6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 1/37

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Nothing's more annoying than trying to browse the tens of thousands of BI assets in your SAP BusinessObjects CMS

and getting slapped on your mouse with the enterprise-unfriendly Too Many Objects message. (And it's not

just us who's affected by this!)

This happens in particular when browsing large CMS's through Instance Manager, a

capability or "micro-application" accessed through the Central Management Console

and that helps SAP BusinessObjects administrators search and discover the scheduling

activity of their deployment by a number of different properties (owner, date, status, folder,

etc).

So how do you sort through all this "Big Metadata"? There are a slew of different ways,

but the one we enjoy the most is shown below, using MetaMiner Community Edition,

to instantly get the answers you need around scheduled instances.

And if you missed our semi-pluggy-but-not-really-since-its-freeware announcement of MetaMiner Community

Edition now's a great time to have a look and start "MetaMining"!

668 View s 0 Comments

Tags: businessobjects, business_intelligence_(businessobjects), bi_platform, administration, bi4.1,

sap_businessobjects_business_intelligence_platform_4.0

0:00 / 4:23

Infolytik MetaMiner - Scheduled Instance Analysis

SAP BusinessObjects Scheduled Instance Analysis(on the Mac!)

Posted by Atul Chowdhury Feb 27, 2014

BI Platform & Data Services Patch History AnalysisTool

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 2/37

When investigating a problem on a SAP

BusinessObjects node, it is often very helpful to

understand what software has been installed on the

host and in what order was it installed. Fortunately, the

installer that SAP BusinessObjects products uses keeps

a detailed record of this information and this type of

detail is accessible if you know where to find it. This

Patch History Analysis capability will soon be included

as part of the BI Platform Support Tool Landscape

Analysis Report however in the meantime, I thought it would be helpful to release a stand-alone version for BI / DS

administrators to utilize.

The stand-alone tool is an executable jar file that queries this information from the installation manifest

(InstallManifest.sqlite) of a BOE system and generates an Excel report (.csv) containing information including:

Which products and patches were installed

What order were they installed

What date/time it was installed

Was it an install, uninstall, repair

Which user installed it

What was the build number

What is the setup language

Was the installation committed successfully to the manifest

Currently, the tool is programmed to support the following products and versions

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0 / 4.1

SAP Data Services 4.0 / 4.1 / 4.2

Information Steward 4.0 / 4.1 / 4.2

Usage

1. Download PatchHistory.zip and unzip PatchHistory.jar to the SAP BusinessObjects InstallData folder (for

example C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\InstallData) or copy the file InstallManifest.sqlite to the

same folder as your PatchHistory.jar (note: Java 1.6 is required)

2. Double click the PatchHistory.jar (alternatively, launch the program using the command java -jar

PatchHistory.jar)

3. A .csv file is generated

4. Open the .csv in Excel

Here's example output from a BI Platform 4.0 node:

PRODUCT TYPE DATE / TIME BUILD INSTALL USER SETUP LANGUAGE COMMITTED

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0 SP4 Install 2013-02-06 / 15:58:51 14.0.4.738 C123456 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0

Client Tools SP4

Install 2013-02-07 / 09:43:12 14.0.4.738 C123456 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0

update SP5

Install 2013-02-07 / 11:16:26 14.0.5.882 C123456 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0

Client Tools update SP5

Install 2013-02-07 / 13:05:26 14.0.5.882 C123456 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0

update SP5 Patch 3

Install 2013-02-07 / 14:13:53 14.0.5.957 C123456 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0

Client Tools update SP5 Patch 3

Install 2013-02-07 / 15:48:50 14.0.5.957 C123456 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 4.0 SP4 Install 2013-02-14 / 13:37:02 14.0.4.738 I123123 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0

update SP5 Patch 5

Install 2013-03-15 / 09:10:49 14.0.5.1003 C123456 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0

Client Tools update SP5 Patch 5

Install 2013-03-15 / 11:29:01 14.0.5.1003 C123456 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0

Client Tools update SP5 Patch 5

Uninstall 2013-03-15 / 14:59:41 14.0.5.1003 C123456 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0 Install 2013-03-15 / 15:36:20 14.0.5.1003 C123456 en TRUE

Posted by Toby Johnston Feb 26, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 3/37

Client Tools update SP5 Patch 5

SAP Design Studio 11.1.0.84 Install 2013-08-15 / 11:55:35 11.1.0.84 I123123 en TRUE

Crystal Reports for Enterprise 4.0 SP7 Install 2013-12-11 / 10:38:47 14.0.7.1147 I123123 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.1

update SP2

Install 2013-12-16 / 22:13:39 14.1.2.1121 D213123 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.1

Client Tools update SP2

Install 2013-12-17 / 15:08:27 14.1.2.1121 D213123 en TRUE

Crystal Reports for Enterprise 4.0 SP7 Uninstall 2013-12-17 / 17:10:54 14.0.7.1147 D213123 en TRUE

Crystal Reports for Enterprise 4.0 SP2 Install 2013-12-17 / 18:31:06 14.1.2.1121 D213123 en TRUE

Crystal Reports for Enterprise 4.0 SP2 Uninstall 2013-12-18 / 12:18:04 14.1.2.1121 D213123 en TRUE

Crystal Reports for Enterprise 4.0 SP7 Install 2013-12-18 / 14:01:38 14.0.7.1147 D213123 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0 SP2 Maintenance 2014-01-12 / 12:37:02 14.1.2.1121 D213123 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.1

update SP2 Patch 2

Install 2014-02-11 / 16:46:56 14.1.2.1195 I123123 en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.1

update SP2 Patch 3

Install 2014-02-20 / 13:23:07 14.1.2.1216 I123123 en TRUE

Here's example output from a BI Platform 4.0 (with Data Services add-on) node:

PRODUCT TYPE DATE / TIME BUILD INSTALL USERSETUP

LANGUAGECOMMITTED

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

4.0 SP4

Install 2012-11-15 /

11:38:17

14.0.4.738 SAP\TJohnston en TRUE

Data Services 4.0 SP3 Install 2012-11-16 /

09:43:14

14.0.3.273 SAP\TJohnston en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

4.0 update SP4 Patch 5

Install 2012-11-19 /

10:53:14

14.0.4.855 SAP\TJohnston en TRUE

Data Services 4.0 SP3 Patch 1 Upgrade 2012-11-19 /

12:11:46

14.0.3.353 SAP\TJohnston en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

4.0 update SP5

Install 2013-04-26 /

15:59:25

14.0.5.882 SAP\TJohnston en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

4.0 update SP5 Patch 7

Install 2013-04-26 /

18:12:57

14.0.5.1036 SAP\TJohnston en TRUE

Data Services 4.0 SP3 Patch 3 Upgrade 2013-04-26 /

19:52:46

14.0.3.451 SAP\TJohnston en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

4.0 SP7

Install 2013-08-24 /

13:00:29

14.0.7.1147 TCoffman en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

4.0 update SP6

Install 2013-08-25 /

14:32:03

14.0.6.1036 TCoffman en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

4.0 update SP6 Patch 4

Install 2013-08-25 /

17:36:34

14.0.6.1145 TCoffman en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

4.0 update SP6 Patch 11

Install 2014-01-24 /

19:19:10

14.0.6.1312 TCoffman en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

4.0 update SP6 Patch 11

Uninstall 2014-02-06 /

15:29:57

14.0.6.1312 TCoffman en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

4.0 update SP6 Patch 10

Install 2014-02-07 /

13:28:07

14.0.6.1272 SAP\TJohnston en TRUE

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

4.0 update SP6 Patch 10

Install 2014-02-11 /

15:26:10

14.0.6.1272 SAP\TJohnston en TRUE

Download the latest stand-alone version from here

BOE and Data Services Patch History Analysis Tool - Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects) - SCN Wiki

