Help me in using WID Scanner?

system · September 3, 2007, 10:53am

Hi,
I was looking for some code or macros to help me in retriving .wid from BO Server, I need to have each report and which universe used in it. I found a tpoic called “WID Scanner” in the download section, I download it but there is something called “grep 2.5” to be installed, so can any one help me with the steps to install this Scanner? and what is the function of the “grep 2.5”? is it safe to installed in the BO server?

Is there any other way to scan all the reports and get a list of univers used in each report?

Thanks.

DataAdmin (BOB member since 2006-08-23)

system · September 3, 2007, 2:37pm

For information on grep:

You don’t need to install this on a server. You can run from a client as well, as long as the client can access the filestore on the server (UNC-path) (and desktopintelligence needs to be installed)

jbo (BOB member since 2005-07-31)

system · September 4, 2007, 6:15am

Hi Jbo,

Thanks for your reply.

I have download this “filegrep-2.5.1a-2-setup.exe” from the site www.sourceforge.net and install it in my server, but still I get nothing and a message apper telling me “File not found”, so can you explain the steps for me ?

Thanks again

DataAdmin (BOB member since 2006-08-23)

system · September 4, 2007, 9:06am

Probably you didn’t set the path pointing to your filestore properly… (or one of the other paths)

jbo (BOB member since 2005-07-31)

system · September 4, 2007, 9:30am

Hi Jbo,

I have checked every thing and they are all correct , but I think the problem is with grep function, there is a note that i should add it to my “PATH environment” so could you tel me how, please.

DataAdmin (BOB member since 2006-08-23)

system · September 4, 2007, 6:44pm

Go to control panel\system\advanced\environment variables\ here you can edit the PATH-variable. Add the folder were the grep is installed to the variable.

However it should also work without the grep installed. In that case objects belonging to a wid-file are not retrieved.

hope this helps.

jbo (BOB member since 2005-07-31)

system · September 5, 2007, 6:07am

Hi Jbo,

It is worked Thanks, it is so helpful tool, I will go through the code to see wither I can customize it.

Thanks again

DataAdmin (BOB member since 2006-08-23)

system · September 5, 2007, 8:07am

Hi again,
Do I bother you ?

I have one more thing about the Scanner

what do you mean by the last check box “Exclude Instance-object-files”

because when i select only the first checkbox “Write to flatfile” it shows 252 documents but when it 175 document it shows an error message, it same for the second checkbox “Write to Database”, but when I select the third checkbox with one of the above boxs it shows 212 documents and it read them all without any error.

So is there any limitation in the tool?
and what do the third cheeckbox mean?

Thanks

DataAdmin (BOB member since 2006-08-23)

system · September 5, 2007, 8:58am

Dear Jbo,

I have do some changes to my Language setting and number setting and it work correctly, may be because i have some Arabic title and numbers.

OK, now I have another Questions

What do you mean by Universe_shortname in wid_document_universes Table? because I found a lot of universes that have a diffrent universe_name than the universe_shortname?

Note: most of then are done by saveing a universe with a diffrent name and then I change the universe name in “parameters” in designer.

Thanks

DataAdmin (BOB member since 2006-08-23)

system · September 5, 2007, 9:46am

Nice to hear everything worked out fine,

Shortname means the name the universe is saved with (without the extension unv)
Name means the name that is stored in the Universe Parameters

jbo (BOB member since 2005-07-31)

system · September 5, 2007, 9:57am

Halooo Jbo,

about the short name, I have a univers called worker, I open it and save it as employer and changed the univers name in the parameter,
so now i get this result

name | shortname

worker worker
employer worker

so the short name not changed here??? do you know why? :?

this cause a problem when i check the WID Scanner report because all the report shown that they related to worker in “Universe_used” field.

I check the code and I found where the location that i can chenged the value to be SI_name instead of SI_shortname. but do you have a solution for this without changeing the code? 8)

Thanks

DataAdmin (BOB member since 2006-08-23)

system · September 5, 2007, 10:16am

I don’t have a clue so I should say change the code.

Maybe you can check with BO query builder where it goes wrong:

http:///businessobjects/enterprise115/WebTools/websamples/query/ie.aspx (URL for IIS installation)

You can get the universe info from the CMS with following query:

select * from ci_appobjects where SI_KIND = ‘Universe’

The field SI_WEBI gives you all the SI_IDs of webi documents using that universe

Get webi document info by using:

select * from ci_infoobjects where SI_ID in (1696,1697,…)

jbo (BOB member since 2005-07-31)

system · September 6, 2007, 6:08am

Thanks Jbo
The tool is so helpful and through it i descover some errors in my repository

thank again

DataAdmin (BOB member since 2006-08-23)

system · December 13, 2007, 3:13pm

Hi Jbo,
I am trying to identify all reports that use specific objects as part of an upgrade to BOXI.

Would you be able to say if you’re wid scanner would work on v6 .wid reports If it does it would save me loads of time.

Did you ever manage to include the class that the object belongs to

Thanks,
Robin.

RMCPHAIL (BOB member since 2007-11-01)

system · January 8, 2008, 3:09pm

When I run this report, I get Transport error: Communication Failure message. I installed Grep 2.5.1a and modified Path variable.

BOisBest (BOB member since 2004-04-05)

system · January 10, 2008, 4:30pm

I too am receiving the Transport Error : Communication Failure message when trying to use this utility. Any advice as to why this is happening?

The utility will run successfully against my local BOE install, but will not run against other server environments thus far (even when running it from the server itself).

Has anyone found a solution for this?

Thanks

crystal01 (BOB member since 2006-08-30)

system · January 30, 2008, 5:26pm

For those of you seeing the “Transport Error - Communication Failure” when you run the tool, check your event log. I originally though this was a network communication error, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

When I run the WID-Scanner against medium to large size environments, I receive this error, and noticed that the CMS would re-start itself shortly after as well. A look at the event log shows the following:

CMS is unstable and will shut down immediately. Reason: Database access error. Reason ORA-01795: maximum number of expressions in a list is 1000

I see in the WID-Scanner VB that the query used to retrieve the WID objects has a “top 1000000” in the select clause, so this seems to be a different issue…

Anyone have an idea on how to resolve this?

Thanks!

crystal01 (BOB member since 2006-08-30)

system · March 24, 2008, 8:04pm

Regarding my previous post on the Maximum Expressions In List… error, there is a 1.2 version of the utility which allows for retreival of the WID documents in small batches (# input by user). This will work around the In List DB errors that were received.

Additionally, I found I would occasionally receive “File Not Found” errors that would stop the utility. These are a result of cases where the CMS still has a FRS location pointer, but the physical WID document no longer exists on the filestore. These can be avoided by adjusting the code to check for existance of the file before trying to pull the file size (and grepping for objects).

On a separate issue - I noticed through testing that for certain WID files, object names are not retrieved. Looking closer at the WID files that objects are not retreived for, I see that these WID documents do not contain the “” tag that is parsed for by this utility. I believe this is only the case for a portion of instances, not the report objects themselves…

Does anyone know why there is a difference in the internal format of the WID file? I haven’t yet been able to find a pattern (old WIDs created on a previous SP, instances vs. non-instances, etc). Any input appreciated!

crystal01 (BOB member since 2006-08-30)

system · April 15, 2008, 6:51pm

Those wid-files where you cannot retrieve objects from are wid files created in an earlier version of webi (before XIR2). This happens when those wid files are migrated to XIr2.

jbo (BOB member since 2005-07-31)

system · April 15, 2008, 7:31pm

That’s what I suspected - thanks…

crystal01 (BOB member since 2006-08-30)