HANA Relational Connection to Analysis for Office 2.0

[Former Member]

Dear all,

I´m trying to create a HANA Connection to Analysis for Office with following versions installed:

Analysis for Office 2.0

Just updated Client BI 4.1 to SP 5

HANA version (under HANA Studio) is 1.00.80.00.391861

I have been trying different options and I have not been able to connect porperly to the data.

With a Relational Connection created in the IDT I can access the HANA sources and build my report normally, but at the moment of saving the report I get an error saying: "Cannot save workbook in 2.0 format because it is still in 1.4 format and contains an inactive SAP HANA data source"

Do you have any idea of why I get this error?

Thanks and BR

Araceli

[TammyPowlas · Accepted solution]

I believe the preferred method to connect to HANA is http - see Venkata's documents here

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Tammy,

Thanks for your quick response. I tell you I already tried also that way but on the http connection I have a problem as I get an error 403 Forbidden which I´m not sure why appears.. I created a connection with this steps:

1. Analysis for Office 2.0 --> Add Data Source
2. Context Menu available on 2.0 --> Create HANA Connection

Im not sure which is the Host Name that I should enter there so I put the Host IP Direction from       the HANA Server and the Port as 80xx where xx is the Instance name. The confusion comes as I     see in the document you sent me and in the SAP tutorial that the host finishes with .sap.corp and Im not sure how to get this, reading I saw can be related to a virtual host that comes from the      HANA Cloud but we dont have Cloud in our system.

Also I saw that in order to get the http way working would be necessary to have:

HANA SP9

Analysis for Office 2.0

BIP SP 5

I´m not sure if updating to this version only my client would work or if the Servers of HANA and BIP have to be also updated.. so in general I would like to know also if it´s possible to update individually client systems or if it´s always required to make in parallel Servers and Client updates. As said above I already updated BIP to SP 5 and I dont know if this could cause problems.

Thanks a lot for your support and BR

Araceli

[TammyPowlas · Accepted solution]

Hi Araceli - my guess is the http connection isn't working because it requires HANA revision 96 (not sure how that matches with your version)

Did you try creating a relational connection using the steps contained in the tutorials here:

[former_member110741]

Hi Sindhoora Labuti & Araceli,

can you try with 2.1 SP02 (current latest one) you will observe correct behavior

i.e. it doe snot list relaitonal connection can you check and confirm ?

Subhash

[Former Member]

Hi Subash , Labuti & Araceli,

I have installed Analysis for office 2.1 SP02 and the both the below issues are resolved :

Case 1) We can export the 2.1 work book to BI launch pad over http connection with out any error.

Case 2) Relational connections are not visible in the client tool to make use of , which is as expected as we are supposed to use only SAP HANA http connection for AO 2.x versions.

So all happies !!  

Regards,

Sindhoora Leburi

[Former Member]

Hi Sindhoora,

Great to hear is working! Can you tell me which HANA SP did you used together with 2.1? Is still only for HANA SP + ?

Thanks in advance ad BR

Araceli

[Former Member]

Hi Araceli,

We used HANA SP09.

How ever post this resolution we have faced many more issues with AO 2.1 too , we finally scrapped the decision of using AO and went back to Webi.

Regards,

Sindhoora

[Former Member]

Hi Sindhoora,

Oh ok! Thanks for your answer, maybe some of this issues are solved with 2.2?

Also if you could explain in general what kind of issues you had so we can follow up accordingly and track if that is soled with next releases 😃

Thanks and BR

Araceli

[former_member110741]

Hi Araceli & Mark P,

i tried this in my installation

true, i can confirm this is an issue from AO 2.0, you can open SAP incident

but you can connect to HANA using below options, which is recommended from SAP

How to create HANA Http in BIP and consume in Analysis Office 2.0

How to create HANA Http connection in local and consume in Analysis Office 2.0

i tried Both Relational, SAP HANA(1.x) & SAP HANA Http(2.x) connections in BOE, at the end all are used to connect to HANA models .

i am trying to understand, is there any particular reason to use Relational connection to connect  HANA data source  instead of using direct SAP HANA HTTP connection in BOE?

Thanks & Regards,
Subhash

[Former Member]

Hi Mark and Venkata,

As you Mark.. I also have same versions of HANA so we don´t have the SP 9, therefore I had to go back to AO 1.4 and there everything is working ok, just I see that working with HANA on AO even 1.4 has some limitations (some options in the menu are in gray, for example: Filter by meassure and so on) but possible to save correctly with any kind of connection ODBC JDBC or BICS.

