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BusinessObjects and SAP - Installation and Configuration

First of all we need the software and for our purposes we will use the following components:

BusinessObjects Edge Series XI Release 3.0

Crystal Reports 2008

Xcelsius Enterprise 2008

Live Office XI Release 3.0

Integration Kit for SAP Solutions XI Release 3.0

SAP GUI

SAP Java Connector

SAP Transports (part of the Integration Kit for SAP Solutions)

You should be able to download the software either via SDN (Download area) or you might already have access to the software via service marketplace (Software Distribution Center > Installations  and Upgrades > BusinessObjects packages and products).

In this blog I will focus on the installation part of the software and in the next blog I will explain the configuration of the components. I will use a blank VMWare with Windows 2003 Server to create a system which will have the client components on the server components on a single VMWare.

BusinessObjects Edge Series

I start with the installation of BusinessObjects Edge. After calling the setup I am asked to select the language of the installation routine (not the language for the installed software).

I am selecting English and continue.

In the next step I accept the license agreement...

...And will then provide the license key for the software.

 In the next step I can now select the Language Packs for BusinessObjects Edge allowing me to deploy multiple languages of the software in a single step.

After selecting English as Language Pack, I can provide the folder for the software and I can select which database server I want to select to host the system database (a detailed list of supported databases is available in the platform matrix).

Then I can select the port for the Central Management Server and provide a password that will be set for the administrative account as part of the installation process.

... and I can then configure the port for the Server Intelligence Agent...

... and in the next step configure the password for - in my case - the MySQL database that will be deployed.

  Now I select the Application Server and for my purposes I am selecting Tomcat as application Server (a list of supported Application Server can be found in the platform matrix).

After this the software will get installed as selected and depending on the hardware you will get the following screen after a couple of minutes.

I am restarting my system and continue the installation afterwards

This is part 2 of the Installation and Configuration blog series for the integration of BusinessObjects with SAP.

I will describe the following parts:

BusinessObjects Edge Series XI Release 3.0 (Part 1)

Crystal Reports 2008 (Part 2)

Xcelsius Enterprise 2008 (Part 2)

Live Office XI Release 3.0 (Part 3)

SAP GUI (Part 3)

Integration Kit for SAP Solutions XI Release 3.0 (Part 4)

SAP Transports (Part 4)

Crystal Reports 2008

I start the installation of Crystal Reports 2008 and do select - identical to the previous installation - "English" as the language for the installation routine.

I continue from the Welcome screen...

and accept the license agreement.

Now I need to provide the license key...

And similar to the installation of BusinessObjects Edge I can then select the Language Packs for Crystal Reports.

I am selecting the Installation Type "Custom" and...

... do select all components of Crystal Reports 2008.

In the next screen I have the option to leverage the web update service or to disable it and...

Then in the last screen the actual installation based on the selections I did will start.

After the installation process is finished you will see this screen.

Xcelsius 2008

Now I will start the installation of Xcelsius 2008 and select English as setup language

After the Welcome screen...

... I accept the license agreement

... and then enter the license key.

Now I can select the Language Packs for Xcelsius 2008 and after clicking Next...

... I can select the folder for the installation

...and then the installation will start and after a few minutes you will see the following screen.

In Part 3 we will continue with Live Office and the SAP Frontend for the installation

This is part 3 of the Installation and Configuration blog series for the integration of BusinessObjects with SAP. I will describe the following parts:

BusinessObjects Edge Series XI Release 3.0 (Part 1)

Crystal Reports 2008 (Part 2)

Xcelsius Enterprise 2008 (Part 2)

Live Office XI Release 3.0 (Part 3)

SAP GUI (Part 3)

Integration Kit for SAP Solutions XI Release 3.0 (Part 4)

SAP Transports (Part 4)

Live Office XI Release 3.0

Now I will start the installation of Live Office XI Release 3.0 and select English as setup language

After the Welcome screen...

... I accept the license agreement

Now I can select the Language Packs for Live Office XI Release 3.0  and after clicking Next...

... I can select the folder for the installation

...and then the installation will start .....

and after a few minutes you will see the following screen.

