When BW Moves to HANA_ Potential Impacts to the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

6/23/2014 When BW Moves to HANA: Potential Impacts to the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform - Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects) - SCN Wiki

http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/When+BW+Moves+to+HANA%3A+Potential+Impacts+to+the+SAP+BusinessObjects+BI+Platform 1/5

Getting Started Newsletters Store

Search the Community

Welcome, Guest Login Register

Products Services & Support About SCN Downloads

Industries Training & Education Partnership Developer Center

Lines of Business University Alliances Events & Webinars Innovation

Added by Grant Eaton, last edited by Grant Eaton on Mar 04, 2014

Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects) / / Migration

When BW Moves to HANA: Potential Impacts to the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

Original Wiki By Grant Eaton

Introduction

In this article I explain the high-level considerations faced by customers w ho are moving their existing BusinessObjects-on-BW landscape to BW-on-HANA. The intended audience is technical personnel

responsible for SAP BI Platform 4.x or SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1.

This article is not exhaustive and should not be taken as a substitute for engaging an experienced SAP BusinessObjects professional.

I have organized the article into the following sections:

Introduction

Background

Migration Myths: Theres More Than Meets the Eye

BW Data Connectivity Refresher

Ways to Move BW to HANA

Potential Impacts to BusinessObjects Tools

Area 1: BW Server Name Details Affect the SAP Authentication Plug-in

Area 2: Authentication and Single Sign On (SSO)

Area 3: Mapped Users and BW Roles

Area 4: OLAP Connections

Area 5: Universes (XI 3.1 Legacy .UNVs)

Area 6: Reports and Dashboards

Area 7: Recurring Report Schedules

Area 8: Reports Published Directly into BW

Area 9: Connecting Directly to HANA

Area 10: SAP HANA Live for Operational Reporting

Caution: Version Dependencies

More Resources

Background

It started w ith an innocent-seeming question from a large customer w ith at least 5,000 BusinessObjects users. We have over 3,800 BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 public reports based on SAP BW

7.3, their BI team lead informed me, And another 20,000 personnel reports on top of that.

We are now in the process of moving that BW system from Oracle to HANA, he continued. We need to understand the implications for our Web Intelligence and Crystal reports. Do w e need to change

anything? What BusinessObjects reports might break after the migration?

The business justif ication for moving to HANA w as compelling. By using HANA instead of Oracle to pow er BW, the customer expected to realize enormous gains in reporting throughput and performance.

Another expectation w as that new kinds of statistical analysis could be performed on shopping baskets, to understand the relationships betw een product SKUs that sold w ell together or at specif ic retail

outlets. The goal of HANA w as not only to enable faster reporting, but to provide the opportunity to mine enormous volumes of retail and operational data to identify hidden linkages that could provide clues

about how to make the business more competitive.

How ever, the new analytic opportunities presented by the HANA project had also raised several technical questions in the customers mind, and the stakes w ere high. The customer relied on the availability

of the BusinessObjects platform to help w ith critical day-to-day operations. An interruption in the SAP reporting services could create a ripple-effect that w ould impact operations.

Some of the questions the customer raised included:

For supportability reasons, w as it going to be better to upgrade to BI 4.x before moving BW to HANA?

How w ould the existing BI landscape cope w ith a change to the underlying database storing the SAP BW schema? (For example, w ere the 24,000 existing reports going to survive the transition to BW-

on-HANA, or w ould their data connections break?)

Was moving BW to HANA going to pose a more serious impact to BusinessObjects than w hat it might seem?

Would logging into BusinessObjects tools using SAP credentials (secSAPR3), or Single Sign On (SSO), continue to w ork like before?

What other non-obvious technical considerations might there be for an existing BI-on-BW infrastructure w here BW is moving to HANA?

Migration Myths: Theres More Than Meets the EyeAfter reading the customers email, my f irst thought w as that there w ould not be any impact to BusinessObjects infrastructure, because the connectivity betw een reports and BW is normally database-blind.

In other w ords, the reports and Universes are unaw are of w hether BW is running on HANA, SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, or any other supported platform for that matter because the data connectivity

references only BW server connection information. Therefore there should be no impact of migrating BW to HANA or so I initially thought.

I asked some colleagues. Isn't moving BW to HANA simply a database migration w ith no impact to BI Platform? some w ondered.