Download the BI Platform Support Tool here:

SAP BI Platform Support Tool - Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects) - SCN

1844 View s 3 Comments

Tags: businessobjects, bi, bi4, business_intelligence_(businessobjects), 4.0, bi4.0, reporting, bobj, bi4_upgrade, bi_platform,

tools, utility, bi4.1, sap_businessobjects_business_intelligence_platform_4.0

BI Platform Analysis (and having fun doing it) - Part 1

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 4/37

The team at Infolytik has been working very hard to finally bring to the community

MetaMiner Community Edition: the first free ultra-light, cross-platform SAP BI4 and

XI3 landscape visualization app aimed towards helping administrators and architects

become more productive and efficient with their time spent managing SAP

BusinessObjects resources.

Q: What does MetaMiner Community Edition do? A: MetaMiner CE is an ultra-thin high performance client that connects directly to the MetaMiner

Server and allows for Google-like search and discovery across all of your BI assets like Web

Intelligence, Crystal Report or Xcelisus Dashboards. Furthermore, MetaMiner reveals a complete

CMS object hierarchy, or tree, providing even the deepest of insights into your users' Favorites and

Inbox folders.

CMS Explorer is a complete

rendition of your Business Objects

folder hierarchy

Meta Query: True freehand SQL

against your CMS metadata

Filter groups provide quick slice and

dice across corporate assets like

instances and schedules

Q: What insights will it provide to better manage my Business Objects XI3 or BI4

deployment? A: There are lots of them. Here are a few off the top of my head:

MetaMiner Community Can Answer This

Question...

Why its helpful

We're performing a cutover from our XI3

environment to a brand new BI4 one.

We've completed the initial migration but

want to know - what reports were

changed or created in the last

15 days?

In order to remain within compliance and adhere to process and

promotion workflows, we must ensure that any unauthorized BI content

authored directly in the new BI4 environment is accounted for (or

removed)

Joe's about to leave the organization and

he's authored many reports in different

places. How can I quickly

identify all their content and re-

assign it to another user?

When deleting a user in an organization, it automatically deletes their

related reports and content. Their "Public" content is also promoted to

"Administrator" as far as ownership goes. By answering this question

we can more easily delegate content to a more accurate person in the

organization and preserve BI continuity of the user who's leaving the

company.

We have hundreds of scheduled reports in

our environment, but managing them has

become difficult. Is there a way to know

how many schedules are

running, by status and how

long do they run for?

Query execution and delivery time can be measured by duration of

schedules. Luckily, MetaMiner CE captures all of this data. And by

understanding duration times more we can gain tighter control over

when and to whom to schedule content, and schedule the longer-

running, "heavier" schedules to another machine, or during off-peak

hours (or procure new hardware if needed).

Lately, our reports running from a specific

job server seem to be failing. We'd like to

reschedule those jobs on a different server

but how do I find out all failed

jobs using a specific job

server?

Again, to maintain BI continuity in the organization, it's critical to learn of

where the failure points are and how to remedy them ASAP. It could be

a scheduled report or QaaWS component that fails, and now the

executive board is looking at stale, outdated data. We do not want this

scenario!

We keep running out of space on our file

store (FRS). Is there an easy way to

determine who's utilizing most of

the disk space, and the

There are a number of reasons why being alerted of resource

exhaustion is important. An untrained user may be developing "run-

away" reports that query more data than they should. Other reports may

simply store more data than they need, and could be re-saved to the

Posted by Atul Chowdhury Feb 25, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 5/37

reports that have the largest

file size?

CMS with purged dataproviders, and thus save time and money to the

organization.

Q: Awesome! How can I get MetaMiner Community Edition and start using it right

away in my XI3 or BI4 environment? A: It's simple: Just head over to http://www.infolytik.com/downloads , install the software and then

request a CE (free) license key from us and its yours to use - for free, forever.

And don't forget to visit some of the other awesome resources available to those wanting to learn more about Query

Builder, CMS metadata and understanding the SAP BI4 or XI3 platform "under the hood", like Mani's expert series

on using the Query Builder and the difference between CMS data vs. Audit data.

In upcoming parts to this series we will answer even more questions and perform more analysis and help uncover

the wealth of information harnessed inside your BI platform!

Happy Reporting!

Atul Chowdhury

Infolytik

813 View s 1 Comments

Tags: bi4_upgrade, business_intelligence, bi_platform, sap_businessobjects_business_intelligence_platform_4.0

0:00 / 6:49

MetaMiner 5 Installation

I have noticed so many questions flowing around BusinessObjects Audit reporting and Metadata

reporting for a quite long time in SCN. The intention of this blog is to explain the basics and the

major difference between each of them.

To start with an introduction, Auditing is predominantly used to get the statistics about the

BusinessObjects deployment by providing more insights on usage metrics of the system where as

metadata reporting is used to get the real-time information about what is available in

BusinessObjects repository. Some of the metrics from Audit database

Who is the more active user in my BusinessObjects environment?

What is the major user activity (create/modify/refresh/delete) carried out on reports over a

week?

BusinessObjects Administration - Audit reporting vsMetadata reporting

Posted by Manikandan Elumalai Feb 17, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 6/37

What are the frequently failing scheduled reports?

Metrics which you can get from CMS database using Query builder (Metadata reporting)

What is the total number of users in the system and who are all the members of a particular

group?

What is the value set at server parameter called “Maximum Character Stream Size”?

What are the reports associated with a particular corporate category?

The below table could help you to distinguish the major differences

Category Audit reporting Metadata reporting

Nature of

data

The information stored in Audit tables is

historical in nature.

Repository tables contains real-

time information about BI contents

which is transactional (No history)

in nature.

Configuration Audit database configuration is not mandatory

during installation. We can continue to use

the system even without auditing and It can

be configured as on when it is required.

It is mandatory to Configure the

CMS database during installation

without which installation will not

succeed.