At this point I have three components left that I need to install:

SAP GUI

SAP Java Connector

SAP Integration Kit

SAP GUI

The SAP GUI is required for two areas. Crystal Reports is leveraging parts of the SAP GUI (like SAP Logon) to allow the user to open a BI Query or save a Crystal Report object to the BI System.

BusinessObjects Edge requires the librfc to communicate with the SAP backend like Crystal Reports does as well.

I start the installation of the SAP Frontend (7.1) and I select the SAP GUI Suite

.... The BW Add-On (for BW 3.5 Add-Ons) and the BI 7 Add On.

Right now Crystal Reports 2008 is using the dialogs from the BW 3.5 Add-On and therefore you have to deploy the BW 3.5 Add On components even when your backend is a BI 7 System.

This is part 4 of the Installation and Configuration blog series for the integration of BusinessObjects with SAP. I will describe the following parts:

BusinessObjects Edge Series XI Release 3.0 (Part 1)

Crystal Reports 2008 (Part 2)

Xcelsius Enterprise 2008 (Part 2)

Live Office XI Release 3.0 (Part 3)

SAP GUI (Part 3)

Integration Kit for SAP Solutions XI Release 3.0 (Part 4)

SAP Transports (Part 4)

SAP Java Connector

The SAP Java Connector is being leveraged from BusinessObjects Edge and the SAP Integration Kit as part of the SAP Authentication plug-in in the Central Management Console.

You can download the SAP Java Connector from the service marketplace (http://service.sap.com/connectors).

I am downloading the version 2.1.8

After unzipping the Java Connector download, I copy the file sapjco.jar to the shared library folder of the application server (in my example : \Program Files\Business Objects\Tomcat55\shared\lib) and the file sapjcorfc.dll to %windir%\system32.

(see page 51 in the installation guide for the Integration Kit for SAP Solutions for details)

SAP Integration Kit

Now we can start the installation process for the SAP Integration Kit.

I select English as language and click OK to go to the next step.

In the Welcome screen I click Next ...

... and accept the license agreement.

In the next screen I enter the license key...

And move to the next screen to select the Language Packs.

In the next screen I select "Custom" to select all components from the SAP Integration Kit.

In the next screen I can select the components and the screen below shows the complete list of all available elements (details see further down in the blog).

In the next screen I need to authenticate to the BusinessObjects Edge system so that the necessary changes can be applied to the system database.

I authenticate towards the system and move on to the next step.

In the next step I need to enter the details for the publishing service that is being used to publish the Crystal Report objects from the BI System to the BusinessObjects Edge server.

The elements on the screen are

 Program ID

 Type a descriptive string to identify the BW Publisher service. The Program ID can take any value, but must be 64 characters or fewer, and may not contain spaces. The Program ID is case-sensitive

 Gateway Host

 Type the name of your BW server. If you have a BW cluster, enter the name

of the central instance of BW.  Gateway Service

Type the port number that the Gateway Host is listening on. For example, type 33##, where ## represents the instance number of your SAP Gateway. Usually, the instance number is 00, and the value for this field is 3300.

The details for the Publishing Service and those settings will be explained in the next part where we will configure the publishing for Crystal Reports.

In the next screen I can select to deploy the web applications (customizations to InfoView, SAP Authentication plug-in) automatically.

In the next step the installation routine is asking if the SAP Java Connector has been deployed. the installation can continue without the files but then the files need to be deployed afterwards.

After this the installation starts and the final screen you will see looks like this.

As soon as the installation is finished and when you call the Central Management Console from the BusinessObjects Edge server you should be able to select "SAP" as authentication method and your screen should look similar to this.

Now we need to install the transports from the Integration Kit for SAP Solutions on the SAP server.

Installaton of SAP transports on the SAP server

The BusinessObjects Integration Kit for SAP includes transports as part of the product. These transports include functionality especially designed for the integration with SAP. The following is a list of functionalities that require SAP transports:

Open SQL connectivity.

InfoSet connectivity.

BW MDX Driver connectivity.

BW ODS connectivity.

SAP authentication.

Content Administration Workbench.

BW Query parameter personalization.

The transports are available as part of the SAP Integration Kit in a separate folder "\transports" with a detailed documentation about the import and the objects that will be created in the appendix of the Installation Guide for the SAP Integration Kit.

