BI Web Services presentation from SAP Inside Track 2011 now available for download!

October 3, 2011 by: David Lai

SAP Inside Track Vancouver 2011Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation on BI Web Services at SAP Inside Track Vancouver 2011!

A replay of the presentation can be found at the following link => http://bit.ly/rkBU1p

I’ve also attached the powerpoint presentation that you can download here

 

Comments

11 Responses to “BI Web Services presentation from SAP Inside Track 2011 now available for download!”
  1. santosh says:

    Thanks David, good summary to understand the difference of various connectivity options.. very useful info..

  2. santosh says:

    David, i have a general question.. i have used BI Web Services at my previous client and am considering this for my current project.. Any best practices around managing these Web Services and objects that you recommend. In terms of migrating or restricting other users from accessing it(to schedule).
    Also correct me if i am wrong, once we publish a block as a web services any changes that are made to the block is not picked up by the web services. For eg to an already published block if we add a column that new changes is not picked up, or we cannot update the web services to include that new column right? All we can do is create another web services and rebind it in xcelsius..

    • David Lai says:

      Hi Santosh,
      In terms of scheduling, it is the WEBI reports that you schedule, so you can easily control scheduling access to the WEBI Reports.
      When you create a BI Web Service, BOBJ treats it like a QaaWS object, so managing the published objects through Life Cycle Manager for example will be exactly like QaaWS. For migration I highly recommend using Life Cycle Manager as you can easily manage hostnames and server info for each of your environments. Also it allows for easy rollbacks.

      When you are making changes to a block that is already published, you will only need to republish and rebind if there is a structural change such as changing from a table to a crosstab or if you change prompts. If I change calculations or formulas, I don’t have to worry about re-binding.

      Finally for structural changes, you don’t have to create another web service. You can just delete the existing block from your BI Web Service, and re-publish your block. Then you will need to rebind it in Xcelsius. When you remove or add a column, your BI Service remains intact so you do not need to republish. The only thing you’ll need to do is go to Xcelsius and change the number of columns the output is bound to.

      Thanks for asking these questions as it is most likely useful for others so keep asking if you have more questions.

      Thanks!
      David

  3. santosh says:

    thanks David, very well explained.

  4. Santosh says:

    Hello David, i have a question.. what are all the scenario(atleast you have faced) where you have to republish the block to web services. If there are modification to the query that would keep the format intact (that is the coloumn size will be same) even then do we have to republish the web services.

    • David Lai says:

      Hi Santosh,
      Making modifications to the query but keeping the object names, filters the same and we are okay without republishing the web service.
      If I for example change some object names, filter names, etc. Then we will need to republish.

      Hope that helps.

  5. santosh says:

    hi David, thanks for clarification..

  6. Mustafa Bensan says:

    Hi David,

    That was a very informative presentation, thanks. I’m currently using BI Web Services with WebI 4.0 and have noticed that data blocks with a hierarchy are misaligned in Dashboard Design 4.0 (Xcelsius). I was wondering if you have encountered this issue and if so, do you have a solution?

    The issue seems to be caused by the new way WebI handles hierarchies. In WebI 3.1, hierarchies are flattened into separate levels and this structure is maintained in the published BI web service. However, in WebI 4.0, hierarchies are not flattened and are displayed as a tree structure. As a result, each node is only displayed once. If there are multiple data rows under a node, the hierarchy node value is not repeated and appears as a blank cell. When such a report block is published as a BI web service, these blank cells are actually omitted from the XML structure, resulting in a misalignment of the data rows with the column headers.

    Any suggestions would be appreciated.

    Regards,

    Mustafa.

    • David Lai says:

      Hi Mustafa,
      Unfortunately I haven’t used BI Web Services much with BI4. The ability to preserve hierarchies is a new feature with BI4 so that may be the reason why it isn’t supported with BI Web Services yet. Let me do some tests on my BI4 box and I’ll get back to you with my findings regarding hierarchies and BI Web Services.

      Thanks
      David

  7. AtulK says:

    Hi David,

    I have two questions regarding web service created using webi report.

    Question 1: If i created web service based on the webi report which having prompt. that web service im using in xcelisius dashboard. now if i need to change the prompt of web report. then will that reflect to web service. As per my observations changed prompt will not reflect to web service.

    but i need it should reflect to web service.
    please suggest solution for this.

    2. Question: If i have dashboard with number of web service. i don’t know web service . but i have WSDL url. so my question is how do i find out WEB Service name using WSDL url.

    please suggest.

    Thanks ..

    Best Regards,
    AtulK

    • David Lai says:

      Hi AtulK,

      Answer 1: You may need to delete and recreate the Web Service if the changed prompt is not reflecting correctly

      Answer 2: Unfortunately there is no simple way to do a search on your web services based on your WSDL URL. You’ll need to figure out which web service is being used by the method that you see being used in the dashboard.

      Hope that helps.
      David

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