Source-Sytem: Cloudsrv012
Target-System: Cloudsrv016

Promotion Management is primarily used on the Source System.

Update from SAP support

SAP support was quite quick and told me that the issue described in this post will be fixed in patch 4.7 (including the problem of promoting BusinessViews residing in subfolders)

Terms

Dynamic Cascading Prompt (DCP): A parameter object in Crystal Reports 2011 which contains a dynamic list of value (LOV).

List of Value (LOV): List of Value object based on a Business View (BV). Can be created manually in the BV-Manager.

Business View (BV): Business View’s are created in the BV-Manager (which is part of the Client Tools setup of the BI Platform). BusinessViews are based on Business Elements. Business Elements are based on Data Foundation objects. And Data Foundation Objects are based on Data Connection objects. These items are generally considerd as “Repository Objects” (at least in XI 3.1 Import Wizard this was the case).

Initial Setup

Create a LOV with its underlying BVs based on the Xtreme database (using ODBC-Connection to local Access file). Save them in a subfolder (in my example “rbra_Test”):

Create a simple Crystal Report (in CR 2011) containing a parameter with a DCP:

Save this report in the source system. In the BI Launchpad the parameter looks like this:

Problem Description

Goal: Simply promote the above created report from source to target system using promotion management.

Steps taken:

Create new promotion job in Source System including all dependencies:

Then promote:

Result: Partial Success:

My guess: The problem is that the BV-objects are in a subfolder. Therefore, I move the BV-objects in source system to root folder:

Report still works in source system:

Take the same Promotion Job as before and refresh dependencies – no Sub Folder in Business View Branch is shown anymore:

Promote again:

^

Now it shows Success:

It looks like a success in BV Manager too:

and also in Crystal Reports:

BUT: If you open report in BI Launchpad, you don’t see any List of Values:

Tested Workarounds

Promote BusinessViews separately (not working)

I tried to promote BusinessViews and LOV objects separately from the report. I have the same issue regarding storing repository objects in subfolders. Besides this I found the following:

• Just promoting the BusinessView and underlying objects works fine according to Promotion Management. But if you look into BV-Manager you’ll get errors like this
  
• Promotion Management doesn’t allow to select LOV objects separately.
• If you then promote the same Crystal Reports containing the DCP but do NOT select the dependencies, all the BusinessView objects (and LOV objects) are promoted anyway and break the functioning of the BusinessView and LOV in the target system. Currently we couldn’t find a way to promote a Crystal Reports with DCP without automatically promoting all dependencies and therefore break the target system.

Remove DCP, export / import LOV using BV-Manager (not working)

In order to escape the circumstance that Promotion Management automatically promotes DCP objects etc. (see point above) I tried the following:

• In the source system, set the Crystal Reports parameter to a Static list of value and save the report.
• Promote it – no repository objects are promoted.
• In order to “promote” LOV objects independent from report we used the option to export BV and LOV definitions in the BusinessView Manager.
• We imported the LOV object into the target system using the import option of the BusinessView Manager.
• Reset the static prompt to the imported LOV.
• Result:
  
  The LOV of the second level doesn’t work.

Remove DCP, export / import BV, recreate LOV (working)

• In the source system, set the Crystal Reports parameter to a Static list of value and save the report.
• Promote it – no repository objects are promoted.
• Promote BusinessView only using export / import in BusinessView Manager
  Using Promotion Management doesn’t work properly! (see errors in BV-Manager above)
• Recreate LOV objects manually in target system
• Reset the static prompt to the newly created LOV.

Although this is NOT what I expect from SAP in terms of a properly working software – at least these final steps lead to a working solution without too much of manual recreation of repository and report objects!

For all SAP internal guys if you want to track (and support me : The message number with the same case description as above is 971741 / 2012. I will open up some more cases as the things shown above is just the top of the iceberg of what doesn’t work properly in Promotion Management.

(Source: pic.twitter.com/Wckjr4HX)

During the recent BO user conference (the BusinessObjects Arbeitskreis / BOAK) hosted by IT-Logix in Zurich / Switzerland I mentioned this and got numerous requests to look for more details. Obviously many of Swiss BOBJ customers still use Deski and it is quite a show stopper to them regarding any upcoming migration to BO 4. Yet this morning Blair Wheadon from SAP confirmed the slide above was no joke but serious:

As you can see the Desktop Intelligence Compatibility Pack (DCP) should be available in BO 4.1, the next minor release (don’t confuse this with patch 4.1 which equals to BO 4.0.4.1). So far I couldn’t find any rumours when BO 4.1 will be available. Feel free to write your estimation by adding a comment!

