BO: Internal files for Customization

general discussion
1

Hi,

I am doing a full client upgrade from 5.1.6 to 6.5.

Our project plan has an item as “Verify Business Objects internal files for customization”. Could any one let me know as to what it means exactly.

We are using DB2 as our database.

Regards,
Vijay

mvijay77 :india: (BOB member since 2005-03-15)

2

I would ask the author of your project plan what they meant by that. Every report is a custom internal file, and I would expect that you would verify that they will still work properly in 6.5.1, but I’m not sure that this is what they meant.

MichaelWelter :vatican_city: (BOB member since 2002-08-08)

3

Maybe they meant custom coding for the Infoview web site?

Judy

JMulders :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-20)

4

Hi,

I checked with the concerned person and came to know that , the files to be customized are “DDB2EN.PRM and DB2MVSEN.PRM”.
I checked the files but could not make out what it has to do with the upgrade. We are not yet decided if we would go for a DB2 Connect upgrade as well now. We are using Db2 Connect 7.2 at present. Would it sound meaningful if we are going for Connect upgrade as well.

Please let me know if any of you have any idea what this means.

Regards,
Vijay

mvijay77 :india: (BOB member since 2005-03-15)

5

The parameter files (.prm) contain default behaviour settings for Business Objects products. Most deployments use the default parameters, but these files are customizable simply opening them up in a text editor and making the needed changes. If these were customized in version 5.x, then you will need to make the same customizations to the 6.5.x parameters files. In some cases, however, parameters are set in different places. For example, universe parameters are now set in the Designer module, per universe, rather than in .prm files.

MichaelWelter :vatican_city: (BOB member since 2002-08-08)

6

For that version of DB2/Connect we had to modify our .PRM files.
… We added a WITH UR to the end of every SQL statement generated
… We also had to change the date format for our installation.
Both of these (and other things) are customizeable thru the .PRM files.

Chris Pohl :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-18)

7

Chris/Michael,

Thanks for your quick response. Some more clarifications please.

Could you let me know some of the universe parameters which we need to keep an eye on?

Where did you add the “WITH UR” clause. (Did you add as another entry in the .PRM file?)

Hope my question makes sense. Excuse me if it doesnt as i am very new to this field.

Thank you,

Regards,
Vijay

[/quote]

mvijay77 :india: (BOB member since 2005-03-15)

8

Well, nothing in particular. Open up a universe, and look at the parameters box. You will see a Parameters tab. This is where you can customize the parameters for that universe.

The specific parameters files that you are customizing for your project are DB2 files, which doesn’t necessarily relate to specific universes, so you’ll want to compare the existing ones with the new ones that you get with 6.5.x.

MichaelWelter :vatican_city: (BOB member since 2002-08-08)

9

UR = Uncommitted Reads (sometimes called Dirty Reads)
Start HERE for more details and proper syntax

Chris Pohl :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-18)

10

Hi,

Thank You. I was able to find out the changes needed with all your inputs.
One more question though.

How can I add a comment to the .prm file that i want to change. ie I want to make a modification in one line. I need to put a comment that, .prm file modified on so and so date and due to this reason, so that at a later stage we can trace where we had customized.

the following is a line from db2udb.prm file in 6.5.1

N

Regards,
Vijay

mvijay77 :india: (BOB member since 2005-03-15)

11

Can you comment the .prm file? … hmmm, interesting idea.

I did try editing our .prm file and added a few semi-colon lines:

;This is a Comment
;This is another Comment

And the tool still seemed to work fine. Couldn’t find this documented anywhere, so your mileage may vary.

We document the changes on our install server itself
For every patch we apply (and this is a patch for our installation).

Chris Pohl :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-18)

12

HI,
Our old files(5.1.6) had comment in a different way using ‘#’. This is how it looks.

Modified 11-14-02 prevent aggregation error message

#GROUPBY_EXCLUDE_COMPLEX=Y
GROUPBY_EXCLUDE_COMPLEX=N

I could not try it out with 6.5 as I do not yet have them installed.

Regards,
Vijay

mvijay77 :india: (BOB member since 2005-03-15)

13

Hi,

Adding one more info i just got, For oracle .sbo file it is ‘;’ that is used as comment.

We are using DB2 v 7.2.

The following doc may be useful. (No need of techsupport id).
http://support.businessobjects.com/library/docfiles/cps10/downloads/boxi_dataaccessgde_en.pdf

Regards,
Vijay

mvijay77 :india: (BOB member since 2005-03-15)