The blog is very much informative. But the issues requested are not answered here. Also, Crystal 2008 with SAP Multi-providers does not work properly. I request you to keep posting the latest on the subject.

Thanks

Thanks.
Syed.

Yes, BusinessObjects has supported BW Hierarchies for a very long time… even before they became part of SAP. I’m not sure why you are struggling with them, unless you have a particularly unusual implementation. I suggest that customers with a strong need around SAP integration leverage some of the new capabilities in the new XI 3.0 release.

Some of the highlights include:

Refreshing SAP BW Universe structure
SAP BW Universe Customization
Calculated Key Figures

XI 3.0 also received an SAP Prompting “Extreme Makeover”, with support for optional variables, keydate and mandatory variables and default prompt values. Calendar-based query prompts have also been added.

I suggest you contact SAP BusinessObjects support and/or SAP Forums to see if they can shed more light on your specific issue/implementation with BW Hierarchies.

Thanks for your useful information. We have been working in a BW environment for 8 years and we are now trying to use WEBI to replace the BEX Analyzer for our clients. One problem we have faced is that it does not seem that WEBI supports BW Hierarchies(of which, we have many). Is this true ? Is there a work-around for this ? Is this something that they will be trying to fix in the future ?

Thanks,

Craig

I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the blog and found it useful. It is true that Crystal Reports can connect to more SAP data sources than WebIntelligence, but you to remember what the tools are used for. Because Crystal Reports is targeted to a technical audience, it provides a lot of power but some users find it difficult to use.

WebIntelligence on the other hand is targeted for the self-service user who need to slice and dice data. This is usually accomplished in a data warehousing environment by creating a star schema with conformed dimensions, etc. This is exactly what you get in BW, therefore WebI has only ever worked with BW. There have been internally discussions about the value of allowing WebI to connect to the SAP ERP data structures, but as far as I know right now, this isn’t being pursued.

If you are committed to SAP BW, then you can use WebI against BW.

If you are committed to SAP ERP but not BW, then you can use RapidMarts to extract data out of the ERP structures and into a star schema for reporting using WebI… (or any other BI tool).

Hope this helps,

–david

I came across your website recently and have to explore it more, but by reading some of the articles it provides lot of clear information and you have provided useful information and thank you for all your efforts.

I was reading about the data structures in SAP which are supported within BusinessObjects and it is clear that Crystal Reports is able to connect more
sources as compared to Web Intelligencea and hence provides more useful reports as compared to WebIntelligence or Voyager, but since Crystal Reports is not
a Adhoc reporting tool, going forward I guess SAP is trying to integrate more features into WebI/Voyager as this will be the leading adhoc reporting tool.

Thanks,
Baazi

Great section. Wondering if you could help provide more context around why SAP (and yourself) keep recommending Universes’ be attached to queries instead of infoproviders?

For example:
- MultiProvider1 has 100 Chars/InfoObjects and 50 Key Figures/measures.
- Universe1 has the same and is attached directly to the MP.
- Universe2 is attached to a super query with 100 chars and 50 kf’s.
- WEBi report only has 10 Chars and 5 Kf/measures

Why is there a difference between using Uni1 versus Uni2 for this WEBi report? Is there something in the MDX code that makes 1 option better than the other?

If the question isn’t clear, just let me know and I’ll elaborate.

Regards,
Paul

Thanks for your feedback regarding reports with no data. The only workaround for XIr2 is the workaround you are already using. You can create a subreport and if the main report contains no data, then execute the subreport which contains an database connection error and will cause the entire report to fail. Short of building your own email processing engine via the SDK, that’s the best I can do. (If you are interested in building your own, I can provide you a sample that was done by a colleague of mine a number of years ago.)

In XI 3.0, we introduced publications. A publication can be setup with delivery rules. One of the default delivery rules is that the report “Must Contain Data”. If you select this rule, the publication will not email the document unless it contains data. The publication will complete successfully and not generate an error message.