Update: I’ve just found more information here:

scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-31798

Great thoughts by Eric Vallo here: bit.ly/NEi3b9

The recovery scenario: Partial restore of report and universe objects

In my eyes the typical recovery scneario is a partial restore. It happens quite quickly that you either delete a folder with a whole bunch of reports or that you want to revert a change in a report or universe development. Especially if we consider the ad-hoc reporting capabilities of Web Intelligence you probably don’t have a local copy of the corresponding report. In addition people which do any mistake leading to a recovery procedure tend to notice that they did such a mistake only with a certain gap in time, this means they request the recovery e.g. of a given folder not immediately after its deletion but perhaps two weeks later when they realize they deleted some reports too much. In the meanwhile the system might have been used heavily, that’s why a full recovery of the system itself is not really an option. What you need in such a situation is the possibility to recover only selected objects from a backup set to the original system. In this blog I will concentrate on this scenario. I use “original” system as a term to identify the system on which I take the backup and to which I want to recover something back.

The available possibilities in BO 4.0

There are three major approaches in taking a backup of BO 4.0 and recover partial content:

1. Create some kind of BIAR file (multiple options available, see below) and try to recover selected elements back to the original system.
2. Do a full backup, restore the full backup to a separate BO “recovery” system and finally use LCM to “promote” selected objects back to the original system.
3. Use a professional backup & recovery solution like 360View from GB and Smith

Let me evaluate the above approaches in the next few sections.

The BIAR approach

The BO Admin Guide states in section 12.1.1.3 (page 466):

It is recommended that you use the Lifecycle management console for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform to regularly back up your Business Intelligence content, such as reports, users and groups, and universes. Having current backups of your content makes it possible to restore your Business Intelligence without having to restore your entire system or your server settings.

Whoever wrote this sentence at SAP doesn’t seem to have either any concrete experience with LCM or not a clear idea what a backup & recovery tool should fullfifl in practice. Respectively let’s have a look at just any given freeware to backup your Windows files. Therefore to point this out right at the beginning: Keep your hands off in trusting LCM as your one and only backup solution for BO. LCM is a tool to promote (or in the SAP jargon ‘transport’) objects from one environment to another. LCM was never made to be a backup solution. Let me explain in some more details:

The preferred way to take a backup using LCM is exporting a LCM job into a LCMBIAR file. Finally with FP3 / SP04 you can now schedule the export to such a file. But there are some critical short comings with this (as of SP04 Patch 1; anyone having differing experience with a higher patch level please comment below!):

• reimporting the LCMBIAR file to the original system on which you created the file will fail as soon as you delete the original LCM job. What real backup solution makes itself depending on the job object creating the backup set?
• whenever you import a BIAR file you don’t have an option to select / unselect objects to restore. There is only black or white: Either you import all the contents from your (LCM)BIAR file or nothing.
• LCMBIAR files do not save your successful instances. Only recurring instances are backed up. But by the way you cannot decide whether to restore recurring instances or not, as mentioned before you have to restore everything belonging to the BIAR file.

A next approach in using BIAR files is to use the new Upgrade Management Tool or the “legacy” biarengine.jar. The good news here are that LCM finally is capable to import regular BIAR files which were created by these two means. The following things should be considered:

• In contrast to LCMBIAR files, regular BIAR files can be imported without any dependancy to any LCM job.
• The Upgrade Management Tool as well as the biarengine.jar takes a backup of both, recurring as well as successful report instances.
• Unfortunately SAP was so stupid – sorry to say it like this, but I couldn’t find any other term to express my feelings about this situation – to remove (or just not allow…) the possibility to import a BIAR file of the same software version using the Upgrade Management Tool. In XI 3.1 this became quite standard during a recovery procedure to load the BIAR file using Import Wizard and then select only the objects you need to recover. In combination with the short coming of LCM not to be able to select individual objects this is a real sad thing (#factoryofsadness …). Dear SAP: Just give us back basic functionalities like restoring selectively either using Upgrade Management Tool or LCM!

