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Author's profile photo Patrick Perrier

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP02 (SAP BI 4.3 SP2) Released!

SAP%20BI%204.3%20SP02%20-%20Christmas%20Banner

Source: Webi4Me

SAP BusinessObjects 4.3 SP02 Released

December 10th, 2021

Ho Ho Ho!  Merry Xmas 🎄

Over the years I have written several blogs following the new releases of SAP BusinessObjects and its Service Packs.  In fact I started it back in 2013 with the announcement of SAP BI 4.1 SP02!

(I didn’t see a point to start with SAP BI 4.0 😂)

Back then I was a BOBJ consultant for a boutique BI Consultancy in London (UK) and mostly on the road visiting customers at their workplace.  It was so painful to remember where to find all the resources I needed scattered around the different SAP sites or 3rd party resources from the community.

Having a one stop shop repository available on the internet where I could find all the useful documents, URLs and notes to do my job was very useful.

Hundreds of thousands of views and many years later, I hope some of you still find these useful and here I present you with my latest edition: SAP BI 4.3 SP02!

*********************************

A week earlier than planned (originally CW 50) SAP released last Friday: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 (14.3.2.4073).SAP%20BusinessObjects%20-%20Maintenance%20Schedule%20Q4%202021

SAP BusinessObjects – Maintenance Schedule Q4 2021

Source: Maintenance Schedule

This nicely follows the plan of releasing a Service Pack every year:

BI%20On%20Premise%20Active%20Maintenance%20-%20Release%20Roadmap

BI On Premise Active Maintenance – Release Roadmap

Source: ANALYTICS BI Maintenance Strategy

  • 12/2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP03 ?

 

What was released?

The usual suspects were released for a fresh Installation or Support Package:

  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Server
  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Client Tools
  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Live Office
  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Integration for SharePoint
  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 NET SDK Runtime
  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Crystal Reports for Enterprise
  • SAP Crystal Server 2020 SP02
  • SAP Crystal Reports 2020 SP02

Important: Crystal Reports 2020 services have been removed from the BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Linux and Unix packages.  This means you must have a Windows server and/or node to run Crystal Reports in your BI Launch Pad.

 

What’s New?

SAP%20BusinessObjects%20BI%204.3%20SP2%20in%20a%20nutshell

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP2 in a nutshell

Source: SAP

This time SAP has been great at releasing several blogs offering a lot of information:

 

Download Locations

The packages are available from these locations:

SAP%20BI%204.3%20SP02%20-%20Download%20Locations

SAP BI 4.3 SP02 – Download Locations

More Information: SAP Note 3129887

 

Installation Scenarios

You might doing a fresh installation on a new server which is the easy part.  Or of course performing an upgrade from an earlier version.

Here are some good resources to read more about upgrade methods, tips and their pros & cons:

 

Installation – How did it go?

My test environment is running on an AWS EC2 t3.2xlarge.  That’s 8 VCPUs and 32GB RAM.  Went very smoothly as you would expect.

For a fresh installation of SAP BI 4.3 SP02, you will follow the exact same steps as in previous 4.x versions.

SAP%20BI%204.3%20SP02%20-%20Installed%20Products

SAP BI 4.3 SP02 – Installed Products

Products Installed:

  • SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform Servers 4.3 SP02 – ONE
    • 1/2 BIPLATS4302_0-70002684_P1.EXE
    • 2/2 BIPLATS4302_0-70002684_P2.RAR

SAP%20BI%204.3%20SP02%20-%20BI%20Platform%20Completed

SAP BI 4.3 SP02 – BI Platform Installed

  • SBOP BI Platform Clients 4.3 SP02 – ONE
    • BIPLATCLNT4302_0-70005711.EXE

SAP%20BI%204.3%20SP02%20-%20Client%20Tools%20Completed

SAP BI 4.3 SP02 – Client Tools Installed

Important:

Tomcat has been updated to 9.0.52.  SAP Note 2112338 is not up-to-date but take my word for it!

⚠  If you do an in-place upgrade, this will affect your SSO and other customisations.

 

SAP BusinessObjects Private Cloud Edition (PCE)

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few months, you must have heard of this offer which part of the RISE program.

In short:

“SAP Business Objects Private Cloud Edition is a new service from SAP that offers customers the opportunity to move their existing SAP BusinessObjects on-premise platform(s) to a private cloud environment managed for you by SAP.”