Direct SQL

access

Data available with in Audit tables can be

queried directly using traditional SQL.

Direct access to CMS tables is not

recommended as they are

encrypted. We need to use Query

builder to get the required

information.

Universe and

reports

Out of box and As-Is sample of universe &

reports are available in BO 3.x and BI 4.x

respectively

We need to develop the universe

and associated reports from the

scratch based on the requirement.

Information

availability

Data available within Audit tables is not real-

time and is based on the parameter - “CMS

Polling interval”

Data available in CMS tables are

real-time in nature and they get

updated as soon as the BI content

gets added/modified/deleted.

Data

retention

and purging

We can purge data available within Audit

tables based on their age

Not possible. But the

inconsistencies between CMS

database and FRS can be removed

using Repository Diagnostics Tool.

Hope this blog is interesting.

References

BusinessObjects Query builder - Basics

BusinessObjects Auditing - Considerations & Enabling

BusinessObjects Auditing - What is changed in BO 4.0?

1194 View s 3 Comments Tags: bo_audit_metadata

Process to Uninstall :-

Updates can only be uninstalled one at a time, in the reverse order of installation.

WaitforCMSForTheFirstTime

Posted by Dharmendra Kumar Feb 14, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 7/37

How to Uninstall in Windows -

START - Control Panel - Programs - look for program which needs to be uninstalled - right click and uninstall/ change

* if the installed program cannot be changed, It will not show change option. It will only give option to uninstall.

NOTE –

Uninstalling program will not revert CMS from 4.1 to 4.0. To get get 4.0 deployment , we must restore CMS database

from backup after the uninstallation has completed.

After uninstalling the update, the previous version can redeployed using wdeploy which can be found at

<INSTALLDIR>\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\wdeploy to your web application server. All components in

your deployment must be at the same version level.

At one step, you SAP screen will show "WaitforCMSForTheFirstTime" for quite long time and SAP keeps thinking what

to do next.

I had the same situation and to proceed further, I started SIA (Server Intelligence Agent) and it worked.

Thank you!

474 View s 0 Comments

Hello BI4 Admins,

In addition to James Rapp's guide about Improving the User Experience in SAP BI Platform - BI 4.1 and Apache

2.4 Supplement,

I want to explain how to migrate an existing Tomcat SSL configuration to Apache and how to enable some logging

improvements.

Apache SSL Setup

Assuming that there is already a working SSL configuration for Tomcat in place,

the existing certificate and it's private key, can be extracted from the keystore used by Tomcat,

with the help of the java keytool and openssl:

- Open CMD.exe

- Change directory to "<BOBJ>\win64_x64\sapjvm\bin",

where <BOBJ> is C:\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\

(or on which drive it's installed in your deployment)

- Export existing certificate with the following command (always adapt the values in < > according to your deployment):

keytool -exportcert -keyalg RSA -alias <cert alias> -file apache.crt -keystore "C:\

<keystore location>\<keystorename>"

Configuring Apache Split Deployment for SSL andImproving Apache Logging

Posted by Moritz Hödel Feb 10, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 8/37

- Clone existing keystore to PKCS12

keytool -v -importkeystore -srckeystore "C:\<keystore location>\<keystorename>" -srcalias

<cert alias> -destkeystore myp12file.p12 -deststoretype PKCS12

- Switch directory to openssl in <Apache root>\bin, e.g. C:\Apache24\bin

- Extract private key from the PKCS12 keystore with openssl by the following command:

openssl pkcs12 -in myp12file.p12 -nocerts -nodes

- Copy the private key, shown in CMD as plain text, to a text file and save it

Please keep in mind that this is sensitive information since it's your certificates private key!!

- Rename the text file to apache.key

- Move the created files apache.crt and apache.key from "<BOBJ>\win64_x64\sapjvm\bin"

to your default keystore location

- Stop Tomcat and Apache

- Change your Tomcat SSL port to another value by modifying the corresponding connector

in "<BOBJ>\tomcat\conf\server.xml", to avoid conflicts, e.g. to 44380

- Open httpd.conf located in <Apache root>\conf, to configure SSL for Apache:

- Search for LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so

and uncomment it by deleting the # at the beginning of the line

- Insert the following lines, for example after the default Listen statement for HTTP.

Please adapt the <Apache root>, <HTTPS port>, <servername> and <default keystore location>

according to your deployment.

Keep in mind that <servername> has to match the common name (CN) of the certificate,

as well as the hostname used when accessing the BIP via HTTPS and that Apache needs "/" instead of "\" for paths:

Listen <HTTPS port>

SSLSessionCache shmcb:<Apache root>/logs/SSLCache(512000)

SSLSessionCacheTimeout 300

<VirtualHost *:<HTTPS port>>

ServerName <servername>

SSLEngine on

SSLCertificateFile <default keystore location>/apache.crt

SSLCertificateKeyFile <default keystore location>/apache.key

Include conf/bobj.BOE.conf

Include conf/bobj.AdminTools.conf

Include conf/bobj.BusinessProcessBI.conf

Include conf/bobj.MOBIServer.conf

Include conf/bobj.MobileBIService.conf

Include conf/bobj.clientapi.conf

Include conf/bobj.dswsbobje.conf

Include conf/bobj.explorer.conf

Include conf/bobj.explorer_help.conf

</VirtualHost>

- Start Tomcat and Apache

- Basic check of SSL configuration by accessing

https://<servername>/

-> should show the default "It works!" page

- Check BI Launchpad access via

https://<servername>/BOE/BI

-> should show BI Launcpad login

The deployment is now configured for SSL (HTTPS client access).

- Not specific to SSL, but can be helpful in this context:

In contrast to Tomcat, it is not possible to access http(s)://<servername>/BOE/BI/ or /BOE/CMC/,

while using the default bobj.BOE.conf, created by the WDeploy Split Deployment.

If you need that working, add the following parameters at the end of bobj.BOE.conf in <Apache root>\conf:

JkMount /BOE/CMC/ ajp13

JkMount /BOE/BI/ ajp13

Improving Apache logging

By default, Apache writes logs until the disk is full,

which is not a desirable behavior in a production environment.

In this simple example, we limit error.log, access.log and deflate_log.log

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 9/37

to write max. 10 files with 50 MB each, overwriting old files (like a ring buffer).

