Adding SAP tables to Universe using Designer BO XI

building semantic layer
1

Hi All

I’m having problems adding any SAP tables to Designer. When I click on the insert menu, all the options are disabled including Table. Do you know why this is happening? Is it an authorization rights/roles issue that i need on my SAP account? Or are certain infoObjects like infocubes restricted from being used in designer?

I’ve installed BO XI R2 on windows 2003 server.
I’ve done all the SAP transports and installed the SAP integration kit
I’ve setup the SAP Authentication on the CMC

router79 (BOB member since 2007-07-24)

2

Did you ever get this resolved? If so, what was the resolution?

We are created our first universe to run against SAP/BW and ran into the same problem. We are on XIR2 and based our universe off a BEx Query.

Thanks for any help you can give us.

dabrks (BOB member since 2007-03-14)

3

I could be misunderstanding what you are trying to acheive, but you can’t add ‘tables’ into your Universe from a BW Query. The universe simply acts as a translation layer, so that Webi cant create an appropriate MDX statement.

lbrown37 (BOB member since 2002-08-16)

4

After a short time we realized that the universe is really just a ‘translation layer’ for the underlying BEx query. We are now more able to manipulate the universe to suite most of our needs. We can rename objects and classes, and can move objects into different classes. We can create hierarchies.

There are a few important things we cannot do, though. We cannot create filters that the report creator could optionally use in their reports. Also, there is no capability to incorporate databse functions like SYSDATE. I’m told that simple measures like counts must be included in the cube. They can’t be created in the BEx query or the universe.

Is this correct? If not, what am I missing? Thanks for any help you can give us.

dabrks (BOB member since 2007-03-14)

5

Hello,

I noticed in your replies that you have had hierarchies working through a universe. Are you referring to hierarchies that have been setup within BW?

cheers,
Joseph.

bi.australia :australia: (BOB member since 2008-03-05)

6

Hello,

I don’t know about hierarchies transfered from SAP to BO, I created them in the universe.
Other bugs:

  • No decimal values (just integer)

[edit:]
There is a workaround for the bug with the truncated values:
Start the BO (and apache?) service with a user who has regional setting in English/US!

  • date objects from SAP not optimal if you use a range from Jan 2007 to April 2008
  • if you refresh the structure hidden elements become visible and I heard about reports loosing object references (not able to test till not)
  • conditions from a query not in the universe

Or does anyone know a workaround for these “situations”?!?

Thanks!
Joachim

Joachim74 :de: (BOB member since 2005-09-22)

7

We found that the problems with dates was peculiar to using SAP BW InfoSets (which is the SAP InfoProvider type that is used in BEx). When we excluded InfoSets from the InfoProvider, and just used Queries on top of SAP DSO’s then we were able to use dates correctly.

FWIW: SAP say that this problem with InfoSets “should” (but not “will” !) be fixed in BOXI 3.1 SP3 - which is due in May 2010. However, we are not holding our breath…

rodlangham :uk: (BOB member since 2004-04-13)