Extract data from BO using REST

[Former Member]

Hi,

I would like to get the report data from BO in html format. We are on BO 4.0 and I am using REST based services for the same.

The problem if that when I try to get the data using the below URL, I ONLY get the report headers and not the data.

URL - http://xxx.xxx.com:6405/biprws/raylight/v1/documents/1042711/reports/1

Method - GET

Headers that are passed -

Accept - text/html

X-SAP-LogonToken - XXX

I get a response of the HTML document , but it only has the table header and does not contain data. The report does not have an prompts.

Can anyone please help, suggest ideas ?

Thanks,

Vivek

[former_member188030 · Accepted solution]

Hi Vivek,

What is the patch level on BI 4.0?

Does this happen when you export it to some other format?

- Bhushan

Senior Engineer

SAP Active Global Support

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[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Bhusan,

We are on BO 4.0 SP6 Patch 11. I figured that the export was not working because the query had input parameters, without input parameters I get the result.

a) So my question is how can I pass the I/P parameters to the query ?

b) When I export it as HTML, I get a static HTML back where there is no sort, drill down etc BO capabilities ? If there an another was in which I can export to have them or are these features available in 4.1 ?

Thanks for your help.

Regards,

Vivek

[former_member197386 · Accepted solution]

Hello Vivek,

I can inform you that we added (in 4.1 stream) a new RESTful call on Raylight API to make data extraction very easy.

Ex: <url>/documents/1234/reports/1/elements/1/dataset to extract data in a smart format (JSON or XML).

Does this help?

Regards,

Anthony

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Anthony for the details.

We are in 4.0 , so unfortunately I have to work with what is in 4.0.

This is what my end result needs to be -

a) Call a BO report by passing some I/P parameters

b) Call a URL and execute the BO report on the BO server (e.g http://boserver.qa.com:/XXX/XXX) with the I/P supplied in a) above.

I would like to know -

a) How do I pass I/P parameters to a REST based service in BO 4.0

b) I know that once the I/P is passed we can get the O/P in XML,HTML,PDF etc format, but if I do this I loose all capabilities of BO, e.g drill down etc. Is there a was to execute the BO report with the I/P that has been passed ?

Any thoughts/ideas will be very helpfull.

Thanks,

Vivek

[former_member197386 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

If you want to update data in your report before exporting in HTML format, you have to use the /parameters API.

I'm not sure to understand why you said you loose Bo capabilities after replying to prompts?

Best regards,

Anthony

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure to understand why you said you loose Bo capabilities after replying to prompts?

>> I meant that when I get a response back from BO it will be in HTML format. If this is the case then I will loose drill down capabilities, sorting capabilities, re arrange column capabilities etc, from BO.

I would like to instead pass the parameters and invoke the BO report for those parameters.

[former_member197386 · Accepted solution]

Ok I see. In this case, maybe you should use the "opendocument" functionality (which is not part of Raylight - the Webi RESTful API).

Does it make sense?

Regards,

Anthony

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks, but when I use open document, there is no way to pass I/P parameters. I need to pass I/P as well. The users do not like the I/P screen from open document and need a very sleek looking I/P.

[former_member197386 · Accepted solution]

A way to solve this business case could be to use Raylight to set the prompt values, and save the document.

After that, use the "open document" feature to open the document.

Anthony

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Anthony for the help.

A way to solve this business case could be to use Raylight to set the prompt values, and save the document.

>> Will this be user ID and sessoin specific because multiple users can execute the report at the same time.

After that, use the "open document" feature to open the document.

>> Can you throw some more light on this, do you mean to call the open document using http call directly to the BO server or something else.

Definitely this approach looks promising and I will try doing it.

[former_member197386 · Accepted solution]

Hmmm... no, this workflow could not be user-id/session specific since, when you saved a document using Raylight, you will update the document in the InfoStore.

About the opendocument feature, I found this documentation:

https://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/boexir4/en/xi4_opendocument_en.pdf

Hope this will help you.

Regards,

Anthony