Explorer performance and stability enhancement - now accessing MDX BAPI .unv using a 64 bit process!

[Henry_Banks]

Hi Everyone,

As you no doubt know: in BI 4.0, when accessing BW OLAP data through an MDX BAPI .UNV  - [using tools such as Web Intelligence, or Explorer (since SP06)] - the SOFA / MDA olap middleware was only ever a porting of the BOE XI3.x 32-bit library.. hence required hosting an out-of-process relationship with ConnectionServer32.

However, since BI4.1 SP01 (GA) this library has been ported to 64-bit, allowing it to be hosted in-process in the WebIProcessingServer.

OK... But you may ask - How is this administered in practice?

Well, i refer you to section "7.11.1 To Enable SAP BW 64-bit Connections" in the 4.1 Data Access guide: http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/sbo41/en/sbo41sp1_data_acs_en.pdf

Please be aware that you  need to explicitely choose this 64-bit BW driver (in install UI) when upgrading .

For example, after completing my update from 4.0 SP06 to 4.1 SP01,  I had to go back to the original ‘baseline’ install (in my case, SP04) and click ‘Modify’ .  I then located this option: 

For info, this was already a 64-bit process on Linux in BI4.0; but on Windows platforms it was added  with the advent of 4.1 SP1 (GA), and is planned to be back-ported to 4.0 SP08. 

I 'll also confirm again that the Explorer Indexing process continues to go through tge WebIntelligence Processing Server to access .unv (since BI4.0 it doesn't go directly, as in XI3.x).

To conclude - the above mentioned enhancement should help mitigate against the SP06 tuning recommendations (as required previously for Explorer - BW OLAP .unv support, on the old 32 bit library) in the area of:

• WebIntelligence Processing Server - CORBA "-requestTimeout 7200000" parameter - see note 1776896.
• WebIntelligence Processing Server - "Maximum Character Stream Size (MB):" from 5MB to 500MB - see note 1370045.
• Universe Designer - Array Fetch Size from 10 to 1000;
• Universe Designer - Parameters: "DISABLE_ARRAY_FETCH_SIZE_OPTIMIZATION" from "No" to "Yes"- see note 1763544.

I hope this information is of use to you.

Kind Regards,

H