I did a little more thinking and digging. Quickly it became clear there w ere several impacts to BusinessObjects reporting. In fact, there w ere a some myths to dispel!
http://scn.sap.com/community/getting-startedhttp://scn.sap.com/community/newslettershttp://www.sapstore.com/http://scn.sap.com/welcomehttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/login.jsp?os_destination=%2Fdisplay%2FBOBJ%2FWhen%2BBW%2BMoves%2Bto%2BHANA%253A%2BPotential%2BImpacts%2Bto%2Bthe%2BSAP%2BBusinessObjects%2BBI%2BPlatformhttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wikihttp://scn.sap.com/community/downloadshttp://scn.sap.com/community/developer-centerhttp://scn.sap.com/community/uachttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/~epfl8iqhttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/~epfl8iqhttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJhttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/Migrationhttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/When+BW+Moves+to+HANA%3A+Potential+Impacts+to+the+SAP+BusinessObjects+BI+Platformhttp://scn.sap.com/people/grant.eaton



Myth Fact

In the eyes of BusinessObjects BI Platform, the act of moving BW to HANA is

merely a database change

Actually, BW is a possible user authentication system w ith integration for user logons and Single Sign On w ith potential

certif icate and SNC interdependencies; its a considerably more sophisticated relationship than just another data

source

Moving BW to HANA w ill be transparent to SAP BusinessObjects tools (i.e.,

no changes required to Reports, Connections, Universes, or the BI Platform

itself)

Depending on the selected migration approach there w ill definitely be technical impacts to BusinessObjects that need to

be planned for, and addressed, post-migration of BW to HANA

HANA is just a faster database HANA also enables optional new ECC (R/3) analytic reporting options, such as HANA Live, and new connectivity

methods for BusinessObjects tools; leveraging the improved capabilities requires forethought (or at least aw areness or

planning)

BW Data Connectivity RefresherLets take a step back for a moment and review the possible w ays a BusinessObjects reporting tools can access data in BW. This information is important because it establishes the recommended w ays in

w hich reports can consume data from BW, and helps us understand w here there might be linkages w ithin Connections, Universes, or reports.

As you can see in the above diagram, BI tools normally connect to BW through BICS, SQL, BAPI, or MDX. BICS is the preferred and most common connectivity method in BI 4.0, w hile MDX is the most

common method in XI 3.1.

These connectivity methods do not tell the report w hich underlying database platform BW runs on. Reports are not aw are of the database server name, vendor, or other details only the BW server itself.

In the BICS and MDX scenarios depicted above, BW connection information is centralized in an OLAP Connection (BI 4.x) or a Universe (XI 3.1). What this means is there is a single point of control for

updating the connection information for most types of reports, the exception being Crystal 2008/2011 reports that use BAPI under XI 3.1.

Please see Integration of SAP BusinessObjects and SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse for more information on best practices and possibilities for connecting BW and BusinessObjects tools.

Ways to Move BW to HANAThere are three main options for migrating to HANA. Each option has potential or definite impacts to an existing BusinessObjects infrastructure. For more information on migrating BW to HANA, please see

BW Migration Options in the HANA Cookbook. (The details of migrating BW to HANA are outside the scope of this article but the high-level options have been presented to help frame our discussion.)

Potential Impacts to BusinessObjects ToolsThe follow ing sections provide an overview of possible impacts to BusinessObjects BI Platform w hen BW moves to HANA.

Area 1: BW Server Name Details Affect the SAP Authentication Plug-in

The SAP Authentication screen in the Central Management Console (CMC) contains an Entitlement Systems tab that may be affected by a BW-to-HANA migration. This is the primary area concerned w ith

potential changes resulting from migrating BW to HANA.
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-34347https://cookbook.experiencesaphana.com/bw/



Primary Potential Impact of Migrating BW to HANA:If one or more of these f ields change:

Message Server or Logon Group (Load Balancing)

Application Server or System Number (Application Host)

Client

Then there w ill be impacts and changes required to BusinessObjects as outlined in Areas 2-9

How ever, if the aforementioned f ields arent changing as a consequence of your chosen BW-to-HANA migration approach, then there w ill be no technical

impacts to BusinessObjects tools or reports

Area 2: Authentication and Single Sign On (SSO)The follow ing section provides an overview of potential impacts to manual and SSO authentication w hen using the secSAPR3 (SAP Authentication) logon method to BusinessObjects tools.