This is done by the help of rotatelogs, which is contained in <Apache root>\bin:

- Open httpd.conf, located in <Apache root>\conf

- Deactivate the following lines by commenting them with #:

ErrorLog "logs/error.log"

CustomLog "logs/access.log" common

- After that, add the matching one of the following lines, below each one deactivated in the step before:

ErrorLog "|bin/rotatelogs.exe -n 10 logs/errorlog.log 50M"

CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs.exe -n 10 logs/access.log 50M" common

- Open httpd-bi41.conf, located in <Apache root>\conf\extra

- Deactivate the following lines by commenting them with #:

LogFormat '"%r" %b (%{ratio}n) "%{User-agent}i"' deflate

CustomLog logs/deflate_log.log deflate

- After that, add the matching one of the following lines, below each one deactivated in the step before:

LogFormat '"%r" %b (%{ratio}n%%) "%{User-agent}i"' deflate

CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs.exe -n 10 logs/deflate_log.log 50M" deflate

- The LogFormat change, adds a % character after the deflate ratio, for better readability of the deflate_log.log

This can be further modified, see mod_deflate - Apache HTTP Server for more details.

- Restart Apache

Now we have configured a simple log rotation.

If you want to do more sophisticated things, have a look at cronolog,

also mentioned in the Apache documentation:

Log Files - Apache HTTP Server

I hope this helps some of you

Regards

Moritz

(Sorry for not providing any screenshots, but since this topic covers collection of sensitive information,

I didn't want to add some of our original systems)

796 View s 12 Comments Tags: ssl, bi_platform, bi41_platform, apache24

Continued from: A complete guide to setup CA APM Introscope 9 for monitoring SAP BI Platform 4.1 on Windows

[PART 1/2]

Step 4: Configure each BI node and application server node In this step, we need to enable monitoring on each Apache Tomcat and BI Platform node. In this example, Apache

Tomcat is installed by the SAP BI Platform installer. If you have a stand-alone install of Apache Tomcat or another

Java application server you can copy the wily folder from the BI node to the Java application server node and complete

the configuration as shown below.

1. On the BI / Java application server node, browse to <INSTALL_ROOT>:\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP

BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\java\wily\webapp then edit the file IntroscopeAgent_tomcat.profile with a

text editor

2. Search for $IntroscopeAgentEnterpriseManagerHost and replace this with the hostname of your Introscope

Enterprise Manager

3. Search for $IntroscopeAgentEnterpriseManagerPort and replace this with the agent communication port

number of your Introscope Enterprise Manager

A complete guide to setup CA APM Introscope 9 formonitoring SAP BI Platform 4.1 on Windows [PART2/2]

Posted by Toby Johnston Jan 31, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 10/37

4. Save the changes to IntroscopeAgent_tomcat.profile

5. Launch the Apache Tomcat configuration editor (START-->Programs-->Tomcat-->Tomcat Configuration) then

click on the Java tab

6. Add the following Java properties under Java Options

-Dintroscope.agent.name=TOMCAT_<PORT>

-javaagent:<Path_To_Agent.jar>

-Dcom.wily.introscope.agentProfile=<Path_To_IntroscopeAgent_tomcat.profile>

Example:

-Dintroscope.agent.name=TOMCAT_8080

-javaagent:C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI

4.0\java\wily\Agent.jar

-Dcom.wily.introscope.agentProfile=C:\Program Files(x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP

BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\java\wily\webapp\IntroscopeAgent_tomcat.profile

7. Click the Apply button, then click on the General tab and restart Apache Tomcat. If the Apache Tomcat service

fails to start, check that you entered the Java properties correctly in the previous step and that the files exist in the

specified locations

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 11/37

8. Next, launch the Central Management Console, logon as Administrator, choose Servers. Under nodes, right

click on an SIA node and click Placeholders

9. Edit the following Placeholder values:

Placeholder Value Description

%IntroscopeAgentEnableInstrumentation% true Enables or disables Introscope instrumentation

on BOE Java based servers (APS, AJS, etc)

%IntroscopeAgentEnterpriseManagerHost% IEMHOSTNAME Hostname of your Introscope Enterprise

Manager

%IntroscopeAgentEnterpriseManagerPort% 6001 Agent listening port of your Introscope Enterprise

Manager

%NCSInstrumentLevelThreshold% 10 Set the instrumentation level to 10

%SMDAgentHost% localhost This property should always be set to localhost

%SMDAgentPort% 59818 This port should match the port set in

SapAgentConfig.xml

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 12/37

10. Restart the Server Intelligence Agent and repeat steps 8 and 9 for each additional SIA node

Step 5: Validate the installation/configuration is working

In this step, we will make sure that the metrics are working correctly. Before you start this step, go ahead and refresh

some Web Intelligence documents, Crystal Reports, Dashboards, etc to generate some performance data in the

Introscope Enterprise Manager

1. Go to start, programs, CA APM, then click on Introscope Workstation Webstart or browse to

http://iemhost:8081/workstation

2. Logon to Introscope using user Admin and password Admin89

3. Click Workstation,New Investigator

4. Expand SuperDomain, then locate and expand your BI / Java application server node

5. Verify that you see the following:

6. Next, click Workstation, New Console and validate that the Apache Tomcat and BOE 4.0 dashboards are

returning data according to the products you are using in your BI landscape

Congratulations, your BI landscape is now being monitored by CA APM Introscope. Should you face a roadblock in

the configuration, you can request help from SAP by submitting an incident to component BI-BIP-DEP. Stay tuned to

this space for forthcoming BI Introscope diagnostics and monitoring blogs coming soon!

Please don't forget to rate this blog if you found this tutorial helpful.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 13/37

1698 View s 3 Comments

Tags: support, bi4, monitoring, business_intelligence, solution_manager, root_cause_analysis, rca, diagnostics, w ily,

supportability, w ily_introscope, e2e_diagnostics, bi_platform_4.0, bi40, bi40_support,

sap_businessobjects_business_intelligence_platform_4.0

File Name Link

SAPCAR 7.20 DOWNLOAD

Introscope Enterprise Manager 9 SP15 DOWNLOAD

Introscope 9 customizations SP15 (aka Management Modules) DOWNLOAD

Diagnostics Agent 7.3 SP3 Windows 64-bit DOWNLOAD

Introscope Java Agent 9 SP15 (only needed if using stand-alone web-tier) DOWNLOAD

eula.txt (right click and save target as) DOWNLOAD

osgiPackages.v9.1.5.0.windows.zip (right click and save target as) DOWNLOAD

The procedure to setup CA APM Introscope 9 (formerly known as Wily Introscope) for SAP BI Platform 4.1 has got a bit

easier however, the documentation is still spread out across several locations. In this article, I will give you a

complete step by step example on how to get started monitoring your BI landscape using CA APM Introscope 9. In

this example, I have one host which will run the Introscope Enterprise Manager and another host where I am running

SAP BI Platform 4.1 SP2 + default Apache Tomcat deployment.

Here is the workflow we will follow:

Step 1: Download the installation media from the Software Download Centre

Step 2: Install the Introscope Enterprise Manager

Step 3: Install the Diagnostic Agent on each BI node and application server node

Step 4: Configure each BI node and application server node

Step 5: Validate the installation/configuration is working

Step 1: Download the installation media from the Software Download Centre

First, we need to download each piece of software from the Service Marketplace. If you find that your S-USER

does not have access to download one of these files then open a message under component XX-SER-SWFL and

request access to download the file. If you are installing to an operating system other than Windows x64 then search

for the file names under Support Packages and Patches to find the version appropriate for your platform.

