BOXI 3.0 Universe Does not Recognize SAP BI Query Date Fields as Date

[Former Member]

We are noticing that the universes that are created are turning all date fields from the bex query to charachter fields. When we try to change the field back to a date in the universe it fails saying that the driver is not capable. This is usually tied to bad data in the columns. Has anyone seen this and come up with a workaround?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You need to post your question in Crystal Report .Net Form link is here

Hope this helps!!

Regards,

Deepti Bajpai

[Former Member]

Hi,

You need to post your question in Integration Kits - SAP Form link is here

Hope this helps!!

Regards,

Deepti Bajpai

[Former Member]

This is a universe question with no Crystal Reports involved, so i put it under universe designer. Are we allowed to cross post on this forum?

[abdellatif_astito]

Hi Mark,

This was an issue with XIR2 version, but it was corrected in XI3.0.

Your Date field in SAP BI maps to many objects in the universe, if your date field is an attribute for instance, it will map to at lease two objects prefixed with L00 and L01 in the universe. Did you check all the objects created in the universe from your Date field ? one of them should have appropriate type Date, but not all of them.

If you create a universe from the SAP Demo cube for instance, the Calendar Day characteristic which is Date, will map in the universe to a class with two objects:

1- L00 Calendar Day : type = character because it represents ALL calendar days

2- L01 Calendar Day: type = Date because this represents the actual date field.

Hope this helps.

Abdellatif

[Former Member]

We have tested this further and it appears that the Infoset date fields are the problem. When we create a Bex query against a dso based data source the date fields come over fine as date fields. When we create universes off of Infosets they come over as character fields.

[Former Member]

Has anyone else seen this behavior between the different types of SAP data sources?

[Former Member]

Mark, you are not alone.

We also encountered this error using XI 3.0. We received the "Driver is not capable" error message when including date dimensions from a universe built on a BEx query. Looking at the universe, the date dimensions themselves were date fields, but all the date keys were listed as characters.

Our fix:

Replace all the date dimensions with the date keys listed below the dimensions. This is a little tricky because when you add the key into your webi query, it automatically adds the dimension. You have to manually remove the dimensions from the webi query after adding the key, and your report should run without the "Driver not capable" error message.

This is a serious bug, because now we have to train users building the webi queries to delete the date dimension. We cannot hide the dimension in the universe because it will also hide the key.

I guess another fix could be creating a new Dimension in the universe, and copying the properties from the key field into the new dimension...but if you have many dates, it's a big pain.

Hope this helps,

-Lee