I was on BODS & IS 4.2 SP3 and the column order in Data Insight->View Data, View More Data, Export to Excel…etc… would NEVER match the IS View column order in Data Insight. This is a showstopper for me as I have IS projects with users uploading “comments” back into Info Steward Data Insight projects… since the column order is seemingly random, the BODS comment job fails.
I received the following response from SAP and spent an entire day upgrading to 4.2 SP5 Patch 1 only to find the same exact issue still exists !
SAP’s guidance:
21.07.2015 - 19:29:40 CET - Reply by SAP
Hi pissed off SAP customer,
The issue has been fixed in IS 4.2 SP3 Patch4, 4.2 PS4 Patch1 and 4.2
SP5. I recommend you to upgrade both DS and IS to 4.2 SP5. Or if
it’s a minor issue to you as only the column order looks odd, you may
just stay with the 4.2 SP3 that you are running for now. We will have
the 4.2 SP5 Patch1 released shortly. Please let me know if you have
any questions.
yes, the problem is not fixed for the virtual views, if you select to display columns in DB order, for virtual views it will use the order in which the columns were created when the view was created, if you reorder the columns it still uses the old order
not clear on BODS job loading to IS project ? what is this job doing and how does the order of column affects this ?
I received a reply a few days ago on my incident #(839421 / 2015) (from you ?) with some suggestions on things to try (posted below).
background info regarding the BODS “comments” job:
IS project essentially has extra columns added so when users export failed data they can then make notations on the failed data and place the updated Excel file on a server share for BODS to pick up and update records on the next scheduled run, effectively creating a working knowledge base for the users.
As it stands, I have to re-order the Excel export columns to match IS virtual view before each BODS run otherwise the job will abend.
further guidance from SAP/manoj
currently there is a limitation for virtual views, if you reorder
your column in the Virtual View editor and the current “Sort Column
By” Display Setting is set to Database Order, the column order that
you have set in the Virtual View will not be displayed in the
Workspace, the order will still remain same as original order in which
the columns were added to the virtual view. The problem is happening
since currently we don’t save the position of the column in the
virtual view to the IS Repo, it uses the internal id generated when
you create the column for sorting which doesn’t not change when you
move columns in the editor. The reason you see the column order as you
have set correctly in the editor is because the information is
displayed from the Virtual View XML definition and not read form the
Repo tables that stores the virtual view and column information
To support this we will need Repository level and some re design,
which might be considered in the future release, I will forward this
enhancement to development
Since the order is based on the order in which the column is created,
you can export the virtual view, delete the virtual view and import
the virtual view again, this will show the columns in the correct
order, but this may not be easy solution all the time, especially if
you have lots of rule binding and other dependencies on this virtual
view
other option is to set the Sort Column By to Alphabetical Order and
use that
Thanks and Regards
Manoj
