Where Are You Coming From?

Have you ever been confused by directions or road signs?  Sometimes information doesn’t bring clarity.  Hopefully this blog will bring some clarify to potential issues you might encounter in your upgrade to SP2.  I can’t believe this is my 4th post about the subject.

Issues When Moving From Fix Pack 1.6+ to SP2

I made the move to SP2 several weeks ago from XI 3.1 FP 1.3, but what I have since discovered is that not everyone’s journey has been so straight forward.  If a BusinessObjects system was using XI 3.1 FP 1.6 or later, then you may run into issues after you upgrade to SP2.

It seems that at the time SP2 was being built, all the fixes up to FP 1.5 were included; however there have been a number of additional FixPack releases SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 since then.  SAP has released Fix Pack 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8.  These three releases included DLLs that were newer than the DLLs in the SP2 release because they contained fixes that were not originally in SP2.  If this is the case for you will want to move to Fix Pack 2.1 immediately.

What happened?

What I’ve discovered is that due to the desire to keep the size of Service Packs as small as possible, the service pack does not overwrite all the DLLs on the system.  Instead, the service packs looks at your system and only replaces those DLLs which are older than the DLLs within your BusinessObjects XI 3.1 environment.  This means that if you upgraded to FP 1.6, 1.7 or 1.8, some DLLs will be newer than the DLLs contained within SP2.  This can introduce incompatibilities.

For example, if you use WebIntelligence, you may notice that after sometime the WebIntelligence Server stops functioning and you get the following message when opening a WebIntelligence document:

Cannot Initialize Report Engine server: (Error: RWI 00226) (Error:INF)

The Good News

The Good News is that engineering has already identified this issue and has fixed it through the release of Fix Pack 2.1.  If you read the release notes of Fix Pack 2.1, you will see the following:

BusinessObjects XI 3.1 and Crystal Reports 2008 Service Pack 2 Fixed Issues
This Service Pack can only be applied on top of BusinessObjects
Enterprise XI 3.1 / Crystal Reports 2008 SP1. This Service Pack
includes all XI 3.1 FixPacks up to 1.5. Note If you install XI 3.1
SP2 in top of FixPack 1.6 or later, reinstall the latest 2.x FixPack.
Each machine in your deployment must be updated separately with
the patches you require. A separate patch is available for each
BusinessObjects product that has a standalone installation.

There it is.  Tucked into the release notes of Fix Pack 2.1 it explains that if you are on a later fix pack, you need to install Fix Pack 2.1.  I would welcome your suggestions to pass on to the BusinessObjects engineering team of ways to avoid this in the future.

«Good BI»

XI3.1 SP2 Installation Issues Addressed in Re-Release

Over the last several months, we’ve worked to make customers aware of one of the major issues with the latest upgrade within the XI 3.1 product stack.  The main issue has been that the upgrade is simply too slow.  Way too slow.  I knew that the SAP BusinessObjects product development team has been working on resolving this issue and we have some great news.

Recap

The problem only affects Windows and only the BusinessObjects Enterprise package. The problem arises due to limitations of the Microsoft Patch (msp) technology performing disk checking when managing large numbers of files… and the BusinessObjects Enterprice package has lots of those! When run in silent install mode, the installation is significantly faster, but this advantage only works on some versions of Windows (those using Microsoft Installer 3).

RE-RELEASE is available!

If you have an older copy of the SP2 release on your servers, you may just want to update them.  If you go to Service Marketplace, you will see that there is an updated version of the Service Pack (Server+Client) available for download.  These downloads have been updated.

Click image to enlarge

So was the issue completely fixed?  Well, no… not exactly.   In order to get the installer to run fast in interactive mode, either the installer would have to be modified to use the older msi technology or Microsoft will have to fix the issue.  In the meantime, what SAP BusinessObjects has been able to do is to give us an updated version of the installer that is always fast when run in SILENT MODE…. that is… with all versions of Microsoft Installer (3.0/3.1/4.0/4.5).  Therefore be aware.  You must continue to follow the silent installation procedures outlined in my previous posts, however you no longer have to be concerned with what version of the Microsoft Installer is on the Windows Operating System.

And if you are on Unix?  Well, this was never a problem in that case.  This problem only affects the Windows platform.

Thanks!

Finally, thanks to the teams at SAP BusinessObjects for getting this fix released.

«Good BI»

BusinessObjects XI 3.1 SP2 Upgrade Update

I wanted to write a quick follow-up post to the one I posted earlier about the BusinessObjects XI 3.1 SP2 install.  Now that I’ve done several I wanted to give you some additional heads up on some things.  This is what I’ve learned:

Be Careful of Language Packs

The install can take a long time even with the silent install – If you decided to just install all the language packs what you will find is that each language packs adds just under 30 minutes to the install time per language.  In other words, if you installed English, German, and French your installation will take almost a full extra hour.  The installation daisy chains the installations together.  First it will all the SP2 updates and the english language pack.  Next, it will install French and then German.

