SAP BusinessObjects ONE Uninstaller 2.0

VenkateswaraGY · ‎12-10-2022

SAP BusinessObjects ONE Uninstaller was introduced back in 2020 to ease in addressing the challenges faced by IT Administrators managing the BI Systems with respect to ever growing footprint (disk space) due to multiple Service Pack and patch updates of different BI Suite of products. To optimize footprint of BI Suite of products with the traditional uninstallation is not an easy task or sometimes impossible due to challenges related to getting maintenance window. As you know, in traditional method of uninstallation it is last in first should be the approach, in that way, one has to uninstall the lastest version(s) updated (like n, (n-1)), and then uninstall the intermediate versions (which you believe are no more required) one after another, and once all the intermediate versions are uninstalled, then you need to update the system back with last/latest versions previously uninstall to bring the system back to the level where it was, before staring this process. This way if more number of intermediate versions are there, then it will take accordingly longer time to finish this task.

To address this challenge and ease the job for IT Administrators SAP BusinessObjects ONE Uninstaller tool was introduced. This tool, with its ability to calculate analyze and calculate the obsolete intermediate BI versions and offer them to delete all the selected versions of all the BI Suite of product's cache in one shot is winning the hearts of IT/BI Administrators. Like in Jenga Game.. you should know which block is safe to remove... without disturbing the tower.. this is what tool will do it for you automatically..

Now your favorite Uninstaller tool, has got more power, gives more flexibility for IT/BI Administrators looking to optimize large number remote BI Servers or BI Client machines of their end users. Introducing Silent Execution / Remote Execution of the SAP BusinessObjects ONE Uninstaller tool is the major breakthrough feature ever since its inception. And along with this major feature one another useful feature is also got introduced in this ONE Uninstaller release v2.0, that is to know the install history information of a remote BI Server / BI Client machine.

Points related to Tool delivery and execution :

Delivery of this release v2.0 is also done through the same SAP Note 2846512.

Also the future releases of this tool will also be done via the same SAP Note 2846512.

SAP will not maintain the previous versions of this tool with the Note, having said that, you will find only the latest version released for this tool in the Note.

You need to keep the backup of this tool when you plan to start using the latest version of this tool in your BI systems, in case of any unexpected results or blockers with the latest version, you can use previous version of the tool from your backup, until the issue is fixed in the future release.

Tool will fail to execute and will exit, if the value for the Installation directory path and Log directory path has trailing slash.
- For example: if the installation directory path as following "C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\" then tool will fail to execute properly, hence the correct input for the path for this example will be as follows: "C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects"

So, let us see what are these, and how these features together will help BI Administrators / IT Administrators managing the BI Landscapes, and their BI End user systems.

Gathering information remotely(-i😞

IT Administrator / BI Administrator planning to optimize Install footprint on their BI systems (BI Server / BI Client) can now fetch the BI Suite Install footprint information remotely.

With this option in place, Administrators can gather the information about BI Suite Installation history into a file to know which obsolete versions can be deleted. In fact you can get the same information displayed when you run the ONE Uninstaller tool on the command prompt, but for that you need login (directly / remotely) into the machine and run the following command interactively:

java -jar OneUninstaller.jar -InstallDir <BO_Install_Dir> [-LogDir <Directory_Path_for_Writing_Logs>]

Then on the command prompt it will display the information as following (For example):

In the above example screenshot, you can only see purely version numbers.. as you know, if you choose any particular version number out the list, then if multiple BI suite products are there for example BI Platform Clients, Crystal Reports with the same version, then that versioned cache for those both products will get deleted, that is as per the behavior of the ONE Uninstaller. To know which products and all will get deleted when you select particular version out of the suggested versions for delete, you need to cross check the inventory from the installation directory to know which products are there in the system with that particular version.

Instead of that, if you use the newly introduced info option using -i flag with the tool, it will generate all the information for analyzing the data to decide on which versions can be deleted and also at the same time we can understand what products will be deleted when particular version is selected for deletion.

Command to use info option (-i😞

java -jar OneUninstaller.jar -InstallDir <BO_Install_Dir> -i <path_of_file_to_write_info> [-LogDir <Directory_Path_for_Writing_Logs>]

Points to Note:

1. When the tool launched, info option (-i flag), with proper syntax, parameters and their values, then tool automatically executes without any user intervention and writes the output in the file specified in the command with -i flag.
2. And this command can be launched remotely by using any SCCM tool, as this command gets executed silently.
3. This option -i is optional flag. If tool is launched without -i option then tool will follow the normal interactive execution pattern of showing the deletable list on the command prompt and based on the user input either proceed for deletion or quit.
4. Though -i option is optional, but when used it expects a value with proper file path, but if the path given is of a folder then tool automatically writes the information file under that folder with default name "info.csv".

Following is the example, output of the command when launched with info option (-i😞

In the above example output, you can clearly see that it gives the detailed information related to environment when the command was executed, total inventory list in that machine, and which the list of products and its versions which can be deletable. With this information, you can understand better and decide which versions can be deleted, before proceeding for actual execution of the deleting the cache.

Writing response file with user selection (-w😞

This option should be used once you decided for deleting the obsolete cache, login to the machine and open command prompt and launch the following command:

Command to write response file (-w😞

java -jar OneUninstaller.jar -InstallDir <BO_Install_Dir> -w <path_of_file_to_write_response> [-LogDir <Directory_Path_for_Writing_Logs>]

Points to Note:

1. When the tool is launched for writing the response that is with -w option, it will be interactive execution, tool will wait for the user input to collect the desired version list out of deletable version list, as this command is aimed to collect the user selection for deletable versions.
2. Upon writing the user response into the file, tool will exit, marking the completion of intended execution.
3. This option -w is optional flag. If tool is launched without -w option then tool will follow the normal interactive execution pattern of showing the deletable list on the command prompt and based on the user input either proceed for deletion or quit.
4. Though -w option is optional, but when used it expects a value with proper file path, but if the path given is of a folder then tool automatically writes the user response in a file under that folder with default name "response.csv".