Components of the Integration Kit for SAP Solutions

The following is a short description of the components that are part of the installation of the Integration Kit for SAP Solutions

SAP Connectivity

This component provides database drivers that are designed specifically for reporting off SAP data. The following drivers are included:

Open SQL.

InfoSet.

BW Query (BW Query only).

BW MDX (BW cubes and queries).

ODS / DSO

OLAP BAPI.

Except the OLAP BAPI connectivity the drivers are only available for Crystal Reports.

SAP Authentication

This component allows you to map your existing SAP roles and users to BusinessObjects Enterprise users and user groups. It also enables BusinessObjects Enterprise to authenticate users against the SAP system, thereby providing Single-Sign-On to your SAP system.  

BW Publisher

This component allows you to publish reports individually or in batches from SAP BW to BusinessObjects Enterprise.

Web Content

This component includes the SAP specific customizations to BusinessObjects Enterprise InfoView. These customizations include functionalities like multilingual scheduling for Crystal Reports and the ability to retrieve personalization values for SAP Variable from SAP BW queries.

BW Content Administration Workbench

The Content Administration Workbench allows you to administer report publishing functionality from within SAP BW. You can identify roles from the SAP BW system with particular BusinessObjects Enterprise systems, publish reports, and synchronize reports between SAP BW and a BusinessObjects Enterprise system.

SAP Enterprise Portal - iView template & sample iView

The BusinessObjects Integration Kit offers a specific iView template which allows quick creation of new content for the Enterprise portal and surface content from the BusinessObjects Enterprise system. The template offers BusinessObjects Enterprise specific functionalities like choosing a content viewer or choosing between a last instance and on-demand reporting.

we did install all the required software so that we can now configure the BusinessObjects server to allow SAP accounts and SAP roles to leverage the software.

In the next step we enable the SAP Authentication on the BusinessObjects Edge server.

The SAP authentication allows the administrator to leverage the SAP users and roles and it allows the end user to leverage functionality like single-sign-on with BusinessObjects Enterprise.

I am calling the Central Management Console

...and logon as administrator.

After Logon I am presented with the main screen of the Central Management Console

... and can now navigate to the item Authentication (right hand side).

I select the SAP Authentication from the list of available authentications and are now presented with the list of SAP Entitlement systems, which in our case is empty because so far we have not configured any systems.

I can now enter the System ID and Client number from my SAP system and can then enter either a combination of the Message Server and Logon Group or a Application Server and System number.

The credentials used here is to read users and roles and to validate role membership during the authentication process. Please refer to the Installation Guide for the Integration Kit for SAP Solutions (Page 73) to see a detailed list of required authorizations for this user.

I enter the details and then click Update to add the system to the list of available entitlement systems.

Now I navigate to the tab "Options".

Here I can configure multiple items but for now I will only set the Default System to my newly created system and I will set the flag for the option "Automatically import user". By setting this option all users that are assigned to the roles that I will import in the next step will also become BusinessObjects Enterprise users. In case I would not set this option the users would get created based on the rolemembership as part of the initial authentication towards BusinessObjects Enterprise.

Now I navigate to the tab "Role Import".

By importing SAP roles into BusinessObjects Enterprise, you allow role members to log onto BusinessObjects Enterprise with their usual SAP credentials. In addition, single-sign-on is enabled so that SAP users can be logged onto BusinessObjects Enterprise automatically when they access reports from within the SAP GUI or an SAP Enterprise Portal.

For each role that is imported BusinessObjects Enterprise generates a user group. Each group is named with the following naming convention:

[SAP system ID] ~ [SAP client number] @  [SAP role]

For example:     R37~800@BOBJ_TRAIN_ROLE_01

I now select the roles that I want to import and click "Add" and then "Update" to import those roles into my BusinessObjects Enterprise system.

Now I close the SAP Authentication screen and select the item "Users and Groups" to show the imported Groups and User.

Here you can see the imported roles and because I did set the option to "Automatically import users" the assigned users of those roles are imported as well.

To now validate this I call InfoView and select the SAP Authentication and logon to InfoView with my SAP credentials.

In case everything is configured correct you should be able to logon now with the SAP credentials and the SAP account is shown in the top right corner in InfoView

The user and roles that we imported into the BusinessObjects Enterprise system have no rights / authorizations in the BusinessObjects Enterprise system so far but you can use the standard mechanism to assign rights in the Central Management Console to those users and user groups.