@Venkata: As in version 1.4 you can work properly with relational connection I just tried also in 2.0  to see how it worked, the point is that with that connection you can work normally in your report as Mark said, so I was happy building a report then suddenly by saving.. not possible to save as show the error "Cannot save workbook in 2.0 format because it is still in 1.4 format and contains an inactive SAP HANA data source". That´s why is not logical

Then we will have to wait for SAP Support to fix AO 2.0 saving option, use version 1.4 or update versions of BIP + HANA Platform to SP 9 to leverage AO 2.0 and check how it works with http connection  that is the recommended SAP option.

[former_member110741]

Hi Araceli Gonzalez Mendez,

i got update from AO Development team, they made a fix for this issue

From AO 2.0 SP04  onwards  - it does not support connecting to relational connection in analysis Office

Then what about AO 1.4 documents based on relational connection ? for this you can migrate your relational connection to HANA Http in 2.0 and continue

How to do it ? you can see in below document, follow the same process

PS : AO 2.0 SP04 planned release end of this month

Regards,

Subhash

[Verakso]

I can add the comment, that it is still an issue with AO 2.0 SP04

Currently I am having the same problem described as here, running a AO 2.0 SP04 and a HANA DB revision 85 is not compatible.

Rather annoying I must ad, since HANA Live supposedly makes it soo easy to create an analysis - well it does, but it is worthless when you can't save your work.

I'll guess the workarround is either update HANA to SP09 (not alway an option) or downgrade AO to version 1.4

Regards
Thomas

[former_member110741]

Hi Thomas,

In order to connect to HANA via HTTP - prerequisite is that - HANA should be on SPS09(>=96)

i Will add some of the advantages you can utilize via  HTTP(2.x) instead of ODBC(1.x) :

          - Calculated Measures on HANA (currently available in 2.1)

          - Restricted Measures(Currently availbale in 2.1)

          - Parllel HANA access- data acces layer (Planned innovation according to road map)

Some more might be in future

So, i would recommend to upgrade HANA to SPS 09 in order to utilize new features

Subhash

[Former Member]

Hi Subhash,

I am facing similar issue with HANA http connection as well.

Version information-

AO- 2.0

BO- BO4.1 SP5

Microsoft Office - 2013

Connection in CMC-

     Case1- SAP HANA http connection

     Case2- SAP HANA connection

Case1-
I have a HANA http connection created in CMC and I am able to access HANA information models through it.

However when I am trying to save the AO(2.0) workbook onto BI Launchpad , I am getting the error : 'Save Workbook as 1.4 format is not possible due to a HANA datasource'

Case2-

And unlike the blogs and links which say : AO 2.x doesnt support relational connection, I am still able to use the relation connection and very well access HANA data models. However I am unable to test the save to BI launch pad option here as well due to the same error as -  'Save Workbook as 1.4 format is not possible due to a HANA datasource' which I am getting while I use HANA http connection.

Any suggestions??

[former_member151004]

Hi Araceli,

Please also check this document.

Also please check if you have a default parameter (SaveAs1xByDefault)set on your computer.

Thanks,

Diego Ferrary

[Former Member]

Hi Diego,

Thanks for your link, is very complete and helpfull!! I tell you, as I repplied to Tammy, that I tried to create the Http also but got 403 Forbidden error. Also I don´t think we have the SP9 in Platform so I think I should first check the update of all systems in order to try it correctly, right?. For the HOST how can I get that name that finishes with sap.corp as I just have the Hosts as IP´s?

On the other side, do you know where can I check the configuration of the default parameter (SaveAs1xByDefault) as you mentioned?

Thanks a lot for your support.

BR

Araceli

[MarkPa]

Hi,

Has anyone actually been able to save documents with AO 2.0 with a HANA relational connection via ODBC or JDBC?

I have a similar problem to Araceli. This works fine with AO 1.4 SP12 using the relational connection via Business Objects connections to HANA (which is running Rev82). I can save files locally or save a workbook to the Business Object platform without issue.

However with AO 2.0 SP03 I cannot save at all using the same connector - neither locally nor to Business Objects. I get the error message "Cannot save workbook in 1.4 format due to an SAP HANA data source". All other functionality seems to work fine but when you try to save it fails, which is not ideal.

From what I can see the http connector only works with HANA SP09 which is not an option for us in production at present.

I have edited the ao_app.config file as per these articles and and can see in Advanced Settings that the option "Save workbooks in 1.4 format by default" is ticked.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Mark P

[TammyPowlas]

Hi Mark, Araceli - if there's no response here (I am not using HANA) I recommend opening an incident/message with SAP Support - I am not sure of the options for you at this point