Issue with Information Steward Connections

[drei]

We were having problems in modifying connections for Information Steward, as only the access details can be modified through the Central Management Console. If the technical architecture of an ongoing project changes, whether a new database will be used for profiling errors, or a new mirror database will be provided as source systems, the connection details can't be simply modified. A new connection has to be created, affecting all of the existing views dependent on the connection. Changing all the views, validation rules, and binding of rules is very time consuming, especially if the trigger was only a change in database connection.

As a workaround, we had to search the appropriate backend table in the repository system, and directly modify the connection path or name. This only works if the user has access to the database of the repository system, and it doesn't seem like a good practice as well.

Is there any better solution to this issue? Will the next version of Information Steward cater for this limitation?

Thanks in advance for your reply!

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately renaming or modifying existing connections is not supported.  This is definitely a constraint that I would like to see reviewed in the future.

In our system we don't have write access to the database and thus had to take a different approach.

We created a new connection as you described but then exported and imported the project which allows you to map it to the new connection.

Be very careful with this though as there are a number of known issues with importing projects.  If you are importing into a different project without deleting the rules from the original you have will duplicate rules names and the import will fail.  Project is not part of the key because rules can be made public and referenced in multiple projects.

The project name can also be hardcoded into Views, Rules, and RuleBindings upon export.  The import does not identify this and change the project name dynamically, causing failures. 

There are separate threads on both these with more details.  Would love to hear other approaches but that is all we have found.

[drei · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your reply. I guess your method would work if all validation rules were set to public, and a new project would be created for the new database connection.

I agree that importing within BOIS has some bugs and issues. Hopefully SAP would revisit this limitation in the next iteration of the tool.

Cheers!

[JohnClark]

You can modify the connections from the Universe Design Tool.  Open the Universe Design Tool and connect to your Information Steward repository.  Use the Tools menu to go to Connections.  You can edit from there.

[former_member239465]

Hi John.

Thanks for your reply.  Unfortunately, that will not work for us as we have only installed IPS and not the full BI Platform, so we don't have UDT .

André

[JohnClark]

The Universe Design Tool doesn't have to be installed locally.  You can run it from anywhere, you just have to connect to your Information Steward repository just like you would a BI repository.  This is how I have used it.  I assume that since you are using Information Steward, that you have the Universe Design Tool installed somewhere?

[former_member239465]

Hi Andrei.

I have the exact same need as you described.  I agree with you that this should be part of the standard functionality and we should not have to make that kind of change directly in the repository table.

I made the change in the desired record from table MMT_Ep_Cconn_Map but my change is not reflected through the CMC!?

Is it the table you edited?  Thanks!

André

[former_member689997]

Hi Andre

were you able to figure out why its not reflecting in CMC? We are having the same issue and we have lots of tables and views.

Thanks

Mandeep