“Commercially the SAP BusinessObjects Private Cloud Edition offers customers the opportunity to cancel their existing on-premise agreement and replace with a simple cloud subscription (per user or concurrent user). The subscription includes the software licence + infrastructure + operational services required to run SAP Business Objects.”

Full introduction from the one and only Jonathan Freeland (Senior Director, Commercial Office, SAP Platform & Technologies, Customer Success at SAP) : Moving SAP BusinessObjects to the Cloud with SAP BusinessObjects Private Cloud Edition and SAP Analytics Cloud

Here are some extra good resources:

ℹ Did you know that Wiiisdom is the best and prefered partner to accelerate and simplify your move to SAP BOBJ PCE?  Thanks to our solution 360Suite we will automate and run in bulk your regression testing, update your Universe Connections, help with converting to UNV > UNX, repointing your Webi reports, and much more.  Get in touch!

 

Documentation

The usual documents have been made available on the SAP Help Portal.  My most useful ones are:

  • Business Intelligence Platform Installation Guide

 

SAP Support Packs (SPs) and Patches Forward Fit Plan: SAP Note 1794601 can be very useful if you’re wondering which release will include your bug fixes / patches from earlier updates.

“Though Support Packs (SPs) and Patches are cumulative, due to the overlapping release cycles of patches and Support Packs, the contents of the currently installed patch is not always available within the next numeric Support Pack (or subsequent patch on that SP) to be installed. This could mean that fixes that existed in the previous version are not existing in the version being upgraded to.”

In this example, you see that everything released in SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 7 is available in SAP BI 4.3 SP02.

 

Product Availability Matrix (PAM)

(Supported Platform)

Release to Customer (RTC): 12.06.2020

General Availability (GA): 12.06.2020

End of Mainstream Maintenance: 31.12.2025

End of Priority One Support Phase: 31.12.2027

  • URLs:

As always, make sure you have a look at what has been added or deprecated in this version.  There is a bit of both around Operating System, Browser, etc and Semantic Layer & Data sources.

ℹ I find it very useful to be aware of SAP’s strategic direction:

 

Maintenance Schedule – What’s Next?

  • SAP BI 4.3 SP02
    • 28.01.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 1 (14.3.2.4121)
    • 04.03.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 2 (14.3.2.4169)
    • 14.04.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 3 (14.3.2.4214)
    • 11.06.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 4 (14.3.2.4272)
    • 13.07.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 5 (14.3.2.4304)
    • 21.08.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 6 (14.3.2.4343)
    • 02.10.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 7 (14.3.2.4385)
    • Week 46 (November): SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 8
    • Week 52 (December): SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 9

 

  • SAP BI 4.3 SP03: Week 49 (December)

Source: Maintenance Schedule

Source: BI Support Pack End of Life Dates

 

Conclusion

As far as I’m concerned, what a release!  Well worth the wait 👊  Contrats to all involved at #SAP.

Some will say that SAP BI 4.3 should have been released like this.  Maybe.  If we’re honest though, the world was craving for anything from SAP giving a glimmer of hope that BOBJ wasn’t dead.  An incomplete (rushed?) SAP BI 4.3 did the trick for many.

Keeping up with the PAM was another issue also and doing it in an aging SAP BI 4.2 made little sense.

Then we saw SAP BI 4.3 SP01 catching up a lot only to hear that SP02 would be delayed by 6 months.  That was a pity.

Anyway, if you ask me (and I told some of the people mentioned in this blog at SAP) that this Service Pack is amazing enough to have called it SAP BI 4.4 😎  You heard it here first!

 

Keep in Touch!

Hope this blog was useful.   It’s an iterative process and I’ll keep updating it from time to time.  Please do share your thoughts and comments.

And feel free to “like” and share it on social media!

If you’d like to connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pperrier/

Have a great Christmas and New Year holidays.  See you for SAP BI 4.3 SP03 next Christmas!

Take care and stay safe.

A+

 

 

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      25 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Kurt Reinhardt
      Kurt Reinhardt

      I literally just finished an upgrade from SAP Crystal Server 2016 SP2 to SAP Crystal Server 2020 SP2 for a client and the installation deleted their SQL Anywhere CMS database. Now we're doing a rollback and trying to figure out what happened.

      SP1 was hot garbage, so I've waited patiently for SP2. This is a huge disappointment, so far.

