SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Administrator's Guide

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Administrator's Guide

■ SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1

2009-12-08

Copyright

© 2009 SAP AG. All rights reserved.SAP, R/3, SAP NetWeaver, Duet, PartnerEdge,
ByDesign, SAP Business ByDesign, and other SAP products and services
mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered
trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. Business Objects and the
Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Crystal Decisions, Web
Intelligence, Xcelsius, and other Business Objects products and services mentioned
herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks
of Business Objects S.A. in the United States and in other countries. Business
Objects is an SAP company.All other product and service names mentioned are
the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document
serves informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary.These
materials are subject to change without notice. These materials are provided by
SAP AG and its affiliated companies ("SAP Group") for informational purposes
only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP Group shall not be
liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for
SAP Group products and services are those that are set forth in the express
warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing
herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.

2009-12-08

Contents

Introduction..........................................................................................7Chapter 1

About this guide...........................................................................................7

Important SAP Notes...................................................................................7

Related guides.............................................................................................8

Business Scenarios...........................................................................11Chapter 2

End-user features......................................................................................11

Administration features..............................................................................12

Key terms...................................................................................................12

Technical System Landscape...........................................................15Chapter 3

Architecture................................................................................................15

How SAP BusinessObjects Explorer works with SAP BusinessObjects

Enterprise..................................................................................................16

The Explorer servers.................................................................................17

Supported data providers..........................................................................17

Distributed deployment scenarios.............................................................18

Supported platforms for SAP BusinessObjects Explorer...........................19

Monitoring..........................................................................................21Chapter 4

Monitoring the Explorer servers.................................................................21

Tracing and logging the Explorer servers..................................................21

Configuring the Explorer server trace files................................................22

Overriding Explorer server logging methods.............................................22

Monitoring web parts.................................................................................23

3

Contents

Tracing and logging web parts...................................................................24

Web application logging.............................................................................24

Using JMX monitoring capability...............................................................25

System Management.........................................................................27Chapter 5

Starting and stopping Explorer..................................................................27

Software Configuration..............................................................................27

Web Application settings...........................................................................27

Explorer server settings.............................................................................30

Standardizing font usage across your deployment....................................41

Administration Tools...................................................................................44

BI platform administrative tools..................................................................44

Backup and Restore..................................................................................50

Backing up your Explorer System.............................................................50

Load Balancing..........................................................................................51

Loadbalancing...........................................................................................51

Deploying Multiple Search Servers for Improved Information Space

Exploration.................................................................................................52

Deploying Multiple Index Servers for Improved Indexing..........................53

Periodic Tasks............................................................................................55

Verifying Information Space indexes.........................................................55

User Administration and Authentication....................................................55

User Management.....................................................................................55

Authentication methods.............................................................................62

Single Sign On...........................................................................................65

Managing Information Spaces...................................................................76

Authorization required for Information Spaces..........................................76

Controlling access rights to the Information Space folders.......................78

Indexing best practices..............................................................................78

Testing your Information Space.................................................................79

Information Space design best practices...................................................79

Network and Communication Security............................................81Chapter 6

Network security........................................................................................81

4

Contents

Firewall port usage for SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.............................82

Reverse proxies.........................................................................................84

Configuring servers for SSL.......................................................................84

Creating key and certificate files................................................................85

To create key and certificate files for a machine........................................85

Configuring the SSL protocol.....................................................................88

To configure the SSL protocol in the CCM................................................88

To configure the SSL protocol for the web application server...................88

Data storage security........................................................................91Chapter 7

Data and metadata storage locations........................................................91

Data protection..........................................................................................91

Cookies......................................................................................................92

High Availability.................................................................................93Chapter 8

Ensuring system availability.......................................................................93

Configuring failover between CMS servers...............................................93

Configuring failover between Explorer Master servers..............................94

Troubleshooting.................................................................................95Chapter 9

Understanding error messages.................................................................95

More Information................................................................................97Appendix A

Index 101

5

Contents

6

Introduction

About this guide

This guide is for administrators who need to install SAP BusinessObjects
Explorer XI 3.2.

For information on how to use SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to explore
corporate business intelligence data, see the Help.

Information:

For an overview of the information resources dedicated to deployments of
SAP BusinessObjects Explorer with SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator, refer
to the Master Guide for SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, accelerated version
at: https://service.sap.com/bosap-explorer.

Introduction

Important SAP Notes

It is recommended that IT and BI administrators managing an SAP
BusinessObjects Explorer system read the following SAP notes:

7

Introduction

TitleTopicSAP Note

1388247

Monitoring SAP Busines­sObjects Explorer within
SAP Solution Manager

1366180

Performance and reliability
information

Related guides

The following SAP documentation provides information for SAP
BusinessObjects Explorer:

Note 1388247 - RCA: Managed
System Setup for SAP Business
Objects Explorer

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer
Performance & Reliability

8

Introduction

LocationDocumentationInformation

Overview of the fea­tures, architecture and
technical landscape
as well as links to re­quired documentation
and SAP notes.

Information about the
supported platforms
and third party soft­ware.

SAP BusinessObjects
Explorer Master
Guide

Product Availablity Ma­trix

• SAP BusinessOb-

jects Explorer XI 3.2
for Windows Support
Platforms

• SAP BusinessOb-

jects Explorer XI 3.2
for AIX Support Plat­forms

• SAP BusinessOb-

jects Explorer XI 3.2
for Linux SuSE Sup­port Platforms

SAP Help Portal:

http://help.sap.com

SAP Service Market­place: http://ser

vice.sap.com/pam

In the "Search" field,
type: Explorer XI 3.2

Installation proce­dures for each sup­ported operating sys­tem

Explorer administra­tion tasks, configura­tion, monitoring, trou­bleshooting. Network
and communication
security plus user
management, authen­tication, SSO.

SAP BusinessObjects
Explorer Installation
Guide

SAP BusinessObjects
Explorer Administra­tor's Guide

SAP Service Market­place: http://ser

vice.sap.com/bosap­instguides

SAP Help Portal:

http://help.sap.com

9

Introduction

LocationDocumentationInformation

Complete information
about the Business
Intelligence platform
administration to
which SAP Busines­sObjects Explorer is
an add-in component

End-user information
on creating, managing
and exploring data
using the Explorer ap­plication interface.

Quick overview of the
Explorer end-user
features and proce­dures to help new
users get started.

List of the new fea­tures introduced with
the latest release.

List of known issues
and workarounds.

SAP BusinessObjects
Enterprise Administra­tor's Guide

SAP BusinessObjects
Explorer Online Help

SAP BusinessObjects
Explorer at a Glance

What's New in SAP
BusinessObjects Ex­plorer

SAP BusinessObjects
Explorer Release
Notes

SAP Help Portal:

http://help.sap.com

Log into the applica­tion then click Help.

SAP Help Portal:

http://help.sap.com

SAP Help Portal:

http://help.sap.com

http://ser
vice.sap.com/re
leasenotes

10

Error messages ex­plained

SAP BusinessObjects
Explorer Error Mes­sage Guide

SAP Help Portal:

http://help.sap.com

Business Scenarios

End-user features

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer combines the simplicity and speed of search
with the trust and analytical power of business intelligence (BI) to provide
immediate answers to business questions. Users employ familiar keyword
searches to find information and explore directly on data.

Features include:

• Search across all data sources – Users simply enter a few search

keywords to find the most relevant information instantly from across all
of their data sources; including operational applications, data warehouses,
marts, RDBMS, OLAP servers, and unstructured sources recently
processed through SAP BusinessObjects Text Analysis.

• Preindexed data sources and metadata – Preindexing enables results

retrieval and exploration interactivity to occur at near instantaneous
speeds. Pre-existing reports or metrics are not required.

• Contextual exploration – values are logically presented by category (or

dimension). Selecting values to filter the available data according to end
user's focus area is highly intuitive. No data model or data knowledge is
required.

• Automated chart generation – SAP BusinessObjects Explorer presents

the automatically generates the chart that best represents the information.

• Sharable via e-mail and URL – end users can send their filtered versions

of data sets (or Information Spaces) as a URL-embedded e-mail or save
them as a bookmark.

• Integration with SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence – data sets

explored in SAP BusinessObjects Explorer can be exported to SAP
BusinessObjects Web Intelligence to analyze, format, publish, and share
with others.

• Use Excel spreadsheets as a data provider -- end users can create

Information Spaces on top of Excel spreadsheets and so explore and
visualize personal data files.

Business Scenarios

11

• Export data to CSV or Excel – export your filtered version of data to Excel

or to any third-party application that supports data imports from CSV.

Administration features

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer leverages the BI platform's universe metadata,
security, trust, and administration services.

Features include:

• Business intelligence (BI) platform security – BI platform security is applied

across all SAP BusinessObjects Explorer searches and exploration,
ensuring your users will have access to only the data they are permitted
to see. In addition, Explorer power users and administrators can control
the objects that end users are allowed to see according to their Explorer
logon ID.

• Support for a broad range of data source types – Accessible data sources

can include operational applications, data warehouses, RDBMS, OLAP,
and even unstructured sources processed via SAP BusinessObjects Text
Analysis.

Business Scenarios

Key terms

In order to understand how SAP BusinessObjects Explorer consumes your
corporate data and system resources you will need to familiarize yourself
with some key terms.

Information Spaces

An Information Space is a collection of objects mapped to data for a specific
business operation or activity. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer users type in
key words related to the business question they wish to analyze, in order to
retrieve the Information Space(s) that contain the relevant data. Power users,
with the Space Creator user profile, create the Information Spaces on top of
corporate data providers.

Indexing

In order to prepare Information Spaces for consumption by the Explorer
search and charting engines, Information Spaces need to be indexed when

12

Business Scenarios

they are created. Information Space indexes can be run manually or
scheduled to run at a time of your choice to manage the load on your system
with maximum efficiency. When the Indexing process is run, SAP
BusinessObjects Explorer generates an index associated to the objects
contained in the Information Space.

Note:

Indexing consumes relatively large resources. If your deployment requires
indexes to be run frequently, SAP recommends you deploy multiple Explorer
indexing servers on your SAP BusinessObjects Explorer cluster.

Facets

Facets organize the information available within an Information Space. A
facet contains the list of values available for each of the objects included in
the Information Space. For example, a facet called "Vehicle" could include
values such as "Car", "Bicycle", "Motorbike", "Truck", and so on. Facets can
be organized in groups at Information Space creation or configuration time.
This makes it easier for end users to view related values together and perform
drill type exploration from aggregated values to more detailed values in
related dimensions.

Personalization

Personalization enables you to make a single Information Space available
to all end users, but only make specific objects within that Information Space
available to each user. For example, Managers only see the cost center
objects for which they are responsible. To enable personalization,
administrators need to create a Technical Information Space that contains
the Explorer logins of each user mapped to the objects they are allowed to
view. The Information Space that contains the data needs to be configured
to map to the Technical Information Space.

13

Business Scenarios

14

Technical System Landscape

Architecture

The architecture of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is structured into the
following layers:

• clients

• web tier/gateway - includes the web server(s) and Web Application

Server(s)

• backend - includes the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer servers and the

SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise servers.

Technical System Landscape

15

Technical System Landscape

How SAP BusinessObjects Explorer works with SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is an add-on to SAP BusinessObjects
Enterprise XI. The servers, Information Spaces, and users are managed by

16

the BusinessObjects Enterprise Central Management Server (CMS) and
Central Management Console (CMC), with the exception of audit, which is
not available for the Explorer servers.

To see how the Explorer components fit into the Business Intelligence
platform, refer to the Architecture overview listed in Related Topics, below.

Related Topics

• Architecture

The Explorer servers

When you install SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, the following servers are
added to the BusinessObjects Enterprise Central Configuration Manager
(CCM) and Central Management Console (CMC):

• Explorer Master Server

Manages all of the Explorer servers (that is, the Explorer Indexing Server,
Explorer Search Server and Explorer Exploration Server).

Technical System Landscape

• Explorer Indexing Server

Provides and manages the indexing of Information Space data and
metadata.

• Explorer Search Server

Processes search queries and returns search results.

• Explorer Exploration Server

Provides and manages the Information Space exploration and analysis
capabilities including search on data, filtering and aggregation.

Each Explorer server manages its own index.

Supported data providers

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer XI 3.2 can consume data from the following
data providers:

17

Technical System Landscape

• BusinessObjects universes

• Excel spreadsheets

• OLAP universes built on SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW)

InfoCubes

Note:

If you purchase SAP BusinessObjects Explorer (blade) 2.0, the Explorer
application can also leverage SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator (BWA) indexes
enabled for Explorer, based on SAP NetWeaver BW InfoCubles and non-SAP
data sources. Non-SAP data sources are loaded into BWA using SAP
BusinessObjects Data Services.

Distributed deployment scenarios

Implementing a distributed deployment scenario is recommended in the case
of larger and critical production deployments.

Failover

If failover is a key requirement, you can deploy more than one Explorer
Master Server to manage the other Explorer servers. The Master Servers
work together to maintain the consistency of critical data.

18

Load balancing

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer supports the clustering of your web application
server. Hardware or software load balancers can be used as the entry-point
for the web application servers to ensure that the processing is evenly
distributed among servers.

Note:

The following persistence types are currently supported

• Source IP address persistence

Information:

For information about load balancing for SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise,
refer to the SAP Product Availability Matrix (PAM) at: http://ser

vice.sap.com/pam. From the PAM home page, enter "Explorer XI 3.2" into

the Search field on the PAM home page.

Related Topics

• Network security

• Deploying Multiple Index Servers for Improved Indexing

• Deploying Multiple Search Servers for Improved Information Space

Exploration

• Configuring the workload update setting for load balancing

Supported platforms for SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

For detailed information on supported operating systems and web application
servers, refer to the SAP Product Availability Matrix (PAM) at: http://ser

vice.sap.com/pam. From the PAM home page, enter "Explorer XI 3.2" into

the Search field on the PAM home page.

Technical System Landscape

19

Technical System Landscape

20

Monitoring

Monitoring the Explorer servers

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer can be used with SAP Solution Manager 7.0
EhP1 to perform Root Cause Analysis with some limitations. The following
steps need to be implemented to make this possible:

• Solution Manager 7.0 EhP1 is properly installed and configured

• Wily Enterprise Manager is propertly installed and configured

Note:

For full details, please see SAP Note 1388247 - RCA: Managed System
Setup for SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.

Monitoring

Tracing and logging the Explorer servers

You can trace the operations of the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer servers
by using the SAP standard tracing protocol .trc. Tracing is appended to an
ASCII file with the .trc extension. The file name is automatically generated
at creation time. For example: InstallDir\Logging\Server

Name.polestarSearch=PolestarSearch_XXXXXXXX_XXXXXX.trc

By default, ERROR tracing is activated.

Note:

The timestamp appears in an encoded format. The log files can be viewed
in a decoded format using the SAP Log Viewer after connecting the Explorer
Server host to the central Solution Manager system.

Related Topics

• Configuring the Explorer server trace files

• Web application logging

21

Configuring the Explorer server trace files

By default, server logging within SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is activated
and is configured to only log errors. To activate other trace levels for server
logging:

1. Open the BusinessObjects Enterprise CMC, navigate to the "Servers List"

and locate the server you want to apply logging to.
Ensure that the server has been stopped.

2. Right-click the server and click Properties.

The Properties dialog appears.