For the scenario where you want to use SSO based on tickets with the BusinessObjects Enterprise and the BI System (either from the SAP GUI or via the SAP Enterprise Portal) you need to configure profile parameters in the SAP BI System.

The two profile parameters are:

login/accept_sso2_ticket

login/create_sso2_ticket

Profile parameter Value Comment

login/create_sso2_ticket

1 or 2 Use the value 1 if the server possesses a public-key certificate signed by the SAP CA. Use the value 2 if the certificate is self-signed. If you are not sure, then use the value 2.

login/accept_sso2_ticket

1 Use the value 1 so that the system will also accept logon tickets.

Please also check the SAP documentation for more details and keep in mind that those changes will require to restart the SAP system.

I hope you are now at a point where you were able to install everything and you are now able to use your SAP Credentials to authenticate towards the BusinessObjects Enterprise system

so far you should be in a situation where you have a running BusinessObjects Edge system with Crystal Reports, Xcelsius, Live Office and the SAP Integration Kit installed and you are able to logon to BusinessObjects Edge with your SAP credentials.

In the next step we will configure the publishing of a Crystal Reports where we first will save the report into the BI repository and then push it from the BI environment to the BusinessObjects Edge server.

In the last blog we did install all the required software so that we can no configure the BusinessObjects server to allow SAP accounts and SAP roles to leverage the software.

This image outlines the publishing process:

Step #1 : When a user attempts to publish one or more Crystal reports, BW looks for a Remote Function Call (RFC) destination (of type TCP/IP) that is configured to connect to this BW Publisher. The TCP/IP destination provides SAP BW with the name and port number of the SAP Gateway that the BW Publisher is registered with.

Step #2: SAP BW then communicates over TCP/IP with the BW Publisher Service, and sends the following information across the network:

o The appropriate Crystal report file(s), with any required translated report strings.

o A publishing command, if you are not using a local SAP Gateway.

o The name of the appropriate Central Management Server (CMS).

Step #3: The BW Publisher Service responds by executing the publishing command, thereby invoking the BW Publisher. The BW Publisher logs onto the specified CMS as the user, and checks to see if the user has the appropriate permissions in BusinessObjects Enterprise to publish reports. If the user's rights are sufficient, the CMS allows the reports to be added to the system.

When publishing a report from Crystal Reports the report is published with the language from the SAP Logon as "master-language". Master-language in this case means that the string values from this report are stored in SAP translation tables with the configured language set as source language for the translation process.

Configuring the BW Publish service

As part of the installation of the SAP Integration Kit we did select to install the BW Publishing service. You can start the BW Publishing service via the Central Configuration Manager from BusinessObjects Edge.

The configuration of the service is done via the registry.

The path in the registry is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Business Objects\Suite 12.0\SAP\BW Publisher Service

There are three values that you can configure

Program ID Type a descriptive string to identify the BW Publisher service. The Program ID can take any value, but must be 64 characters or fewer, and may not contain spaces. The Program ID is case-sensitive.

Gateway Host Type the name of your BW server. If you have a BW cluster, enter the name of the central instance of BW.

Gateway Service Type the port number that the Gateway Host is listening on. For example, type 33##, where ## represents the instance number of your SAP Gateway. Usually, the instance number is 00, and the value for this field is 3300.

After you entered those items in the registry you should be able to start the Publishing service and the service should keep running.

In my case I entered the following:

Program ID : VMW010_PUBLISH

Gateway Host : vanpgsap05.sap.crystald.net (which is my SAP BI Application Server)

Gateway Service : 3300

In case you entered everything correct you should be able to start the BW Publishing Service and it should keep running.

The publishing can also be configured using a SAP Gateway as an alternative for the Publishing Service.

Creating an RFC destination

As next step we need to create a RFC Destination in transaction SM59 and configure it to leverage the BW Publishing service.

You logon to the SAP BI System and start transaction SM59

I select the option "Create"

... and provide a name for the RFC Destination. As Connection Type I select TCP/IP (T) and enter an description as well.

As Application Type I select "Registered Server Program" and enter the Program ID that I configured previously for my BW Publishing Service as the Program here. Important - this is case sensitive.

