BOBJ 4.0 Upgrade: Impact on Int Kit customizations for crystal reports?

[Former Member]

BW Version 7.01

BOBJ version XI 3.1

We would like to upgrade to BOBJ 4.0, could anyone provide input on these questions?

1 - Can we keep BW 7.01, or do we need to look into upgrading to 7.3? We'd prefer to not touch bw now. If we move to bobj 4.0, does BW need to be touched?

2 - We have modified these function modules in BW (i believe they are part of the integration kit in SAP BW) to meet end user requirements for crystal reports; will crystal reports in BOBJ 4.0 still work with these? I believe one of the improvements is that these aren't used anymore for performance reasons???

BAPI_MDPROVIDER_GET_VARIABLE

BAPI_MDDATASET_CREATE_OBJECT

BAPI_MDDATASET_GET_AXIS_DATA

BAPI_MDPROVIDER_GET_MEMBERS

BAPI_MDPROVIDER_GET_MEMBERS

3 - 99% of our reports are crystal, are there any other hurdles or reasons why we should be cautious moving to 4.0? We are looking to roll out explorer, webi, and xcelsius and would rather go ahead and catch up to 4.0...

Thanks,

Matt

[Henry_Banks]

Hi,

1. i'd recommend having a seperate BW for BI4 purposes. If anything, it makes management of integration TRANSPORTs much easier, given that you can only have 1 version active..

(yes, although there's no SAP IK Kit, transports are still imported into backend)

2. OLAP BAPI access is still there in BI4.0, namely for the CR 2011 tool with BW MDX Driver , and for Webi documents using the legacy Universe Design Tool OLAP.unv file.

the new OLAP data access driver for SAP in BI4.0 is the BW's BI Consumer Service (BICS API). The function modules for this are generally called: BICS_PROV_GET*

3. No hurdle at all. You can migrate your content as-is without fear of change. that's principally why the CR 2011 client is there for the 4.0 RTC - for adoption and onboarding. That legacy CR client technology is wholy unchanged, apart from .xlsx support and a 'read only' save mode.

the Crystal for Enterprise product is still playing catch up. It hasn't got all (any) of the direct drivers you would expect from crystal, but it can consume the new .unx common semantic layer and the BICS jco driver (neither of which the CR2011 product can)

... as of 4.1 (Q1 2012) the fit-gap in features is answered. i.e. they've all been fwd ported.

i hope this helps

Regards,

H

[Former Member]

1 - By separate BW, you mean on a different machine / server - correct? if so we currently have CMS database and BW 7.1 on different servers/machines. I'm wondering if we need to concern ourselves with a parallel BW upgrade - or can we just go to BI 4.0 for BOBJ? Then - leave BW alone and just import the transports is our goal. I don't see why we couldn't, just checking....

2 - Actually I'm using the BICS in Xcelsius now, and we don't use webi b/c our hierarchy's don't work well. I'm told in BI4.0 webi will support this better.

Thanks,

Matt

[Former Member]

Hi Matt,

You can upgrade BO itself without any changes to BW. In 4.0 you need not need to install integration kit (it's a part of standard installation for 4.0).

SBOP 4.0 offers 2 versions of Crystal reports

1. Crystal Reports 2011- (successor of 2008) which provides same functionality as 2008, so you can still run all the reports developed in CR 2008. Also you have option to migrate your reports to Enterprise version.

2. Crystal Reports Enterprise - This a brand new Crystal Reports and future of Crystal Reports in BI suite going forward. This supports new .UNX format and BICS connection with BW and yes it does fully support BW Hierarchies. Though it does not support expand / collapse functionality like BEx Analyzer. You have to pre select the hierarchies you want to show in report via query designer or user variable.

WEBI - In 4.0 WEBI is redesigned as well and supports new BICS connection which fully supports BW Hierarchies and you can Expand / Collapse just like BEx Analyzer.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.

Edited by: Rajan Patel on Nov 28, 2011 11:03 AM