Furthermore, if you find that the downloads do not complete successfully using the links below, then instead search

for the files in the software download centre and add them to your download basket. Once they have been added to

your download basket, you can then download them via the software SAP Download Manager.

Step 2: Install the Introscope Enterprise Manager

SAP provides a read-only version of CA APM Introscope (RTV version) for free as part of your support contract. This

means that you can leverage the monitoring and root cause functionality provided by Introscope, without spending

additional money on a full license. Should you decide that you want to create alerts, customize dashboards, or utilize

the Websphere/Weblogic power packs, then I encourage you to contact your account executive about upgrading to the

SAP Extended Diagnostics package (SED).

The Introscope Enterprise Manager should be installed on a dedicated server which has 24/7 uptime. All of the

performance metrics are stored in the SmartStor database which is maintained by the Introscope Enterprise

Manager. For best performance, you should install to a dedicated hard disk with plenty of available disk space

(300gb or more). The Introscope Enterprise Manager makes frequent read/writes to this disk and works best if

nothing else is reading/writing to this disk in parallel.

For additional information regarding Introscope installation process, refer to the CA APM Introscope 9.1.5 installation

guide.

1. Copy the Introscope Enterprise Manager 9 SP15 media, Introscope 9 customizations SP15, SAPCAR*.exe,

eula.txt, and osgiPackages.v9.1.5.0.windows.zip to a temporary folder on the host where you will be installing

the Introscope Enterprise Manager

A complete guide to setup CA APM Introscope 9 formonitoring SAP BI Platform 4.1 on Windows [PART1/2]

Posted by Toby Johnston Jan 31, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 14/37

2. Open a command prompt and extract the contents of WILY_IS_EM15_0-20007498.SAR using the sapcar -xvf

command

3. Edit the file eula.txt and change "reject" to "accept" to accept the end user license agreement

4. Edit the file ca-eula.txt and change "reject" to "accept" to accept the end user license agreement

5. Edit the file installer.properties and update the properties USER_INSTALL_DIR and

silentInstallChosenFeatures

6. Double-click on the file introscope9.1.5.0windowsAMD64SAP.exe to launch the silent installer. Wait about 2

minutes and check the install directory for failed log files. If no failed log is generated then the install worked.

Confirm the install worked by checking your start menu

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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7. Next, we need to turn up the Max Java heap setting for Introscope Enterprise Manager. Browse to your

Introscope install bin directory and edit the file C:\usr\sap\ccms\apmintroscope\bin\EMService.conf. Change

the Maximum Java Heap Size to 2048

8. Next, copy the file WILY_IS_MM15_0-10010973.SAR and SAPCAR.exe to the root directory of your Introscope

Enterprise Manager install. Then extract the contents to this directory

9. Next, go to Administrative Tools and restart the Introscope Enterprise Manager service

10. Copy the file SAP_BOBJ.jar, SAP_Apache_Tomcat_Basis.jar, and SAP_Host.jar from

<DRIVE>:\usr\sap\ccms\apmintroscope\sap\extra_modules to

<DRIVE>:\usr\sap\ccms\apmintroscope\deploy

11. Go to start, programs, CA APM, then click on Introscope Workstation Webstart or browse to

http://introscopehost:8081/workstation (note, you need to Java 6 x64 JRE installed). If prompted with a security

warning, check the box that you want to accept the risks and click run.

12. Logon to Introscope using user Admin and password Admin89

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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13. Click Workstation, New Console.

14. Confirm that the BOE 4.0 dashboards are installed. Confirm the Apache Tomcat dashboards are installed

Step 3: Install the Diagnostic Agent on each BI node and application server node The SAP Solution Manager Diagnostic Agent provides a framework from which the BI Platform 4.x c++ based

processes can be monitored. These servers connect to the agent listener port and collect/push Introscope metrics

via the NCS libary (ncs.dll). Additionally, the Diagnostics Agent also includes the SAP Host Agent which monitors

operating system metrics via the SAPOSCOL.exe program. It is recommended to install a Diagnostics Agent on each

BI Platform node and also each node hosting a Java application server. If you have a node that is hosting both the BI

components and the application server components then only one Diagnostics Agent installation is needed.

For information on installing the SMD Agent on Unix/Linux refer to the Diagnostics Agent 7.3 SP3 Setup Guide

NEW!! Tutorial for installing SMD Agent in stand-alone mode using silent installer on Linux

It is a requirement that you use a local administrator or root account to execute this installation. Be aware, the

sapinst installer will create three local accounts on the system and these accounts will be used to run the agent

services. The user accounts created are:

SAPServiceDAA (where DAA is the system id for this agent)

sapadm

daaadm

The following user rights will be assigned to the user running the installation and to daaadm account:

• Act as part of the operating system

• Adjust memory quotas for a process

• Replace a process level token

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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1. Copy the files SAPCAR*.exe and the diagnostic agent installer DIAGAGT73SP03_0-20006981.SAR to a

temporary folder on each BI node and application server node

2. Open a command prompt, then unpack the Diagnostic Agent installation media using the SAPCAR -xvf

command

3. Browse to the extracted folder SMD730_IM_WINDOWS_X86_64

4. Execute the Diagnostic Agent installer in stand-alone mode using the command sapinst

SMD_INSTALLATION_SCENARIO=ishub

5. Expand Solution Manager Diagnostic Agent-->SAP Systems-->Standalone Engines-->Diagnostics agent in

SAP Solution Manager then select Diagnostics Agent and click Next

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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6. You may be prompted that SAPinst needs to log you off in order to reliably continue the installation. Click OK

7. Log back on again and the installation continues automatically. On the next screen, confirm that the hostname

where you are installing the agent is correct then click Next. If you are installing to a machine with multiple

virtual hosts, specify the hostname of the virtual host where you would like to install the agent to.