I also enter the Gateway options:

o   Gateway host Type the name of your BW server. If you have a BW cluster, enter the name of the central instance of BW. You must use the same BW server name here that you specified when you configured the BW Publisher service.

o   Gateway service Type the port number that the Gateway host is listening on. For example, type sapgw##, where ## represents the instance number of your SAP Gateway. Often, the instance number is 00, and the value for this field is sapgw00.

In my case I configured the destination as follows:

As final step I test my connection.

Create a BusinessObjects Enterprise server definition

So we created now the BW Publishing Service and the RFC Destination. In the next step we need to put the pieces together and define a definition of the BusinessObjects server in the transaction /CRYSTAL/RPTADMIN (part of the ABAP Transport from the Installation)

I start the transaction /CRYSTAL/RPTADMIN (Content Administration Workbench).

... and can use the "Add new System" icon in the Folder Enterprise System to create a new definition.

On the first tab "System" I can enter an Alias name for my system and I need to enter the CMS name (fully qualified) with port (in case you not using the default port).

The option "Default system" allows you to configure on BusinessObjects server landscape as the Default system for BI Roles that have not been assigned to a specific system.

On the "RFC Destinations" tab I now need to add the RFC destination that I did create in transaction SM59 previously.

On the tab "HTTP" I need to provide the following details:

o   ProtocolType http (unless the web server that is connected to BusinessObjects Enterprise is configured to use https).

o   Web server host and portType the fully qualified domain name or the IP address of the web server that hosts your BusinessObjects Enterprise InfoView or custom web application.

o   PathThis path is essentially the virtual path that your web server uses when referring to the SAP subfolder of your BusinessObjects Enterprise web content (or the path to any customer web application). Do not include a forward slash at the beginning or at the end of this entry.

o   Viewer applicationType the name of the viewer application.

On the tab "Languages" you can select the list of languages that will be leveraged for Crystal Reports. The system will take all string informations from the Crystal Reports and the text can be

translated to those languages selected here and then there will be one report per language created automatically on the BusinessObjects Edge server.

On the Roles tab you need to select the list of roles that will publish the Crystal Report related content from their roles to the configured BusinessObjects Edge server. Based on this you can see that you could have on BI system pushing content to multiple BusinessObjects Edge system (example : one system separately for HR, one system for the rest).

On the "Layout" Tab you can define the base folder for the publishing and the security levels that you want to assign. These security settings will then be used as default settings in BusinessObjects Edge.

In regards to the folder structure the following explains how SAP Roles and Crystal Report objects in the SAP Roles are being created in the BusinessObjects Edge server.

When publishing, the top-level folder "SAP" and the folder underneath "3.0" (naming depends on the configuration in the Content Administration Workbench and the SAP Authentication in the Central Management Console) are created automatically.

Underneath the folder structure is created based on the values retrieved from SAP BW during the publishing process:

The Folder "SID" is replaced with the logical system name consisting of the SAP System ID and the SAP Client Number (for example, R37CLNT800).

The role folder is created based on the technical name and description of the role that has been used to store the Crystal Report object on the SAP BW system.

The report itself is saved to the actual role folder.

For each language the report is made available in, one report object is created.

For example, the following structure will appear on the BusinessObjects Enterprise system assuming the following values:

SAP system ID : R37

SAP client number : 800

SAP BW role name : Business Objects Training Role

Used languages : English, German (DE), and simplified Chinese (ZH)

We will continue in Part 2 with theconfiguration in the Content Administration Workbench and in Part 3 with the necessary security configurations.

I explain how you can configure the BusinessObjects system and the SAP BI system to leverage the publishing workflow with Crystal Reports.  

In case you followed the first part you should now have the publishing service running, a RFC Destination in transaction SM59 configured and a configured BusinessObjects server definition in transaction /CRYSTAL/RPTADMIN.

Now we continue with the configuration steps.

Configure the SAP source parameters

In addition to the definition of the BusinessObjects server you also need to configure the SAP Server settings that should get used for the reports in the BusinessObjects server. You could - as an example - design a report against an application server but then when publishing it switching to a message server with a logon group.

I start the transaction /CRYSTAL/RPTADMIN (Content Administration Workbench)....