For those interested in the biarengine.jar – I couldn’t find any hints on it in the BI4 documentation, so I took the admin guide from XI 3.1 and it seems that everything still works as before (for more detailed infos see this blog):

First of all you need a properties file to specify what you want to be backed up:

exportBiarLocation=C:/temp/BiarEngineBackup.biar
action=exportXML
userName=Administrator
password=<your password>
CMS=cloudsrv012:6400
authentication=secEnterprise
exportDependencies=true
exportQuery=select * from ci_infoobjects where si_parent_folder = <your own id or query> OR SI_ID = <your own id or query>

Save these lines of text in a file, e.g. mybackup.properties. After all you can execute the following commands on the command line or in a batch file (replace C:\BOE4 etc. with your own BO install path):

cd “C:\BOE40\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\win32_x86\jre\bin”
java -jar “C:\BOE40\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\java\lib\biarengine.jar” C:\Temp\mybackup.properties

You can use either the biarengine or LCM to restore content to the original system. As you can only restore the full BIAR file, I recommend to have a dedicated recovery or sandbox system in place where you can import the BIAR file as such and then use LCM to restore only what you need back to the orginal system. Such a dedicated system you need anyway for the second major approach, restoring objects from a full backup.

The full backup / restore approach

As long as you have a dedicated system available to “mount” the full backup into a running BO system this appraoch is quite straight forward and nothing to be afraid of (as long as you know what you do ). The following high-level steps will guide you through the recovery process:

1. Take a full backup of your original system on a regular basis. This includes at least a backup of your CMS system / repository database, the FileStore folder(s). As of FP3/SP04 SAP added an official “hot backup” option (see the “Settings” area in CMC), therefore you don’t need to shutdown your BO system to take the backup. Just define a time window in which you create both, first the backup of your system database and then the backup of the FileStore. In addition to system database and FileStore, please note your Cluster Key and Administrator password from the original system!
2. Prepare the Recovery-System: I assume you have an already installed “recovery” system. This can be a sandbox or as well e.g. a QA system you want to temporarily use as your recovery system. Stop all existing SIA and Tomcat services on the «Recovery» system. Have a look into Task Manager and make sure that all CMS.exe and sia.exe processes have been stopped.
3. Restore the System-DB: Restore the backup of your «original» system database to a new, empty database / schema. After restore, execute the following SQL statement on this restored DB to remove all server entries: Delete from CMS_INFOOBJECTS7 where ParentID=16
4. Restore the FileStore: On the «Recovery» system rename the existing FileStore folder to «FileStore_orig». Restore the FileStore from «Orginal» to the «Recovery» system into its original location.
5. Create ODBC source: In case your recovered system DB is hosted on a SQL server, create a 64bit ODBC source to it on the «Recovery» system.
6. Create Recovery SIA (1/2): On the «Recovery» system, create a new SIA with a new CMS. Point the CMS to the recovered system database (probably using the ODBC source created in the previous step). Select the «Use a temporary CMS» option.
7. Create Recovery SIA (2/2): Once the new SIA is added, change the Cluster name from the orginal name to a new name, e.g. «Recovery». Start the newly created SIA and check in Task Manager if CMS starts up and keeps up running. Then stop the SIA again.
   (if you want you can combine step 6 and 7 and add only one additional SIA)
8. Create second SIA to add regular servers: Add a second SIA including regular servers, you can even add a second CMS. Start this SIA and Tomcat. Login to CMC on the «Recovery» system and check in the Servers area if all expected servers are up and running.
9. Verify File Repository Servers: Check if the file path indicated in the Properties of the Input and Output File Repository Servers correspond to the location where the FileStore has been recovered.
10. Run the Repository Diagnostic Tool: Run the Repository Diagnostic Tool in order to remove any inconsistencies between File Repository Servers and (recovered) system database.
    (replace C:\BOE4\ with your own BO install path; more info about the command line parameters you’ll find in the BO admin guide):
    cd “C:\BOE4\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\win64_x64″
    reposcan.exe -dbdriver sqlserverdatabasesubsystem -connect “UID=sa;PWD=<password>;DSN=<ODBC_Name>” -dbkey <cluster key> -inputfrsdir “C:\BOE4\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\FileStore\Input” -outputfrsdir “C:\BOE4\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\FileStore\Output”
11. Do a «selective restore» from the recovery to the original system using LCM (or one of the other ways explained above, mostly depending whether you need to recover report instances or not)
12. Recreate original settings on Recovery system: If you don’t need the «Recovery» system anymore, you can reset everything to match the original settings. For this simply stop the created SIAs and either set their startup mode to disabled or delete the SIAs from the system entierly (a practical how-to you’ll find here). Rename your FileStore on the Recovery system from “FileStore_orig” back to FileStore. This means you need to either delete the recovered FileStore folder or give it another name before. In addition you can remove the recovered database (schema).

