI 4.2 SP07:
12.04.2019: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 1 (14.2.7.3116)
17.05.2019: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 2 (14.2.7.3130)
18.06.2019: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 3 (14.2.7.3168)
23.07.2019: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 4 (14.2.7.3200)
05.09.2019: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 5 (14.2.7.3248)
11.10.2019: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 6 (14.2.7.3285)
29.11.2019: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 7 (14.2.7.3334)
30.01.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 8 (14.2.7.3399)
11.03.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 9 (14.2.7.3437)
24.04.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 10 (14.2.7.3487)
06.06.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 11 (14.2.7.3536)
07.08.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 12 (14.2.7.3592)
26.09.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP07 Patch 13 (14.2.7.3644) (last one)
Source: Maintenance Schedule
What’s Next… Next!?
Since it was announced at #SAPPHIRENOW and in my blog earlier in June 2018, not much has come out regarding SAP BI 4.3.
I had the chance to Test Drive the new SAP BI 4.3 Launchpad though back in November 2018 at the UKISUG! Thanks again Ashok Rajashekar 🙂
This is what we know about the roadmap so far:
SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3:
Q4 2019: SAP BI 4.3 (RTC)
Q1 2020: SAP BI 4.2 (GA)
Source: SAP
Conclusion
Well… is this going to be the last service pack for SAP BI 4.2? Maybe not. But most probably the final one in terms of new features. I hear the guys at SAP are hard working in SAP BI 4.3 obviously.
For me, I look forward to working more with the Fiori BILaunchpad enhancements. I see more and more customers using it for their “less mature” BI users where basic self-service and all is required. And visualisation improvements of course.
I’m glad to see the continuous investment in SAP BusinessObjects. And finally some clarity on the roadmap. Sure the future in the long run will be a cloud solution with SAC or else but while we’re waiting for something that is a real replacement (or alternative), BOBJ will be there to support you until at least 2026!
Which is why I’m surprised to hear time and time again statements from companies thinking about dropping BOBJ for other BI vendor(s). BOBJ may not be the shiniest thing out there but it has a solid platform, arguably the best semantic layer (Universe) and analytics solutions (Webi, CR, AO, etc) which can more than “do the job” and dare I say, still compete.
Not even talking about the fact that major acquisition investment is done, and surely an annual maintenance is less than buying something new?
Never mind rebuilding everything and training your developers and end users!
And a bit of gray hair doesn’t hurt 🙂
Anyway! My thoughts! Clearly biased as an ex BOBJ employee and been doing this for 20 years!
What do you think? What are your plans? Issues? Experience? Please do share!
Keep in Touch!
Hope this blog was useful. Please do share your thoughts and comments.
Feel free to “like” and post it on social media!
Always happy to connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pperrier/
Take care… A+
Thank you!! We are eager for SP07 as it has some fixes to vulnerabilities that we desperately need, otherwise we wouldn’t be moving to SP07. Also, we won’t go with the base support pack (lessons learned), so are eagerly waiting their plans for Patch 1.
Re: plans / dropping BI for other vendors:
We are a partner so we re-sell this platform to our customers. It puts us in a bit more of a tough situation as we have to keep our customers happy, and if we’re selling a product that they don’t like and complain a lot about to our Product Managers, then we’re kind of forced to search for a platform that better suits their desires.
There’s some huge investments being made in other platforms, that are SUPER user friendly and much easier to use. You don’t have to be a “BI Developer” to use these platforms. A lot of our customers don’t have “BI Developers” on staff, so they’d expect it to work just like a spreadsheet (eg. no knowledge of what a query is/means).
We did take the leap and acquire other platforms. We tried 1 (the sales guy was really good, but the customers hated it). So that one is getting discontinued. We’re about ready to roll the next platform out later this month.
I’m of course disappointed our company has taken this approach as the SAP BI Platform is all that I know. Without SAC being where it needs to be, and without adequate dashboard tools (Xcelsius still beats Lumira, in our opinion), not many options left besides looking at different vendors.
And now that new functionality will greatly decrease as we await 4.3, this gives our executives all the more reasons to frown on the SAP BI Platform. I wish/hope that there are some HUGE innovations in 4.3 (not just migrating everything from DHTML over to Fiori, but like some serious platform innovations– something that no other competitor has (eg here, WOW!)). And I really need SAP to market these new innovations that we are patiently awaiting for so that I can continue to up-sell this platform in the midst of us bringing in the competitor’s product at the end of this month.
As Brian said, needed functionalities are coming too slowly compared to competitors
Thank you Patrick Perrier for the information.
We are doing Inplace upgrade our 4.1SP7 to 4.2SP6Patch5 but it took like 8-10hrs of time on Primary Node and we did number of iterations to ensure the Product has a bug or what. Worked with SAP Engineer and He confirmed that he is able to reproduce the same issue in house for 4.1SP7 to 4.2SP6PAtch 500 and he is suggesting to go with 4.2SP7.
Before we go with 4.2SP7 , I would like to know how much duration taken for In place Upgrade on One node.
Thank you Patrick - planning on a fresh install of 4.2 sp7 p1. I'm interested in your 360Bind results - any update?
Thank you KimM
Hello Kim,
I have used 360Bind successfully indeed for this task. So has many of our customers.
Let us get in touch offline so we can discuss further on what you would like to know.
Thank you.
Patrick
We are going to be upgrading from 4.1 sp9 probably to 4.2 sp7. Is this a stable product? Any gotcha's we should know about? We have over 1500 reports. I have done numerous upgrades so not looking for consulting - just experienced advice. I did the upgrade from XI3.1 - 4.1 about four years ago so i am familiar with UMT and the process. I was going to spin up a window 2016 server since we want sharepoint 2016 support - Thanks in advance
This might come late for you but 4.2 sp7 is very unstable with regard to Webi. It is ok for crystal reports.
where can i get the list of features of comparison of Webi, Crystal, AfO Lumira designer in Excel sheet ?
you can ask for the comparison of all this products from your SAP Account manager.