8. Next, specify the Diagnostics Agent System ID and the drive where you would like to install the agent to then click

Next. The agent will always be installed to the path <DRIVE>:/usr/sap/<SID>/.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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9. The Diagnostic Agent will create 3 user accounts which are needed to run the SMD Agent services. Selecting

local domain will have the installer create the user accounts locally on this host. Alternatively, you can also use

domain accounts which have already been created on the domain (for example: SAPServiceDAA, sapadm,

daaadm). Select a domain model and click Next

10. Next, you need to specify a password for the new user acccounts. It is recommended to use the same

password for all three user accounts and it is required that you use a strong password containing both upper-

case and lower-case letters and numbers (9 or more characters). After you have entered in both passwords,

click Next

11. You will be prompted to add the service account user to the trusted users list. Click Yes

12. Next, select a free instance number for this Diagnostics Agent. If you do not have any other agents running on

this host, choose the default instance number of 97. Otherwise, enter another available instance number and

click Next

13. On the Unpack Archives screen there are no changes needed here, click Next

14. On the Parameter Summary screen, click Next to start the installer

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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15. When the installation completes, you will be prompted. Click OK

16. Open a command prompt, browse to <DRIVE>:\usr\sap\DAA\SMDA97\script then execute the following

command to configure the agent to point to your Introscope Enterprise Manager:

smdsetup.bat hostagentconf emhost:"IEMHOSTNAME" emport:"6001"

17. Next, run the following command to enable the host agent

smdsetup.bat hostagent state:on

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 21/37

18. Download the attached SapAgentConfig.xml, copy it to

<DRIVE>:\usr\sap\DAA\SMDA97\SMDAgent\applications.config\com.sap.smd.agent.application.wilyhost and

overwrite the existing SapAgentConfig.xml. This file specifies the TCP port on which the agent listens for

incoming metrics from BOE (NCS/c++ based) services. By default, this port number is 59818

19. Go to Control Panel-->Administrative Tools-->Services and restart the SAPHostExec and SAPDAA_97 services

(where my system id is DAA and instance number is 97)

20. Repeat the steps in this section for each BI and application server node

Continue to next part: A complete guide to setup CA APM Introscope 9 for monitoring SAP BI Platform 4.1 on

Windows [PART 2/2]

4358 View s 10 Comments

Tags: bi4, business_intelligence_(businessobjects), analytics, 4.0, monitoring, business_intelligence, solution_manager,

root_cause_analysis, rca, remote_supportability, diagnostics, w ily, supportability, w ily_introscope, e2e_diagnostics,

bi_platform_4.0, bi40, bi40_support, sap_businessobjects_business_intelligence_platform_4.0

Hello SCN Members; This is my very first blog and I hope this topic would help you to go through the basic troubleshooting to

be performed to narrow down your issues for a resolution in BI Platform. You can always use the immense KBA's available in SAP xSearch itself for a direct resolution which may

help. However we might be in the dark unless you come to know what the exact problem is and how to

resolve it. Hence troubleshooting is a very important part to look into. It would be difficult to show examples of errors that may be faced, however I would mention generic

examples and points to look forward to in case of any issues. In this blog I would kickstart with troubleshooting and checklists for issues during installation. Immediate failure or partial installation scenarios are pretty common. Where do we look into for such

cases? 1. First look whether the user performing installation is a not part of root in Linux and has admin level

privileges or else is part of admin group in windows.

2. Check the free space available for user in *nix and adequate free space is available in installation

directory of BO in windows.

3. Issues can be related with antivirus. Ensure that this is kept inactive temporarily during installation.

A very common scenario where default Db installation is not being used but connection is done to a Db in

a different server.

Basic troubleshooting for installation issues in BIPlatform

Posted by Arvind Pandalai Jan 31, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 22/37

1. Network non - availability, is a major cause. Basic test is to ping the Db server to ensure that BO server

and Db server is in same network.

2. Does the BO user have adequate read, write access to the CMS Db.

3. Telnet the ports to check whether the port assigned is available or being used by some other process.

4. You would often see, majorly in *nix that issues such as CMS fails to start or fails to register error,

reason the JAVA HOME, CLASS PATH and Environment variables are not in place.

5. Issue can be related with few MS and *nix libraries. To look into these we will need to go through the

logs. System logs, install logs and var logs would be of great help in such cases. A very well known and troublesome issue usually found with coredumps in *nix environment. Most of the

dumps that get generated during installation is a consequence of inadequate free space or else unavailability

of memory. Ensure that a bare minimum of 8 Gb is available for installation. Keep in mind this is just a

minimum requirement and will not help in any manner as soon as development activities begin in the

system. I hope this has been helpful. Your comments and inputs are welcome to enrich this blog for installation

debugging issues and scenarios. Next time; generic issues observed with web intelligence reporting and how can these be narrowed down.

Cheers;

@R^!N|) PS: Do go through How to troubleshoot any issue in your SAP BI 4.0 deployment

483 View s 2 Comments

Tags: intelligence, businessobjects, bi, sap, bi4, business_intelligence_(businessobjects), 4.0, bi4.0, bobj,

business_intelligence, bi_platform, bi4.1, sap_businessobjects_business_intelligence_platform_4.0

Hello Everyone,

these days I went ahead and added an Apache Web Server to a test BI4.1 Installation as per the proposal

made by James Rapp. I was particularly eager in seeing how much effort would it take to do this for a standard

1-box BI4 installation. Here I am sharing screenshots of that process in order to give you a highlevel overview.

This blog is not intended to give you instructions on how to split deploy with Apache. For the correspondent

instructions please visit following Documents:

Improving the User Experience in SAP BI Platform 4.0 with Apache and WDeploy

Improving the User Experience in SAP BI Platform - BI 4.1 and Apache 2.4 Supplement

Quick Step-by-Step Guide to Apache Split Deployment with BI 4.1

I am on Windows Server 2012, BI4.1 SP02 Installation with Tomcat7, Downloading Apache 2.4.7 and mod_jk

1.2.37. Furthermore I am also using the httpd-bi41.conf and workers.properties file shared in the documents by

James and Ian in the articles above.

After Downloading the Apache files, I extracted it to the root folder (in this case Z) just to make less changes

to paths later on in the configuration files (C:\->Z:\):

Checking out the Apache Split Deployment

Posted by Victor Gabriel Saiz Castillo Jan 30, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 23/37

From the module mod_jk, which comes as a separate .zip file, copy the file mod_jk .so file from modules-2.4-

win64-VC11.zip to \Apache24\Modules:

In the httpd.conf file, adjust the corresponding lines for the ServerAdmin and ServerName. Because my

Apache root is not C\Apache24, I also need to adjust ServerRoot and DocumentRoot in this file:

Before starting with the installation of Apache Web Server, make sure that no one else is listening on port 80,

this is the port that Apache will listen to in standard. With following command you can check which process is

currently listening to which port:

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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In case you would see another program listening to port 80, you could identify it by the process ID being shown

to the right of the last screen. This Process ID can be useful in the task manager to get to the corresponding

program.

Open a command window in \Apache24\bin. Now we are ready to install Apache Web Server in form of a

windows Service with the name BOEXI40Apache. Services starting with the name BOEXI40 will automatically

appear in the CCM:

Ok, the installation says there is something wrong, but no explanation and no logs, so I go ahead and try to

start Apache from the CCM, Seems I can start it without any issue:

Test to kindly ask Apache if it really works?