Following 2 screenshots shows sample execution of the tool with -w option for reference:

Once the tool successfully gets executed with -w option, refer the file which is captured with user response along with other supporting details at the location given for -w in the command.

Following the sample output of user response captured in the file with -w option:

Response file contains the following information inventory list, Deletable list in full form with product names, Deletable list with version numbers in ordered list form (Deletable version list:), and finally the User selection, which contains the user choice to delete which obsolete versions.

Silent / Remote execution of ONE Uninstaller (-r😞

This is the actual step where the silent execution (-r) of the tool by reading response file (containing the user selection) generated with -w option, and perform the deletion of the selected obsolete versions, with out user intervention.

Command to launch silent or remote execution by reading the response file (-r😞

java -jar OneUninstaller.jar -InstallDir <BO_Install_Dir> -r <path_of_file_to_read_response> [-LogDir <Directory_Path_for_Writing_Logs>]

Points to Note:

1. When the tool is launched for deleting the selected obsolete cache with -r option by providing response file, it is silent execution, no user intervention is required.
2. response file path should be proper and path should contain the file name, if the supplied response file path is not proper or If tool finds the response file is not in the expected format then tool will stop execution by throwing the following error (which can be referred in the log file):
```
Invalid response file. Either the path provided is not valid or the file provided is not generated using ONE Uninstaller.
```
3. Tool will execute the deletion of cache, based on the following conditions:
  1. Tool will first compare the Inventory list from the response file and inventory list generated from the machine, if it matches without any differences then tool will proceed for the next step execution, otherwise tool will stop the execution with following error:
```
BI suite inventory list from the response file and from the machine are not equal, cannot proceed for the next step.
```
  2. Tool will next compare the Deletable Products list from the response file and the Deletable Products list calculated from the machine, if it matches without any differences then tool will proceed for the next step of execution, otherwise tool will stop the execution with following error:
```
Deletable products list from the response file and from the machine are not equal, cannot proceed for the next step.
```
  3. Tool will next compare the Deletable Versions list from the response file and the Deletable Versions list calculated from the machine, if it matches without any differences then tool will proceed for the next step of execution, otherwise tool will stop the execution with following error:
```
Deletable version list from the response file and from the machine are not equal, cannot proceed for the next step.
```
  4. Tool will next verify the user selection values provided in the response file are in the range calculated from the machine or not, if the supplied values in the response file are in range of Deletable version list, then tool will now proceed for the actual deletion of selected obsolete versions, otherwise tool will stop the execution with following error:
```
Invalid input!. out of range
```

Following screenshots shows sample execution of the tool with -r option for reference:

BI Install history in the system before cache deletion.

Silent execution of SAP BusinessObjects ONE Uninstaller Tool

BI Install history in the system after cache deletion.

Verifying the Cache Deletion by re-running the tool.

Important Points to Note:

The response file written by tool with -w option can be re-used as is if you have similar machines with same BI Suite installation history when the tool is being launched with -r option to actually delete the cache, if it has been decided to delete the same obsolete versions from those machines as well.
1. Same Install history means, BI Suite of products and their update history is exactly same and built in same order.
2. This will be useful and handy, in scenarios like for example, in your organization, you have end users using the BI Client tools, and in their systems they all have same Installation history and its footprint became large over a period of time, then you can capture the response file in one machine, and push the tool to all other machines having the same install history with that response file. In this way you can optimize the Install footprint remotely in convenient way.
  1. To find the install history is same or not on different machines, you can run the tool remotely with -i option and collect them in one place and compare and identify the machines having same install history.

Once generated, the response file should not be tampered, if you decided that while using this file in the similar machine having the same install history, but you want to choose different versions selected, then you can change the information under "User selection" section of the file.
1. For example, while writing the response, that means while executing the tool with -w option, tool has identified 6 deletable versions and out of that you have selected 1,2,3 as your selection for deletion, but later while using the same response file to execute the tool with -r option if you have decided to added another from the deletable list into user selection, you can do that, like out of 6 deletable you can change the "User Selection" value from "1,2,3" to either "1,2" delete only first two versions from the list or "1 - 4" to include 4th version also to be deleted.

The three newly introduced -i,-w, and -r optional flags are mutually exclusive, you should not launch the tool with any of these options together. Only other flag allowed is -LogDir, tool will fail to execute the desired step if it is launched with any of combination of flags between -i,-w, and -r.

You can still use the tool in standard interactive mode to decide and delete the obsolete cache in one execution session just by launching tool with -InstallDir option (mandatory) and optional -LogDir option, if -LogDir is not provided log file will be created in the folder where the tool is placed with default name as "OneUninstallerl.log".

Log File Samples for reference:

Log file reference for tool execution with info (-i) command.

Log file reference for tool execution for writing response file (-w) command.

Log file reference for deleting cache (silent execution) (-r) command.

Error Message screenshots for different scenarios:

Error message when supplied directory path for installation directory (-InstallDir) is wrong.

Error message when supplied directory path for log directory (-LogDir) is wrong.

Error message when supplied file path for gathering information (-i) is wrong.

Syntax Help gets displayed when arguments supplied are wrong or wrong number of arguments supplied.

For Information related to all releases and to know how the tool evolved, refer the table available at the end of the Note 2846512

Regards, Venkat.