Potential Impacts to Authentication, SSO, SNC:

The SAP Authentication plug-in screen w ill need to be updated or else manual Authentication and SSO w ill stop w orking

The SNC Certif icate is used only for support of XI 3.1 .UNV Universes SSO-to-BW or Crystal 2008/2011 SSO-to-BW reports or Publications that contain them; if

using these features, the SNC Certif icate w ill need to be re-generated on BW and re-copied to the BI server or else Publications (or other features that require

SNC such as XI 3.1 SSO-to-DB for legacy .UNV Universes and Crystal 2008/2011 reports) w ill stop w orking

The SSO key store f ile w ill need to be regenerated and re-imported or else SSO may stop w orking

Area 3: Mapped Users and BW Roles

The follow ing section provides an overview of potential impacts to BW users and roles that are mapped to the SAP Authentication plug-in in the CMC.

Impacts to Mapped BW Users and Roles:

No impact if SimpleUsernameFormat=Yes in the Window s registry

If SimpleUsernameFormat is non-existent or is set to No, then user aliases might change, forcing you to re-import mapped BW roles (As of this w riting, it is unverif ied if this situation w ould potentially

break any parent/child relationship w ith Enterprise groups, or cause Access Levels that might be directly assigned to mapped BW roles to lose their assignment)

See the following wikis for more information:

How to map SAP users and AD users in XI3.1 CMC

How to map SAP users and LDAP users in SBO BI4.0 CMC

Area 4: OLAP ConnectionsThe follow ing section provides an overview of potential impacts to the OLAP Connections area of the CMC.

Impacts to Connections:

OLAP Connections w ill need to be updated or else BI 4.0 Common Semantic Layer Universes (IDT) and Analysis, edition for OLAP w orkspaces on BW w ill stop w orking as w ell as Multi-Source Universes

that leverage BW Connections w ill also stop w orking
http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/How%20to%20map%20SAP%20users%20and%20AD%20users%20in%20XI3.1%20CMChttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/How%20to%20map%20SAP%20users%20and%20LDAP%20users%20in%20SBO%20BI4.0%20CMC



Area 5: Universes (XI 3.1 Legacy .UNVs)

The follow ing section provides an overview of potential impacts to XI 3.1 Universes maintained w ith the Universe Designer tool.

Impacts to Universes:

XI 3.1 Universes on BW w ill need to have their data connection information updated (in Designer) or else all reports that leverage the Universe w ill stop w orking

Area 6: Reports and Dashboards

The follow ing section provides an overview of potential changes to reports and dashboards.

Impacts to Reports and Dashboards:

Crystal Reports 2008/2011 documents that point to BW w ill need to have their data source updated in the CMC or else

they w ont refresh

Analysis for Off ice stand-alone documents that point to BW w ill need to be opened and updated to use the new server

details or else they w ill stop refreshing

Dashboards using Live Office connections w here the underlying Live Office report becomes broken due to the migration

w ill also stop w orking

Area 7: Recurring Report Schedules

Reports that are scheduled to run periodically may also be affected by migrating BW to HANA.

Impacts to One-Time or Recurring Schedules:

Recurring report schedules w ill fail if the underlying report documents cant connect to the new BW-on-HANA server

In the case of Web Intelligence documents, change the underlying OLAP Connection (4.0) or Universe Connection (3.1) and the scheduled Web Intelligence

documents w ill continue to w ork

In the case of Crystal Reports 2008/2011 documents, change the Database Configuration (or edit and republish the report from Crystal Reports designer)

mass-editing of report schedules is possible through the BI Admin API through a custom-built script

Area 8: Reports Published Directly into BW

Impacts to Reports Published to BW (via BW Publisher or Crystal Content Administration Workbench):

If a customer publishes their BW reports from BW to BOE (using CCAW, Crystal Content Administration Workbench, part of SAP IK), the connection info can be updated easily using a setting in CCAW. In

this case, all connection in the reports w ill be updated during next publish.

The LCM tool can also be used to promote/re-import reports and use the Connection Override function to update Crystal Report database connection details.

Area 9: Connecting Directly to HANA

Impacts to the BusinessObjects Servers:

For Explorer 4.0 SP5+ to w ork on BW-on-HANA it requires the ability to connect directly to HANA via the HANA Client Tools. Install the 64-bit HANA Client on all BI 4.0 SP5+ Platform processing servers.

