Source: Webi4Me
SAP BusinessObjects 4.2 SP08 Released
February 24th, 2020
Oh well I had this all planned for a Feb 14th release and ready to wish you all a Happy Valentines's Day ? but that wasn't meant to be.
Nearly a year after the release of SAP BI 4.2 SP07, I'm happy to announce today the latest Service Pack aka Support Package for SAP BI 4.2 - version 14.2.8.3426.
Released few days late according to the Q1 2020 Maintenance Schedule:
10/02/2020:
19/02/2020:
Source: Maintenance Schedule
Previous SAP BI 4.2 Support Pack releases:
- December 2017: SAP BI 4.2 SP05
- July 2018: SAP BI 4.2 SP06
- March 2019: SAP BI 4.2 SP07
What was released?
The usual suspects were released for a fresh Installation or Support Package:
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP08 Server
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP08 Client Tools
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP08 Live Office
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP08 Integration for SharePoint
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP08 NET SDK Runtime
- SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (Xcelsius) 4.2 SP08
- SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 4.2 SP08
- SAP Crystal Server 2016 SP08
- SBOP BI Platform 4.2 SP08 Crystal Reports for Enterprise
- SAP Crystal Reports 2016 SP08
What's New?
This is hopefully not coming as a surprise as it has been mentioned several times over the last few months but this Service Pack is not including new features. We are now in SAP BI 4.3 territory!
This update is about keeping the BI 4.2 lights on a bit longer by fixing bugs and adding few extra things to the PAM.
- More from SAP:
- LinkedIn Community:
Download Location
These packages are available from Software Downloads
Also see SAP Note 2896442
In my case, that's a good old 12.5 GB download!
Installing / Upgrading - How did it go?
My test environment is running on an AWS EC2 t2.xlarge. That's 4 Cores and 16GB RAM.
I have the following installed in SAP BI 4.2 SP07 with 3x Languages: English, French and Finnish.
- Installation: Well it took probably more time as always to unzip everything but all in all (without testing) it took about half day to patch everything. It well smoothly except for this .NET error but everything I have tested so far works.
- Results:
Documentation
The usual documents have been made available on the SAP Help Portal:
- SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.2 SP08 Installation Guide
- More Documents
BI Platform (SAP Help Portal)
SAP Analytics (SAP Help Portal)
Product Availability Matrix (PAM)
(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
- Important:
Expiry of SAP BI 4.1 (Priority One Maintenance) on 31/12/2020 (PAM)
Expiry of SAP BI 4.2 SP06 in February 2020: BI 4.2 Support Pack End of Life Dates
Additions to the Relational Data Sources:
| Amazon | EMR 5.20 Hive (Hive2) | 2.3.4 |
| Amazon | EMR 5.20 Hive (Hive2) | 2.3.4 |
| HP | Vertica | 9.2 |
| HP | Vertica | 9.2 |
| Microsoft | Excel * | 2019 |
| Microsoft | Access * | 2019 |
| Microsoft | SQL Server | 2017 |
| Oracle | Oracle Database | 19c |
| Oracle | Oracle Database | 19c |
| Oracle | Oracle Database | 19c |
| Oracle | Oracle Exadata Database Machine * | 19c |
| Oracle | Oracle Exadata Database Machine * | 19c |
| Pivotal | Greenplum* | 6.0 |
| Pivotal | Greenplum* | 6.0 |
| PostgreSQL | PostgreSQL | 11 |
| PostgreSQL | PostgreSQL | 11 |
| SAP | NW BW * | 7.5 SP15 |
| SAP | NW BW * | 7.5 SP15 |
| Snowflake | Snowflake | N/A |
| Snowflake | Snowflake | N/A |
Maintenance Schedule - What's Next?
- SAP BI 4.2 SP07:
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)
- SAP BI 4.2 SP08:
10.04.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 1 (14.2.8.3481)
08.05.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 2 (14.2.8.3503)
26.06.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 3 (14.2.8.3550)
07.08.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 4 (14.2.8.3594)
23.09.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 5 (14.2.8.3642)
28.10.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 6 (14.2.8.3671)
04.12.2020: SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 7 (14.2.8.3708)
27.01.2021: SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 8 (14.2.8.3759)
12.03.2021: SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 9 (14.2.8.3802)
Week 18 (May): SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 10
Week 26 (July): SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 11
Week 35 (Sept): SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 12
- SAP BI 4.2 SP09 (01.03.2021: 14.2.9.3791)
Source: Maintenance Schedule
What's Next... Next!?
Since it was announced at #SAPPHIRENOW 2018 and in my blog back in June 2018, a lot has happened with SAP BI 4.3.
"Early" BETA has come and gone back in late 2019.
"Standard" BETA is still ongoing and scheduled to close at the end of February 2020.
This is what we know about the roadmap so far:
SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3:
Q4 2019: SAP BI 4.3 (RTC) - "Early" and "Standard" BETA
Q2 2020: SAP BI 4.3 (GA)
Q4 2020: SAP BI 4.3 SP01
Source: Webi4Me
Source: SAP
Conclusion
As planned, not a significant release. Just bug fixes and minor updates to the PAM.
Except... It took me couple of weeks to notice that Snowflake is now supported! I thought we'd have to wait for SAP BI 4.3. Great #geeky news!
I have written a blog on how to make it work: https://blogs.sap.com/2020/03/12/snowflake-for-sap-businessobjects-4.2-sp08/
Looking forward to SAP BI 4.3 General Availability (GA) hopefully in Q2 2020!
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+
- SAP Managed Tags:
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