Objective:

Former Member · ‎02-14-2013

BusinessObjects 4.0 BICS Case Study

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.0 and SAP NetWeaver BW – Issues & Resolutions

By: Michael Flanagan & Shriram Kelkar

Target Audience:
This document is applicable mainly to BICS connectivity, not direct database access through a universe or any other connection.

Objective:

We faced many different issues in deploying Web Intelligence 4.0 over BICS connection. We struggled with various problems and had to try many different techniques and perform exhaustive research to reach solutions. We wanted to share our experience and findings so that others can learn from it and have a much smoother implementation of BO 4.0 on top of SAP BW. These include issues that gave generic and ambiguous error messages and what steps we took to resolve those.

Version Information:
BW: 7.01 Patch 7
BO: 4.0 SP04 Patch 2

SAP is consistently coming out with additional versions of software so it is possible that the issues listed below could be fixed in future releases of the product.

Issues & Resolutions:

Issue Details and Steps to Reproduce	Screenshots	Resolution
Received by user while refreshing a report.	Universe generation failed for resource id Invalid CMS Query. Check if the connection exists in the CMS.	This was a security / authorization issue which was resolved by adding the user to the required access group.
Received by user while trying to open a report	Object expected viewDocument.jsp	This was a security / authorization issue which was resolved by adding the user to the required access group. Note: this message was not displayed for all reports.
Received by user while changing preferences to web and open report	An unexpected error occurred. (WIH 444444) (Error: INF )	This was a security / authorization issue which was resolved by adding the user to the required access group.
When a user tried to select all plants in a report prompt.	The report cannot be generated. java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException	Log out of the BI Launchpad and log back in and re-run the report.
Created a report and tried to add a filter on Plant. When trying to select all plants in the filter this error was received.	An error has occured. businessobjects.sdk.core.server.CommunicationException	Log out of the BI Launchpad, log back in, and then re-apply the filter to the report.
Occurred when trying to change preferences in the BI Launchpad and save the changes.	An error occurred when attempting to save User Settings.	Log out, log back in, and then change the preferences and save them again.
Received while trying to add a crosstab into the report.	An error has occured.	Logged out and logged back in and then was able to do the same operation. User lost the report modification work that had been done since the last save.
BEx Query has mandatory variable on Fiscal period. While trying to add a filter on Fiscal Year Variant (or another dimension) in the WebI query it asks to supply Fiscal period first but does not allow adding fiscal period values ultimately giving error screen (it won’t allow you to even directly type in the values).	Could not retrieve the list of values	It seems to be a product bug. We cannot have mandatory variables in the queries. BEx queries need to be separately customized for the Webi reports with these settings.
#torefresh error (on newly created report)	It might be possible that in the second line the dimensions retrieve only one line of measures from the data source. In this case the Web Intelligence engine does the calculation. The first line however might be retrieving multiple lines of measures and, in the last column the Web Intelligence engine is not able to do the calculation.	You might see #TOREFRESH in some lines and a value in other lines depending on the cardinality of the measure(s). Verify the cardinality is correct.
#torefresh error (on report migrated from BO 4.0 SP02)		For report conversion: As per SAP, we received this #TOREFRESH error because there was a 'corrupt' parent object. When we replaced the parent object with the key and text field it fixed the issue. (Creating a totally new report from scratch using parent object also worked)
Multiple single values for year are showing while refreshing the Web Intelligence query		Added the fiscal year prompt on webi side instead of on the bex side. Got technical names with 2 fiscal variant values.
Opening a report in view mode and then clicking on the Design button on the toolbar gives you this error (When your data provider is a BEx query)	This data provider cannot be displayed because it contains Bex query data provider.	This design button works only for universe data providers. To modify a Web Intelligence query based on a BEx Data Provider we have to right click on report name and click on modify and then click on the data provider edit button.
When double clicking to open a report it was opening up a .PDF version of the report.	Inventory report default opens as a PDF when double clicked.	The instances of the report need to be removed as a PDF to make it not behave this way. To do this we follow these steps:
Received while trying to refresh a report with 12 months of data:	CORBA error while communicating with the SL Service (WIS 00000)	This is an exception due to the processing server being out of memory, there is too much data being fetched in the report.
Received while refreshing a newly added query to a report template after deleting a different data source.	An internal error occurred while calling ‘getPromptList’ API. (Error: ERR_WIS_30270) (WIS 30270)	Delete the report or data in the report before deleting the associated data source
Rich client gives a server error while trying to access the report after recently upgrading the patch level on the Business Objects server.	Server Error CommunicationException$UnexpectedServerException Unknown Error in SL Service	The client tool version on your machine has to match the version on the server. Make sure the correct version of the client tools is installed on your machine. In the CMC you can go to Settings and under Properties you can see the correct version and build number that you need. Then look for the same in the WebI client tools by going to About.
Users cannot save variants in the prompt box like you can in BEx Analyzer.		There is currently no way to save variants (or selections) in WebI prompts like you can in BEx Analyzer prompts.
Error received while trying to modify an existing WebI report.	Java error	Log off the BI Launch pad and log back in and modify the report again.