      Author's profile photo Patrick Perrier
      Patrick Perrier
      Blog Post Author

      Sorry to hear this and of course it shouldn't be happening.

      But for an upgrade like this one which is effectively a BI 4.2 to BI 4.3, I'd always recommend a side-by-side upgrade.

      I released some blogs on the topic in the past: https://blogs.sap.com/2021/12/14/sap-businessobjects-bi-4.3-sp02-sap-bi-4.3-sp2-released/#installation_scenarios

      Also, it's not recommended to use SQL Anywhere in Production: https://userapps.support.sap.com/sap/support/knowledge/en/2546663

      Author's profile photo Dominik Zehentner
      Dominik Zehentner

      Hello, according to note 3017689 "BI 4.3 SP02" is not compatible to any currently published Lumira Version? Can that be correct? Thanks Dominik

      Author's profile photo Patrick Perrier
      Patrick Perrier
      Blog Post Author

      Hi,

      That's correct.  According to SAP Note 3017689, as of today only SAP BI 4.3 SP01 is supported.

      I can't see a 2022 Release Schedule yet for Lumira (SAP Note 2465894) I guess we'll have to wait and see!

      You're a courageous man to still use this deprecated product!

      "Lumira 2.4 is the last minor release for Lumira 2.x, all future patches and security updates will only be provided on Lumira 2.4 minor release from May 2021 onwards."

      2902872 - End of Mainstream Maintenance for SAP Lumira Designer 2.x, SAP Lumira Discovery 2.x & SAP Lumira Server for BI Platform 2.x

      According to this, since there won't be new Service Packs for Lumira who knows maybe it will never work on SAP BI 4.3 SP02.

      Author's profile photo Eric FENOLLOSA
      Eric FENOLLOSA

      Hi Dominik, this is a good catch: thank you.

      Obviously, we need to provide a Lumira version which is compatible with BOBJ BI SP2.

      Let me check internally and come back.

      Regards,

      Eric

      Author's profile photo Mike Flint
      Mike Flint

      I plan on rolling out new 4.3sp02p100 servers to replace our 4.2sp03 environment at the beginning of March.  Are there any updates on a Lumira Server version that is compatible?   While they are working on it, a SQL Server connector for Lumira Designer would be most appreciated.

      Author's profile photo Brian Freiheit Lundholm
      Brian Freiheit Lundholm

      Hi Mike,

       

      Is your plan still to roll out 4.3 sp2 in march? We are planning a new version as well. Perhaps we can share knowlegde?

       

       

      Best regards

       

      Brian

      Author's profile photo Mike Flint
      Mike Flint

      I'm still looking at a mid March rollout.  I'd be happy to share knowledge if I can help.  If anyone is interested in the Lumira Server incompatibility issue, SAP support says that Lumira Server will be supported in 4.3SP02 Patch 5.  At the time of this post we are at patch 1, so it may be a while before Lumira is supported on 4.3SP02.

      Author's profile photo Brian Freiheit Lundholm
      Brian Freiheit Lundholm

      Hi Mike.

       

      We would like to share knowledge. You can find me on linkedin. We have something that is not working perfect so we will be happy to hear your test results.

       

      Brian

      Author's profile photo John Kavanagh
      John Kavanagh

      Lumira development team have added support of Lumira 2.4 Patch 4 (already released in Q4 2021) and BIP 4.3 SP2 with some known issues with work arounds. Please see SAP Note 3145980.

      Essentially the Lumira Server upgrade to 2.4 Patch 4 should be done prior to the BIP 4.3 SP2 upgrade. This scenario will be supported by SAP and the Lumira development team.

      https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/3145980

      Author's profile photo Mike Flint
      Mike Flint

      Thank you for clarifying that John.  I did review the KBA you referenced.  As this is not an upgrade but a new deployment, Patch 4 still will not install.

      Support of the Full (Fresh) Install & Upgrade is planned to be added with Lumira 2.4 SP0 Patch 05

      I attempted the 2.4 SP0 Patch 04 install but I get the same error.

      Author's profile photo John Kavanagh
      John Kavanagh

      Hi Mike

      A workaround in this case would be as follows in this order:

      BIP 4.3 SP1 - fresh install

      Lumira 2.4 Patch 4 - fresh install

      BIP 4.3 SP2 - upgrade

       

      This would be a supported scenario.