Comprende?

Is My Install Done Yet?

When running a silent install you can include the options /qn+ to have the setup.exe program inform you when the installation is done…

setup.exe /qn+ -r <responsefilepath>\<filename>.ini

there’s only one surprise.  The installer will information you that the installation is complete.  What it doesn’t tell you is that it will install the language packs next.  Yep that’s right… It’s done but not REALLY done.  But because it’s running a silent install you won’t know it.  This is related to the previous issue.  After the main installation completed, it tells you the installation is complete.  It THEN begins to install each of the languages packs.  If you look in the task manager you will see that msiexec.exe is still running.  Be very careful and make sure those language packs have completed before you start trying to clean up the install files.

Good Luck

The issue of the installation of the BusinessObjects XI 3.1 SP2 was a main topic of our recent GABOUG meeting.  There was a strong recommendation from customers to make sure and install the SP2 hotfix that came out just after the release of SP2.  I haven’t read through the technical notes, but apparently there were problems with some SAP universes getting corrupted.  This hotfix will solve that problem.

«Good BI»

Getting a Little Help

Happy Friday!  Hope you’ve had a great week…

A Little Help from My Friends

Ever feel like you need a little help?  I do all the time… and I really appreciate all my other friends out in the blogosphere who help me along the way.  When it comes to working with SAP BusinessObjects, there are two things that I always have trouble finding from time to time.  Where do I find the SAP BusinessObjects Software and the Documentation?  There are lots of links to choose from within the SAP Service Marketplace and so you don’t accidentally get lost, I recommend you add two shortcuts to your browser..

All SAP BusinessObjects Software

For access to all releases of the SAP BusinessObjects Product Suite including all the EPM, GRC and Information Management solutions, go to:
http://service.sap.com/bosap-downloads

All SAP BusinessObjects Documentation

For access to all the documentation of all the current and past releases including release notes, user guides, administration guides, glossaries, reference guides, go to:
http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/

If you have some favorite SAP BusinessObjects links that you think others should know about, feel free to post them here as a reply to this post.

«Good BI»

SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 SP2 – Before You Install…

I came across a recently technical support article that I felt was so important,  I wanted to pass it on to anyone and everyone who might be upgrading their SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 environment to SP2.  If you try the installation, BEWARE!  Without following the advice below you might find that it takes several hours!  Below are the instructions I gleaned for a recently published technical article.

SP2 Is Slow to Install

Installing XI 3.1 Service Pack 2 on a Windows environment may take a long time (several hours) to complete and here’s why.

• The problem is with the process of the MSP (Microsoft Patch) installer that we are using for the SP2 install on Windows platform.
• The install/validate check routine in this process takes approximately around 80% of the install time.
• When using this installer the process to find and replace a large amount of files takes a long time.

Workaround

As the main bottleneck in the Install process is a MSFT Install/Validate check routine, the workaround is to skip the check by performing a Silent Install
There is a significant reduction in the total time taken.   NOTE:  We can skip the check only on MSI 3.x., the silent install does not help on MSI 4.x.  Please refer to the installation guide for xi31_sp2_install_en.pdf and refer to page 21.

Regarding how to run in Silent mode:

1. We need to  generate an ini file firstly with the command line: setup.exe -w <response filepath>\<filename>.ini
2. Next,  run the silent install with the command line: setup.exe -r <response filepath>\<filename>.ini where <response filepath> is the path to the .ini file you created created in step 1.
3. You then need to run the silent install with the commandline:  setup.exe /qn+

This runs the installer with all default options and automatically redeploys the war files to the BOBJ-installed Tomcat

Caution:
Note that because the Install/Validate check routine is skipped in order to improve performance, there is a potential scenario where the machine may run out of resources e.g. lack of disk space, partway through the installation. In such a scenario, the system should be rolled back to where it was before originally, and the appropriate logs will be made (assuming logging was enabled).

Limitation of workaround

There were changes between MSI 3.x and MSI 4.x, such that the MSFT Install/Validate check routine is also always executed in machines with MSI 4.x, regardless of whether it is a GUI or Silent installation. Accordingly, the silent install does not help if the MSI 4.x has been installed on the Windows.  Regarding how to know the version of MSI installed on the computer currently, we may right click the file C:\windows\system32\msiexec.exe, choose “Properties”, check tab “Version”, or you can run, from the commandlilne, “msiexec /?” and hit enter. There is no way to downgrade the MSI from 4.x to 3.x except re-installing Windows.

SAP Note 1356691 for the XI 3.1 Service Pack 2 Install and Deployment Guide PDF. The section for Silent Install begins on page 21.