Note that the port number is missing, that is because the standard port is 80

To make things fancy, I keep following James’ proposal and change the display name of the service from

BOXI40Apache to Apache HTTPD 2.4.7:

The CCM looks more organized now with the new name for Apache:

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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As we are still going to be using tomcat for the dynamic content, I add tomcat as a dependency to Apache in

the CCM, this way tomcat will be automatically started when we start apache. Similarly, tomcat cannot be

stopped while Apache is running:

Adjusting now the config.apache file of WDeploy with the ws_dir and connector_type:

Also adjusting the config.tomcat7 file with as_dir, as_instance and as_service_name:

Copying the downloaded httpd-bi41.conf file to \Apache24\conf\extra and copying the workers.properties file to

Apache24\Conf:

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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After making a backup of the server.xml file, adjusting it now and uncomment the AJP connector line by

deleting the <!-- characters at start and --> at the end of the line:

Restarting Apache now by using CCM or windows services. Looks good as the service can be started.

Afterwards, update the CacheRoot and CacheLockPath in the downloaded httpd-bi41.conf file:

Create the corresponding folders of the last screen if needed. Creating now a task with the windows task

scheduler to clean the cache:

Enter a name for the Task, run whether the user is logged on or not, Do not store password:

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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Trigger at startup:

Setting a new action with corresponding arguments:

Adding now an Include line to the httpd.conf file in order to load the httpd-bi41.conf file:

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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Then checking if the Apache server can be restarted. It does correctly, so im stopping it now.

Now its time to start predeploying:

wdeploy tomcat7 -Das_mode=split -Dws_type=apache -Dwork_dir=Z:\temp predeployall

After a successful deployment, I see a corresponding message:

Creating an empty MOBIServer.zip file in the predeployed content:

And now its time to split deploy!

wdeploy tomcat7 -Das_mode=split -Dws_type=apache -Dwork_dir=Z:\temp deployonlyall

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 29/37

Running now post-installation checks. Around 100k files as static content in the BOE directory? -> Check!

Were some extra Include conf/bobj* added to the httpd.conf file? -> Check!

bobj* Files were added to Apache24/conf? -> Check!

Is public,max-age=315360000 (or whatever value you configured in mod_headers) being inserted by

mod_headers from the httpd-bi41.conf file? -> Check!

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 30/37

Victor

1083 View s 2 Comments Tags: bi4, bi_platform, bi4.1, apache;

I got real problems with performance in BI Launch Pad. For instance, my reports were opening very

long time, navigation in BI Launch Pad was awful.

1. Let's modify the Tomcat setting, because by default they have low value.

o JavaHeapSize (-Xmx) from 2G to 4G

o MaxThreads from default (200) to 900

1.1 JavaHeapSize we should modify:

cd <bo inst folder>/sap_bobj/tomcat/bin

modify setenv.sh

# set the JAVA_OPTS for tomcat

Code:

JAVA_OPTS="-d64 -Dbobj.enterprise.home=${BOBJEDIR}enterprise_xi40 -

Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=false -Xmx4g -

XX:MaxPermSize=384m -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -Xloggc:

<bo_inst_folder>/sap_bobj/tomcat/logs/tomcat.gc.log -XX:+PrintGCDetails -

XX:+UseParallelOldGC"

1.2 MaxThreads we would modify:

cd <bo_inst_folder>/sap_bobj/tomcat/conf modify

server.xml

Define a non-SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8080

Code:

-->

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000"

redirectPort="8443" maxThreads="900" URIEncoding="UTF-8"/>

<!-- A "Connector" using the shared thread pool-->

<!--

<Connector executor="tomcatThreadPool"

port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"

connectionTimeout="20000"

redirectPort="8443" />

-->

2. Cleaning of old installed patches and service packs from BO. What does it mean?

Just go to <bo inst folder> and run ./modifyOrRemoveProducts.sh (for Linux):

It is clear that i have many various installation on my server. But it is important to delete old installation!

3. Cleaning of logging directory, in <bo inst folder>/sap_bobj/logging

o Deleting Trace-Files

o Deleting Logs old than 30 days

4. Tuning APS, for start you can use CMC Wizard.

5. APS properties for tracing set to unspecified (-> means bo_trace.ini are used)

Level - Description

Unspecified - Force the use of BO_trace.ini to be used

SAP BusinessObjects 4.1 Performance issue

Posted by Andreas Sbrzesny Jan 30, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 31/37

None - Only critical events such as failures will be logged

Low - Ignores warning and status messages

Medium - Only Status messages with least important will be ignored

High - Includes all the logging messages

6. Disabling of unused services in the CMC, for instance, Crystal, Analyses services.

7. Reorganisation of database statistics of BO-Repository and BO-Auditing.

This one is high important point. As you know, every database has to manage its statistics according to number of

rows. And if you do not collect stat, than you performance as well as refresh rate are decreasing.

2052 View s 1 Comments Tags: performance, bo41

Best Practice for Promoting content using promotion Management Tool:

Guys Please follow this simple procedure to promote the jobs Easily and effectively.

If assume you have to move some content from Development to Integration platform and if your integration platform is

a brand new platform ( just installed BI 4.1 platform) and doesn't contain anything in it except the Default user groups

and the Default folders etc ( which comes with installation ) then If you try to promote a job including the security it

wont work. Nothing will be promoted to destination in this case.

As a first step try to create a job which include all the User Groups which are part of security mapping and promote it

to the destination.

In the second step you can now select any assets such as Folders or universes along with security by selecting this

option:

Things to be Noticed:

promotion Management do not calculate the Security aspects like Users and user Groups, custom access levels etc

as dependent objects and this is the reason it do not display the security aspects in the Dependents tab, but it will

calculate whine you select the above option as shown in screen shot. If you click on that View security button it will

display all the dependent security objects, where as UMT acts completely different in which even security objects are

calculated as dependents.

If you Upgrade to BI 4.1 SP2 you can also promote around 2000 objects in each job which is a very good news where

as in the previous versions it has been already declared that only 100 objects is the limit per each job.

Please leave your feedback and reply me back If you face any trouble.

Thanks,

Vamsheedar Reddy Mannem

1193 View s 4 Comments

Best Practice for Promoting content using promotionManagement Tool

Posted by vamshi mannem Jan 23, 2014

Are you seeing unusually high virtual memory usage

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

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I may be able to help explain why!

As I tend to talk too much, I have provided a summary and a details section below. Choose your own adventure

SUMMARY

Webi monitors VM usage as part of it's Memory Analysis feature. This can cause issues when VM limits are

exceeded

glibc (version 2.10 or higher) which is updated on most newer RHEL versions can cause excessive VM

allocation out of the box.

There are ways to tune/tweak memory allocations using the steps outlined in this KBA

Another option is to disable the Enable Memory Analysis option for the WIPS servers

DETAILS

We have seen a few issues come into Product Support now where BI System Administrators were reporting

abnormally high VIRT (Virtual Memory) usage for the BI processes on their Linux installations. I didn't really think

much of it at first because virtual memory isn't usually a concern now a days with RAM being so cheap and hard drive

space being plentiful. Whelp, it wasn't long before I realized that this IS an issue for BI 4.x. Why you ask?