      Regards

      John

       

       

      Author's profile photo Antoine NGOM
      Antoine NGOM

      Thank you for the amazing notes above , it doesn't get more exiting. I will be very grateful in you could service me with the 4.3 sp02 architecture sizing guide if its already available  and where to get it

      Author's profile photo Patrick Perrier
      Patrick Perrier
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Antoine.

      This is the latest SAP BI 4.3 Sizing Guide: https://help.sap.com/doc/612b4de56cb84dc0b556a32d18123de0/4.3/en-US/Sizing%20Guide_4.3_Updated.pdf

      Except for perhaps very light updates, you can for sure use this one.  There won't be anything significantly different because of SP02.

      Author's profile photo Antoine NGOM
      Antoine NGOM

      Thank you v Patrick.

      Author's profile photo Antoine NGOM
      Antoine NGOM

      Hi Patrick,

      I am new at my company and we migrating from BI 4.0 to BI 4.3 SP02 and i have been tasked to investigate the sizing requirements needed. My task now is to figure out major differences between BI4.0 and 4.3 in terms of sizing and architecture . I have been trying to using the quick sizer as a guide but i am having troubles accessing the quick sizer portal as i keep getting login authentication errors which keeps redirecting me to the login page over and over again. I dont know what to do.

      Would be very grateful if u could help me out with this.

      Author's profile photo Antoine NGOM
      Antoine NGOM

      Hi Patrick

      Please can i get a link to download the pdf of the bi platform installation guide for windows . I have seen the article on this on this page but i need the pdf version which i can use offline.

      Thanks for your help in advance

      Author's profile photo Antoine NGOM
      Antoine NGOM

      Hi,

      Please can you direct me to where i can get the latest article on Business Intelligence Platform Installation Guide for Windows BI4.3 SP2. 

      Author's profile photo Matthew Erb
      Matthew Erb

      We're currently running Crystal Server 2020 - BI 4.3 SP01 (no patches), if we upgrade to SP02 (no patches) will anything need to be reconfigured? For example, we made some config changes to the homepage (hiding fields, default login type, etc) in the FioriBI.properties file, plus we also utilize Windows AD login, will these things need to be backed up and restored once the update is complete?

      Author's profile photo Hardmore Chanakira
      Hardmore Chanakira

      Hie there. I have installed BOBJ 4.3 SP02 Patch 02. I have also installed Data Services 4.3 but i'm facing compatibility issues creating repositories. (BODI-3015002).

      Can someone tell me what Data Services version is compatible with BOBJ 4.3 SP02 Patch 02 please.

      Author's profile photo Aleksey Salinin
      Aleksey Salinin

      I heard that on October 4th there will be a speech about the release of 4.3 SP03. Does anyone have a link to register?

      Patrick Perrier maybe you?

      Author's profile photo Patrick Perrier
      Patrick Perrier
      Blog Post Author

      Hi,

      There are so many.  I know that Gregory BOTTICCHIO has done at least 3 already!

      Here is the recording of one: https://youtu.be/ZwaAbDDwBRM

      He's doing another one on Oct 27th: https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6976091464984338433/

      FYI In November we will run a webinar on the topic of converting UNV to UNX.  Quite an important topic to keep an eye one.  Out of support in 2027 and won't be part of "BOBJ 2024".

      We don't have a registration link yet but happy to send it when available if you want.  Or you will find it here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wiiisdomsoftware/events/

       

      Author's profile photo Adrian Egger
      Adrian Egger

      Dear all

      we have updatet to  SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 9, now we have issues with our Universes. Cannot open any Webi-Reports, cannot  connecto to Universes. 

      Error is WIS 00000 csEX: Unexpected exception while calling the SL Service

      Any help?

       

      Thanks  a lot!!

       

      Kind regards,

      Adrian

      Author's profile photo Tu Bui Van
      Tu Bui Van

      Hello Adrian Egger,

      I have same issues with you.

      Do you fix this?

      Please share solution with me.

      Thank you so much.

      Author's profile photo Noel Scheaffer
      Noel Scheaffer

      We had this issue in our test and production environments installing BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 9. We increased the logging level and found issues with our APS.Connectivity server. So we cloned it and that fixed it. Ultimately we deleted the original and renamed the newly cloned server to have the name of the original server once we were sure everything was working.

      We encountered the same issue in our production environment, but this time it was the APS.WebIDSLBridge server that we had to clone.

      Noel