Impacts to Developer Workstations:

Also install the 32-bit HANA Client Tools on developer w orkstations to enable development of reports, dashboards, Analysis for Off ice, Explorer and Lumira w orkspaces, and Universes to occur directly

on HANA Analytic View s, Calculation View s, and/or SQL tables via ODBC or JDBC. (Note that 64-bit Lumira requires 64-bit HANA Client.)

For more information, please see Installing the HANA Client or the follow ing HANA Academy video.

Area 10: SAP HANA Live for Operational Reporting

A discussion of SAP HANA Live is outside the scope of this article. Please refer to the follow ing links for more information. Depending on your business requirements, SAP HANA Live may be a suitable

alternative or adjunct to BI and/or BW reporting:

SAP HANA Live (formerly known as SAP HANA Analytic Foundation / SHAF):

What is it:

http://w w w .saphana.com/docs/DOC-2949

Main page:


SAP HANA Live Generic Demos (Offline)
http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2275http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkhixj-ELFwhttp://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2949http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2923



Speed Demo External:

http://demo.tdc.sap.com/SpeedDemo/2a7cccd1515c2f5b

Demo Recording:

https://sap.emea.pgiconnect.com/p68367624/

Product Videos:

Within the SAP HANA Studio 4:17

Connecting w ith Analysis Off ice 5:26

Connecting w ith Crystal Reports 2:47

Connecting w ith Explorer 2:36

SAP HANA Analytics Foundation using SAP LT 2:26

Caution: Version DependenciesNote: For customer upgrading to SAP BW 7.4 (GA intended for December 2013), applying a new BI 4.1 or BI 4.0 Support Pack is mandatory. Please see:

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-35096

If you are running SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite on SAP NetWeaver 7.4, please be aw are of the follow ing:

SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite 4.1 Support Pack 1 or BusinessObjects BI Suite 4.0 Support Pack 6 is mandatory! Low er Support Pack levels do not incorporate the enhancements delivered w ith SAP

NetWeaver 7.4.

Please read more in the SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite 4.x release restriction, e.g., SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite 4.1 Support Pack 1 Release Restrictions

More ResourcesThe follow ing section contains links to articles, w hite papers, and w ikis that may be helpful to you as your plan your migration of BW to HANA.

1. SAP HANA Cookbook for BW-on-HANA:

https://cookbook.experiencesaphana.com/bw /

2. Integration of BusinessObjects and SAP BW:

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-34347

3. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer on BW-on-HANA:


4. Importing BW Models into the HANA Modeler:

http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1764251


5. SAP Lumira (Visual Intelligence) & BusinessObjects Explorer on BW powered by SAP HANA:

https://scn.sap.com/community/businessobjects-explorer/blog/2013/01/08/sap-visual-intelligence-sap-businessobjects-explorer-on-sap-netw eaver-bw -pow ered-by-sap-hana


bi bw hana boe upgrade migration sap businessobjects business objects bi_auth_sap bi_auth_auth

Follow SCNContact Us SAP Help Portal

Privacy Terms of Use Legal Disclosure Copyright
http://demo.tdc.sap.com/SpeedDemo/2a7cccd1515c2f5bhttps://sap.emea.pgiconnect.com/p68367624/http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2964http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2961http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2962http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2963http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2950http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-35096https://cookbook.experiencesaphana.com/bw/http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-34347http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2099http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1764251http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-3151https://scn.sap.com/community/businessobjects-explorer/blog/2013/01/08/sap-visual-intelligence-sap-businessobjects-explorer-on-sap-netweaver-bw-powered-by-sap-hanahttp://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2943http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/bihttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/bwhttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/hanahttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/boehttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/upgradehttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/migrationhttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/saphttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/businessobjectshttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/businesshttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/objectshttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/bi_auth_saphttp://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/label/BOBJ/bi_auth_authhttp://bit.ly/SCNTwRhttp://bit.ly/SCNFBhttp://bit.ly/SCNyouThttp://bit.ly/SCNLnIhttp://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-18476http://help.sap.com/http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/policy?view=PPhttp://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/policyhttp://www.sap.com/corporate-en/our-company/legal/impressum.epxhttp://www.sap.com/corporate-en/our-company/legal/copyright/index.epx

Documents

When BW Moves to HANA_ Potential Impacts to the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform