Configuration
First of all we need the software and for our purposes we will use the following
components:
• SAP GUI
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.
...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.
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...
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...
Now I can select the Language Packs for Xcelsius 2008 and after clicking Next...
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)
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 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:
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.
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.
• InfoSet connectivity.
• BW MDX Driver connectivity.
• BW ODS connectivity.
• SAP authentication.
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.
SAP Connectivity
This component provides database drivers that are designed specifically for reporting off SAP data.
The following drivers are included:
• Open SQL.
• InfoSet.
• 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.
... 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.
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]
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_tic 1 or 2 Use the value 1 if the server possesses a
ket 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_tic 1 Use the value 1 so that the system will
ket 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.
• 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.
• 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.
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
... 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.
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 Protocol
Type http (unless the web server that is connected to BusinessObjects Enterprise is configured to
use https).
o Path
This 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 application
Type 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.
• 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
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.
And navigate to the SAP System settings in the Publish reports area.
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.
• Content publishers
Content 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 members
Role 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 Members
BusinessObjects 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
Content Publisher
Assign the following rights to a publisher role in the Central Management Console:
• Add objects to the folder.
• View objects.
• Edit objects.
• Delete objects.
• Delete instances.
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".
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.
• 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.