Once you excerised this process a few times it will serve you as a reliable way to recover (partial) elements in a reasonable amount of time. But still it is not the “elegant” way to go. And therefore I would like to introduce you to my third and favored major approach. What SAP fails to deliver is usually deliverd by one of the add-on providers.

The professional approach

As a professional BO administrator I like professional tools. 360View is one of my favorite tools, not only regarding backup & recovery. But this is one of the major reasons why I recommend this solution. 360View doesn’t keep any separate information outside the regular BO system database, it’s just an alternative view to its content in addition to the CMC.

Let the pictures speak for themselves:

First of all you need to create a backup job in the web based interface of 360View, you can choose from various object types. In addition you can choose whether to include subfolders, report instances or Favorites folders in case you choose groups and users:

You can schedule this job to run “now” or at a later point in time. By the way: All the jobs scheduled with 360View can be triggered by an external scheduler like $Universe etc.

Once having executed the backup job you’ll find a new entry in the context menu of any given folder or document:

And for folders which do not exist anymore completely you’ll find the Trash Bin icon:

After all you can choose from available recovery options as you are used to from any other professional backup & recovery solution:

That’s it. The only thing you need to do in addition is to save the 360View file folder on your BO server by a regular file backup tool.

Are you dissatisfied with the existing backup & recovery capabilities in BO 4.0 too? Or do you see different ways of improving this process? Let me and other knows and write a comment! Thanks for your participation!

If you need some kind of playground for either approach, have a look at Cloudshare.com and / or use my preconfigured BO4 environment. Of course this includes a 360View installation. For those currently visiting the ASUG SAP BusinessObjects User Conference go a and visit GB and Smith at their booth 221!

For European / German speaking people have a look at www.boak.ch – I’ll have five presentations myself next week. Backup & Recovery will be included during my “What’s New in BO 4.0″ session.

If you get an error “red X” in Webi 4.0 where actually should be a chart have a look into the CMC and check whether at least one Adaptive Processing Server hosting the Visualization Service is up and running (and enabled). Times are gone when life was easy to understand and for Webi just the Webi Proc Server was responsible…
(sometimes you even don’t get till the error. I tried to open some reports and nothing showed up at all, not even an error message…) SAP should start to add a “Dependency” function similar to regular Windows services!

You don’t get the error in Webi Rich Client usually. In this post I will quickly outline the reasons for this and how to solve it:

First of all: Others got these errors too:

http://scn.sap.com/thread/2118132

http://scn.sap.com/thread/2043784

The answers from SAP (namely http://scn.sap.com/people/henry.banks) are not really satisfying. Of course it is not very clever to use Access as a demo datasource – but why SAP then provides these (access based) samples in BO 4.0 and not e.g. within the database they include within the setup? Anyway, there are three options you can choose:

1. Move your efashion and other MS Access databases to a “real” database like SQL Server (Express), MySQL etc. It must be just accessible by 32 AND 64 bit drivers.
2. Migrate to BO4 FP3 – and read the rest of the blog of how you can get Access databases running…
3. If you are on BO4 SP2 – sorry, I don’t know a way how to get Access running on a 64bit driver – if you are interested in the reason, read on… (If you know another solution, please post a comment!)

In BO 4.0 still all the client tools (like the Webi Rich Client) use 32bit drivers. Regarding eFashion this is not a problem as any default Windows XP / 7 / Server will provide preinstalled drivers. The BOE setup will automatically create the corresponding 32bit-ODBC datasources. Therefore you’re all fine.

On server side it is important to note that e.g. Webi Processing Server always uses 64bit drivers. As far as I can overlook it as well for MS Access. But these 64bit drivers seem not to be installed by default, at least they weren’t on my cloudshare.com environments. In addition there is a strange thing that the BOE setup creates both, 32bit as well as 64bit ODBC connections for eFashion and club.The below screenshot shows the 64bit ODBC Admin (trust me

But be careful: Whereas the 32bit ODBC connections work fine at least on my side I got the following errors when I wanted to modify e.g. the efashion connection:

If you want to create a new ODBC connection you will notify there are no 64bit drivers installed for MS Access:

My suggestion to solve this is to go here and download the Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable – because there is a 64bit setup / drivers for this:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13255

Download the 64bit setup… and run it:

Finally your 64bit ODBC Admin “Add connection” dialog should look like this:

Now you can create the efashion, efashion-webi etc. data sources. Make sure you write it absolutely identical as it is written in the 32bit ODBC connection!

So far everything works fine for both, BO 4.0 SP02 as well as FP3. As usual there is a big BUT: You will still get the same errors shown right at the beginning of this post. Remember, you just installed the Access 2010 redistributable. This means you have to change your universe connection to use the appropriate driver (for this log in to Universe Design Tool and choose Tools – Connections). And here is, where at least I had to say there is no (obvious) way of how to solve it with SP02:

Sorry guys, no Access 2010 support in BO 4.0 SP02. But at least FP3 provides something for us:

And finally it should work. To sum up:

1. On a BO 4.0 FP3 server install MS Access 2010 Redistributable 64bit
2. Create necessary 64bit ODBC connection
3. Modify your universe connections to point to the Access2010 driver
4. have fun with efashion

PS: I don’t have any issues with our BO 4.0 SP02 environment which has SP02 installed only as a Patch. We installed this environment during ramp-up for SP02 (in these times Webi was still labeled Interactive Analysis, that’s why I noticed the difference…) and only later applied SP02. I didn’t investigate, but it seems like Webi Proc servers uses 32bit drivers here… (no 64bit drivers for access installed on this system…)

PPS: Don’t have FP3 available but you ‘d like to test yourself? I can get you easily access to copy on cloudshare.com – see the corresponding blog post.

Do you have similar experiences? Any other hint I missed? Please post your comment.

(Update October 15th 2012 –> current machine list)

(Update October 28th 2012 –> Patch 4.5 installed)

(Update October 31st 2012 –> graphomate inlcuding demo dashboard installed –> see Cloudsrv012 in folder graphomate – here you’ll find the user manual too; or open Dashboards on Cloudclnt01 and drag n’ drop the graphomate component to the dashboard to test it yourself!)

While I discussed general migration challenges in my previous blog, this blog addresses the fact that every new release (even just a service / support package) of SAP BusinessObjects needs intensive testing (by the way I’m not talking about versions in Ramp-Up but the regular available versions like currently BO 4.0 SP2). SAP seems to work based on the banana principle:

The product ripe with the consumer.

I could now elaborate on how bad this is and how much better other vendors do (do they really?). But I won’t. I would like to share an opportunity of how you can better cope with the circumstance that you have to test, test and once again test whatever you do with SAP BusinessObjects before you “go live”.

When SAP provided its HANA developer environment to partners and customers I came first to know cloudshare. In the meanwhile I’m quite enthusiastic about cloudshare! It was never easier (and cheaper) for me to create development and test environments having the choice out of a multitude of machine templates and afterwards full admin rights on all machines. But the best thing about cloudshare is that you can easily share a virtual server environment with others for free (at least for a first period of two weeks).

This inspired me to create what finally was named the “ITX BO 4.x Migration Assessment and Demo Environment”. This is a virtual server environment in the cloud. It allows for quick and easy to use «hands-on» tests of current and upcoming releases of SAP BusinessObjects BI products. You can import parts (or everything) of an existing BO content from your XI 3.1 system into the XI 3.1 system in the cloud (using BIAR-Files). Afterwards you can test a migration to BO BI 4.0 SP4 (or you can use BO 4.0 SP4 simply for its own sake) You can get your own copy of the environment for free during two weeks. Afterwards you need a cloudshare.com subscription to further use it.

The environment also includes an installation of the products 360View+ and 360Eyes from GB and Smith (www.gbandsmith.com). I highly recommend these two products in order to streamline your migration. There will be another blog where I will detail on this.

The 4 Available Machines

The Migration Assessment & Demo Environment consists of four machines:

• BO XI 3.1 SP3 (Server + Client Tools + 360View + 360Eyes)
• BO BI 4.0 SP4 Patch 5 (Server + Client Tools + Visual Intelligence + 360View + 360Eyes)
• BO BI 4.0 SP4 Patch 5 (Client Tools, Crystal Reports 2011, Crystal Reports for Enterprise, Dashboards etc.
• BO DataServices 4.1 + Information Steward

Request your Free Copy

You’ll receive an invitation email directly from cloudshare.com including a link.

Register on Cloudshare.com

Afterwards you need to open a free account on cloudshare.com:

After your successful registration please log in to Cloudshare ProPlus. Your environment is already starting up… Click on «View environment» to see more details…

Wait until all machines are up and running. In the meanwhile read the description and get familiar with machine names etc.

Let’s «own» the environment. Click on the corresponding button! On the right side you have now much more options available. The cloudshare.com license is now valid for a longer time than only the original two days.