Well, it all started a few years back when we were learning to operate within the constraints of a 32-bit operating

system. Windows has a well know limit of about 1.8 - 2.0 gigabytes of memory per 32-bit process. Once a process

hits this limit, it's a crapshoot as to what will happen. Either the application will crash, hang or if you were lucky

enough, it would through a catchable error message.

To work within this 32-bit limitation, we implemented a memory analysis feature into the Webi Processing Server and

allowed administrators to set a low/high/max memory setting to help control this. Since we do not know how much

memory will be used when a query is executed on a report, we just have to do our best to stop new queries from

coming in when the "high" memory mark is reached.

What type of memory does the Webi Processing Server take into account with this Memory Analysis? Virtual Memory

of course. Why? Because on Windows, if a process exceeded 2GB of Virtual Memory, the process would do horrible

things. So, we had to monitor this as best we could.

I could write a whole document on that subject so if anyone has questions around how that works. feel free to

message me. I'll fast forward a little bit to today's 64-bit world. Today, with BI 4.x being 64-bit, we are not worried

about memory as much. The limits are very high with 64-bit processes and we will likely never reach those limits.

Even though the limits are much higher, we still have this Memory Analysis feature implemented and enabled by

default on the Webi Processing Servers. It is still a useful feature for administrators that wish to keep an eye on their

system's resource usage and limit users from executing unusually large requests. Out of the box however, our

default settings are low and this can cause some hard to explain behavior if you don't know what you are looking at.

Enough background, here is a little known issue that I wanted to bring to everyone's attention.

It seems that some versions of Red Hat EL 5.x and 6.x ship with an updated version of the glibc libraries. Starting

with around version 2.10 of glibc, the default malloc() functionality changed slightly. For those that aren't aware,

malloc stands for Memory Allocator and the new default behavior was added to potentially increase performance on

some applications. The new functionality will allocate an "arena" of memory per thread that a process uses and will

do this based on the # of CPUs that the server has. So on multicore machines, we are seeing that a HUGE amount

of virtual memory is being allocated right on the startup of our processes.

Right out of the box, my 16 CPU test system was allocating up to 11GB of virtual memory for some processes. Webi

processes (WIReportServer) were using 1.7-2.0gb of VIRT memory right out of the gate and were climbing up to 4-

5gb after a single report refresh. The java processes were way up there too and often started in a range of 8-10gb.

This becomes a concern for our Webi Memory Analysis feature as Virtual Memory is what it monitors for the Webi

processes.

This results in stopped/failed Web Intelligence Processing Server and end users start reporting a variety of errors.

Server is Busy, Out of Memory, etc...

So, what's the solution? I have started a Knowledge Base article that documents the known work-arounds for this

issue. It is linked below:

https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1968075

In short, there are 2 options.

1. Add an environment variable to revert back to the old malloc() functionality (where virtual memory was not blown

way up)

2. Disable the Memory Analysis feature in Webi.

I would recommend option 1 personally. The KBA above gives the details of which environment variables to test with.

on your BI 4.x Linux install?

Posted by Jonathan Brown Jan 21, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 33/37

The below - shows you the 'top' output of my BI server right out of the box after starting my BI processes with

'startservers'

And the below image shows the memory usage AFTER setting the environment variables.

Notice how much lower they are once we revert the malloc settings back to the old way of doing things. It's not just

Webi that is lowered, you can see the reduction in VIRT is across the board.

So, if you have a RHEL system with glibc version 2.10 or higher, you may want to check your VIRT usage to see if it is

abnormally high. If it is, it might be worth testing these environment variables to see if it helps you keep that under

control.

If you read this far down! Thanks for tuning in.

Jb

887 View s 6 Comments

Tags: bi4.0, linux, bi_platform, tuning, red_hat_linux, red_hat, bi4.1, sap_businessobjects_business_intelligence_platform_4.0

BusinessObjects Administration - ContentManagement Procedure

Posted by Manikandan Elumalai Jan 20, 2014

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 34/37

Continuing with introduction to Content Management Plan http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-

platform/blog/2014/01/06/businessobjects-administration--content-management-plan I would

like to explain step by step procedure involved in the Content management process in this blog

which has been partially replicated from my old blog here http://blogs.hexaware.com/business-

objects-boogle/business-objects-content-management-planning/

Architecturally there were lot of changes starting from BusinessObjects version XI. Compared to

earlier BusinessObjects versions (Legacy architecture till version 6.5) which is user centric, From

XI onwards it’s Object centric. i.e. things revolve around Objects (BI content) as compared to users

in legacy versions. Again these BI contents (Universe, Reports) will be organised using folders.

Throughout this blog I am going to use Marketing, Finance and HR as different departments of the

organization and Refresher and Author as functional roles of users. Let us start our content

management process from here.

1. Organizing BI contents by folders

To begin with, we need to consolidate Universes, Reports and even users in a hierarchical manner

using folders. This will help both system administrators and end users to use the system

effectively with minimal or no training. In most of the cases top level folders will represent either

departments of the organization or Geographic regional categorization followed by departmental

split. It is up to the organization’s choice to decide their folder hierarchy. Here is my sample

categorization.

2. Organize User groups/Users as per organization preference

Now we need to group the users in a best possible way to apply security on top of the folders

organized above. In most of the cases users will be categorized department wise, User role wise

or intersection of both of them preferably in line with the folder hierarchy.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 35/37

3. Identify required access levels for each user category

Now it’s time to identify who need access to what. As part of this we will be identifying set of

rights needed for each user categorization. For each user category or departmental folder we will

be creating a separate access level based on the access for user to the required folder.

4. Setting up security

Finally the security applied for each departmental folder would be something similar to this.

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 36/37

5. Organizing objects using categories for flexible access

We can utilize categories to provide access to users who needs right to use BI contents from two

or more departments. For example the summary report will be maintained for each

department/Region is used by the Finance team for the monthly processing. Though this report is

maintained in each department’s folder we can create a category to tag all the summary reports

and access them from one place. This is depicted below

Reports with category tagging

Reports in their logical folder path

6. Managing report object instances within each department folders

It is always important to manage instances along with its original reports as this has a very big

impact with File store size. By defining proper instance management plan we can manage report

6/3/2014 BI Platform | SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog?start=30 37/37

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instances either based on their age or number. Refer here to know more about instance

management plan BusinessObjects Instance Management

Hope this would be helpful for those who start designing BusinessObjects Content management

plan.

586 View s 2 Comments Tags: bo_content_plan

If you missed it, the recording for my TechEd 2013 topic on managing rights in 4.1 is available here.

917 View s 2 Comments

Object moved to here.

Understanding Security and Rights recording fromTeched 2013

Posted by Greg Wcislo Jan 9, 2014

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