Technical Articles

Roman Gorbenko

January 30, 2020 3 minute read

SAP BW (demo) and Microsoft PowerBI Desktop. Step by step guide

Prerequisites

You installed SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP Developer Edition

For example, you did it in the cloud with this Step-by-step guide

Link: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/12/15/sap-netweaver-as-abap-developer-edition-7.52-sp04-in-yandex-cloud.-binary-installation.-step-by-step-guide/

Explore your new developer SAP system you find that SAP_BW (SAP Business Warehouse) component installed, transaction RSA1 properly working and a lof of BI pre-delivered content exists in the system. For learning purpose your want use querying tool for existing demo InfoObjects (InfoCubes, DSO and so on)

For example, you want to use Microsoft PowerBI Desktop on your Windows machine for this purpose.

Resolution

As we see in this MS guide

Link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-sap-bw-connector

Mandatory requirement for connection between MS PowerBI and SAP BW is installed SAP Net Connector

Quote:

“Implementation 2.0 of the SAP Connector requires the SAP .NET Connector 3.0. Access to the download requires a valid S-user. Contact your SAP Basis team to get the SAP .NET Connector 3.0”

Lucky peoples with S-user can download SAP Connector from Support Portal – https://support.sap.com/en/product/connectors/msnet.html

Resolution for users who don’t have S-user account and who can’t download files from SAP Support Portal

If we consider installation media closer we can find Connector here –

<extracted path>\client\SAPGUI4Windows\BD_NW_7.0_Presentation_7.50_Comp._2_\PRES1\GUI\WINDOWS\Win32\System64\SAP .NET Connector\.NET40\

OK, In this point we must add this DLLs’ to GAC ( Global Assembly Cache )

An Easy way for lucky peoples who have Installed Microsoft Visual Studio:

cmd

gacutil -i <assembly name>

Link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/app-domains/install-assembly-into-gac

Resolution for users who don’t have Visual Studio IDE and who can’t use gacutil

If we consider PowerShell (this tool basically exists in each Windows machine by default) closer we can find related for our purpose functional:

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load(“System.EnterpriseServices, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a”)

$publish = New-Object System.EnterpriseServices.Internal.Publish

$publish.GacInstall(“<extracted path>\client\SAPGUI4Windows\BD_NW_7.0_Presentation_7.50_Comp._2_\PRES1\GUI\WINDOWS\Win32\System64\SAP .NET Connector\.NET40\sapnco_utils.dll”)

$publish.GacInstall(“<extracted path>\client\SAPGUI4Windows\BD_NW_7.0_Presentation_7.50_Comp._2_\PRES1\GUI\WINDOWS\Win32\System64\SAP .NET Connector\.NET40\sapnco.dll”)

$publish.GacInstall(“<extracted path>\client\SAPGUI4Windows\BD_NW_7.0_Presentation_7.50_Comp._2_\PRES1\GUI\WINDOWS\Win32\System64\SAP .NET Connector\.NET40\rscp4n.dll”)

$publish.GacInstall(“<extracted path>\client\SAPGUI4Windows\BD_NW_7.0_Presentation_7.50_Comp._2_\PRES1\GUI\WINDOWS\Win32\System64\SAP .NET Connector\.NET40\libicudecnumber.dll”)

Run Microsoft PowerBI and try to connect to your SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP Developer Edition

Connection example:

After the connection is successfully established you can obtain data from BW

File – Get Data – SAP Business Warehouse Application Server

List of Objects available for querying

For example, InfoCube – 2CREPM_PRODUCT [1]

Everything works correctly

Conclusion

Microsoft PowerBI Desktop is a very popular BI-tool

Some trick how to use it with SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP Developer Edition are provided

1 Comment

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Hasmatulla Katpadi

May 11, 2020 at 9:29 pm

Hi @gorbenko-teh,

In order to establish the direct connectivity between the Power BI Published report (on Report Server), what components of SAP BW needs to be installed on the Report Server?

Thanks,

Hasmath