Testing BO BI 4.0 SP4

Let’s start with using the client tools and BI Launchpad of BI 4.0 SP4. Select «Fullscreen RDP» from the drop down menu of «CLOUDCLNT012»:

Find shortcuts to the available client tools on the desktop or in the start menu.

Overview of Major Challenges

• Which reports to migrate?
• What happens to still existing Desktop Intelligence reports and especially corresponding report instances?
• Do you want / need to rework your access management settings during the migration?
• Should you plan for a “big bang” migration or better in smaller pieces? If yes, how do you deal with the parallel operation of two BO versions (e.g. regarding client tools?)
• How can you check a migration was successful?
• Do we have enough licenses?
• How much education is needed for administrators and end users?

In the rest of this blog I gonna detail on these points.

Which reports to migrate?

The less reports and universes you have to migrate, the less effort you have to invest in the migration and the subsequent testing procedure. Therefore you should try to identify unused or duplicated reports before doing the migration. Think about all the possible copies of reports residing in user’s favorite folders or inboxes. Do you really want or need to keep them?

What about Deski?

Desktop Intelligence is now definitely end of life and not existent anymore in BO 4.x. In theory you can convert Deski reports into Web Intelligence reports. But there are still differences which – depending on your reports – might force you to rebuild some reports manually in Webi. Have a look at this blog from Michael Welter / @UniversePro : http://michaelwelter.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/deski_webi_delta/

A typical challenge I encountered is that many Deski users don’t use the central repository of BO. They use the tool purely as a desktop application, that means as an administrator you don’t know exactly how many Deski reports exist out there or how often a report is used. Unfortunately the BO Audit functionality does not properly track local Deski usage.

A specific other problem might be that you cannot convert Deski instances to Webi. Therefore think about whether you need to keep them somehow or if you can drop them once your BO 3.x system is taken offline.

The migration itself

Typically you don’t want migrating waste. This is true for access rights too. A migration is always a good point in time to tidy up and realign things.

Especially in larger BO environments I recommend not to do a “big bang” migration. Anyway you will usually migrate the same content more than one time. First, after having installed the new software release, you might want to do a test migration and let some end users test on the new platform. In parallel the still productive system XI 3.1 continues to run. Therefore you’ll have to reimport content before you go live with your BO 4.x system. Metadata reporting tools can help you to compare contents between the old and the new system and therefore make sure everything was moved successfully (I will address this in a separate post later on).

Especially in case of a partial migration approach you need to think about side-by-side installation of client tools. Unfortunately this is not trivial as e.g. there might be conflicts with Web Rich Client:

Understand Side-by-Side Client Installation

(Source: http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/All+you+need+to+know+before+upgrading+to+BI4.0)

Licensing

You should consider the following paragraph in the Admin Guide (p. 84):

The BusinessObjects License Measurement Tool (BOLMT) is a java command-line utility used to collect and store BI platform licensing data. The output XML document contains license deployment measurements and is sent to SAP Global License Auditing Services (GLAS) for consolidation as part of a license audit.

Except you or your customer has an “all you can eat” license for your BO system this might be of interest to you. The availability of certain features in BO are not enabled or disabled by the license key. It is purely a matter of access rights how many users can use such a feature. In XI 3.1 and earlier nobody really cared about this as there was no direct possibility available for BO / SAP to verify license compliance. With BO 4.x this is different and you’d better think of your license situation before you migrate.

Education

Many things in BO 4.x are “somehow” new to existing administrators and users. What do I mean with “somehow”? Let’s take Web Intelligence: There are now ribbon toolbars and the more experience you have with Webi the more you’ll ask yourself where things have moved to. A well done overview the new Webi you’ll find here: http://michaelwelter.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/impressions-of-web-intelligence-4-0/

Another example is Crystal Reports for Enterprise: It is not completely different compared to its “origin”. Nevertheless it took me quite a few hours of struggling with the new interface and differently labeled functionality…

More different compared to its predecessor is the Information Design Tool. Although the basic principles of how to design a Universe remain the same, the approach and architecture of the new semantic layer (= UNX universes) is something you should invest some time to get up and running. A good starting point: http://michaelwelter.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/impressions-of-information-design-tool/

All taken together: Yes, both administrators as well as power and end users need additional education and training to enable a smooth transition from XI 3.1 to BO 4.x.

Additional Link

An additional link and quite good summary of materials for your migration you’ll find here: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-25474

What is your experience with the migration to BO 4.x? Any migration specific aspects I missed?