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Author's profile photo Thomas Jentsch

Metadata reporting for Web Intelligence Documents

With the CMS Data Access Driver, you can use a universe and native reporting clients to query the metadata of the CMS repository database (Unlock the CMS database with new data access driver for BI 4.2). Additional Plugins can be developed (Get more insights with BI CMS Data Access Driver – add Objects or Virtual Tables)

Metadata from Web Intelligence Documents

With the new Sample Plugin and Content. you can even query the metadata of Web Intelligence documents. Get this Plugin from the SAP Samples GitHub – https://github.com/SAP-samples/boe-custom-cms-data-access-driver and try it on your BI platform.

All the details can be found in the sample project, but in short: just copy the Data Access Driver to your server and deploy the content using the Promotion Management.

Query the Metadata

The reporting and analysis can be done in Web Intelligence, here some screenshots for the metadata results.

Document Variables

Document Reports

Document Dataproviders

How does it work

When you refresh the document, you can enter

  • the document name and
  • the request which returns the metadata (some more details below)

In the List of Values, you can see some example requests. Each GET request that starts with /documents/<documentID>/… can be used.

More details about the requests can be found in the Help portal BusinessObjects RESTful Web Service SDK User Guide for Web Intelligence and the BI Semantic Layer here the link of Getting the Variables of a Document.

How would it look like in a REST client

In a REST client, e.g. Postman, you would have to execute

  • the logon request, to get a session token
  • the Get Document Dataproviders request, using the session token
    (or any other request)

The results will be returned as XML or JSON:

Conclusion

With this Plugin you can use the RESTful API without any coding  as dataprovider and the results can be displayed and analysed in Web Intelligence.

The sample is designed to work with the RESTFul SDK for Web Intelligence. Semantic Layer and BI Platform requests cannot be used in the current version.

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      10 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Balaji Bathula
      Balaji Bathula

      Hi Thomas,

       

      i'm unable to  Download the content (universe, Web Intelligence samples and videos). so i'm not getting the report what you are showing in the above screenshot.

      Author's profile photo Thomas Jentsch
      Thomas Jentsch
      Blog Post Author

      You should be able to get the content from the installation:
      Starting with BI 4.2 SP4, the universe and samples can be found in the samples folder of the installation (..\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\Samples\bionbi

      Author's profile photo Balaji Bathula
      Balaji Bathula

      Thank you Thomas,

      in the BOE or Client tools installation folder ..\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI4.0\Samples\bionbi there is no above screenshot report - Custom data access sample rest API Json / Metadta.

      in this folder ..\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI4.0\Samples\bionbi there were few sample reports but not the report which i'm locking - above report to get the metadata of document. if possible can you copy the report ( document metadata) to SAP public documents cloud  and please send the link so i will download.

      Thanks

      Balaji

      Author's profile photo Thomas Jentsch
      Thomas Jentsch
      Blog Post Author

      This sample can be found in the Github repository: https://github.com/SAP-samples/boe-custom-cms-data-access-driver

      Author's profile photo Bathula Balaiji
      Bathula Balaiji

      Thanks Thomas,

      i have pulled the biar file from above github and exported to platform. report is just displaying ID and name no other columns pulling the data from json related objects, do i need to place any other jar files, please suggest me.

      Author's profile photo Thomas Jentsch
      Thomas Jentsch
      Blog Post Author

      Did you follow the steps from Installation & Configuration: https://github.com/SAP-samples/boe-custom-cms-data-access-driver/blob/main/deploy/README.md

      Author's profile photo Bathula Balaiji
      Bathula Balaiji
      • yes i deployed all three jar files to C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\dataAccess\connectionServer\drivers\java\cms_extensions.
      • restarted webi services.
      • promoted content.lcmbair file.
      • Custom Data Access - Sample - Rest API JSON Metadata - able to refresh after deploying jar files in location C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\dataAccess\connectionServer\drivers\java\cms_extensions.
      • but metadata information is not pulling like list of the objects used in the report.
      Author's profile photo Thomas Jentsch
      Thomas Jentsch
      Blog Post Author

      Did you test the content in the universe as explained ?

      Author's profile photo Bathula Balaiji
      Bathula Balaiji

      yes , i tested the content from information designer tool also, its pulling only ID , name no details for the columns - level, path, json.name, value.

      Author's profile photo Thomas Jentsch
      Thomas Jentsch
      Blog Post Author

      so it seems to be a problem with the JAR files.
      Sorry, cannot support further.