And navigate to the SAP System settings in the Publish reports area.

I select the item Set BW source parameter.

... and click on the button New Entries.

I can now enter either a combination of application server and system number or a combination of application / message server and logon group. These settings will then be used and configured in the actual Crystal Report object when the report is being pushed from the BI system to the BusinessObjects server.

Configuring the SAP HTTP request handler

To enable viewing of reports in BW via the role menu (for example, opening a Crystal Report from the SAP GUI), you need to  configure BW to use the HTTP request handler that is included as part of the Crystal Content Administration Workbench transport. Then, when a BW user opens a Crystal report from within the SAP GUI, BW is able to route the viewing request over the web appropriately to BusinessObjects Enterprise.

I start transaction SICF (Maintain services)...

...and navigate to the the folder default_host / SAP / BW

I double-click on the service ce_url.

... and select the tab "Handler List" .

I then change the list to ensure the entry /CRYSTAL/CL_BW_HTTP_HANDLER is the top entry.

This specific handler is part of the ABAP Transports (see the Installation and Configuration for details).

This configuration allows the user to also start a report from inside the SAP GUI (for example: from the role menu) and thenecessary server details are then resolved dynamically based on the configuration we made earlier in the transaction /CRYSTAL/RPTADMIN.

In Part 3 I will explain the necessary steps in regards to security on the BusinessObjects server.

In the first two parts of the publishing configuration we did configure the publishing service, the RFC destination, the BusinessObjects server definition in the transaction /CRYSTAL/RPTADMIN and the source parameters.  

This time we finish the configuration and as last step we will configure the necessary security rights on the BusinessObjects server.

BusinessObjects security configuration for publishing

To be able to publish a report from SAP BI to BusinessObjects Edge the users need to have the necessary rights in the BusinessObjects system.

The following is a suggested differentiation:

BusinessObjects Enterprise administratorsEnterprise administrators configure the BusinessObjects Enterprise system for publishing content from SAP. They import the appropriate roles, create necessary folders, and assign rights to those roles and folders in BusinessObjects Enterprise.

Content publishersContent publishers are those users who have rights to publish content into roles. The purpose of this category of user is to separate regular role members from those users with rights to publish reports.

Role membersRole members are users who belong to content roles. They have rights to view and schedule content that has been published to the roles they are members of. However, regular role members cannot publish new content, nor can they publish updated versions of content.

The following are recommendations for the previously described BusinessObjects user groups:

Role MembersBusinessObjects Edge imports a group for each role that is added to the entitlement system as defined in the CMC. To ensure that suitable default rights are granted to all members of a content bearing role, grant the following rights in the Content Administration Workbench for each entitlement system that is defined in BusinessObjects Enterprise:

Default Security policy for reports = View

Default security policy for role folders = View on Demand

Content PublisherAssign the following rights to a publisher role in the Central Management Console:

Add objects to the folder.

View objects.

Edit objects.

Modify the rights users have to objects.

Delete objects.

Delete instances.

Copy objects to another folder.

To set those recommended rights I logon to the SAP Server and start the transaction /CRYSTAL/RPTADMIN.

I double-click on my system entry and navigate to the tab "Layout".

Now I can set the default security based on the recommendations.

After I configured the rights on the SAP side I now log onto the Central Management Console.

And select the item Folders.

I navigate down to the folder for my SAP System ID.

I select the folder and go to the menu Manage > Security > User Security.

I can now Click Add Principals....

...and by clicking Groups I can select the roles from the SAP system.

I can click Add and Assign Security ...

... and navigate to the Advanced tab. And click Add/Remove rights.

Now I can configure the rights for this role.

At this point you :

Did configure the SAP Authentication and imported roles (previous blog)

Did configure the publishing service

Did create a RFC Destination in transaction SM59

Did create a BusinessObjects Server definition in transaction /CRYSTAL/RPTADMIN

Did assign the necessary rights to the SAP roles in BusinessObjects Edge

And as a result you should be able to publish a report from Crystal Reports Designer.

You can create a new report in the Crystal Reports Design using the SAP specific menus and when saving the report to BW you will be asked if you also want to publish the report from the BW system to the BusinessObjects system - which based on te configuration we did should result in a successfully published report and a report on the BusinessObjects Edge server.