3. Locate the Command Line Parameters: textbox.

4. Type the following if it does not already exist:

-loggingPath "C:/Program Files/Business Objects/Busi

•

nessObjects Enterprise 12.0/Logging/" -trace true

Note:

The loggingPath value is the location to place the output log file and
the trace value activates logging. By default, if the trace value is
false, only errors are logged.

Monitoring

5. Click Save to save your changes.

6. Start the server.

Logs and traces are applied to a log file in the following directory:

• C:\Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects

Enterprise 12.0\Logging\

The name of the file is generated on creation and is based on the name of
the server and when the server was started. For example:

Server_XXXXXXXX_XXXXXX.trc

Overriding Explorer server logging methods

To override the existing logging method:

22

Monitoring

1. Create a file called polestar.log4j.properties and store it under

the following directory:

C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Polestar12.0\

2. Enter your desired Log4j logging content to the file. For example:

log4j.debug=true
log4j.rootLogger=WARN, A1

log4j.appender.A1=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.A1.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.A1.layout.ConversionPattern=%-4r [%t]
%-5p %c %x - %m%n

log4j.appender.A2=org.apache.log4j.net.SocketAppender
log4j.appender.A2.remoteHost=localhost
log4j.appender.A2.port=4567
log4j.appender.A2.locationInfo=false
log4j.appender.A2.reconnectionDelay=10000

To filter, enter the following line, and edit it appropriately:

log4j.logger.package/class=level

You can log packages and classes using the following levels: INFO,
WARN, ERROR, FATAL

For further information on Log4j logging, refer to: http://log
ging.apache.org/log4j/.

3. Restart the servers.

Customized logging for the servers is applied.

Monitoring web parts

Availability monitoring of Web Parts is possible using Wily Introscope.

Note:

For details on how to set this up, see SAP Note 1388247 - RCA: Managed
System Setup for SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.

23

Tracing and logging web parts

To configure the web parts tracing and logging, you need to edit the

saplog.properties file which can be found within the WEB­INF/classes directory in the web application. By default, it will log all errors

to the console of the server.

The saplog.properties file includes an example for how to enable logging
to a file.

Note:

• Details on the format for saplog.properties are provided in the SAP

NetWeaver CE 7.1 section of the SAP Library at:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwce10/helpda
ta/en/63/f79f3f12e1eb0ce10000000a114084/content.htm

• The timestamp appears in an encoded format. The log files can be viewed

in a decoded format using the SAP Log Viewer after connecting the
Explorer web parts host to the central Solution Manager system.

Monitoring

Web application logging

Note:

This example is for Apache Tomcat under Windows. For specific logging
information for other web application servers, refer to the web application
server documentation.

To activate and amend the log4j logging:

1. Open the log4j.properties file, located at:

C:\Program Files\Business
Objects\Tomcat55\webapps\polestar\WEB-INF\classes\

2. Edit the logging levels you want use (such as ERROR) for SAP

BusinessObjects Explorer within the file by following the guidelines located
at:

http://logging.apache.org/log4j/

3. Save your changes and close the file.

24

Logs and traces are applied to the following log file:

C:\Program Files\Business
Objects\Tomcat55\logs\stdout.log

Using JMX monitoring capability

You can leverage JMX to view monitoring information about your Explorer
system in a Java console, such as the console deliverd with JDK. To display
the monitoring information in a console you need to set some parameters
on each of the Explorer servers. You do this by editing the .ini file for each
server, as follows:

1. Open the ini files located in the following directory:

<installdir>\Polestar12.0\

2. Add the following parameters and values to each .ini file:

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=10000

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false

Monitoring

Note:

If you have more than one Explorer server installed on the same host
machine, the port number for each of these servers must be different.

3. Restart the Explorer servers and then launch the Java console and

connect to the Explorer host machine.

25

Monitoring

26

System Management

Starting and stopping Explorer

The Explorer servers (Explorer Master server, Explorer Exploration server,
Explorer Indexing server, and Explorer Search server) can be started,
stopped, or restarted within the BusinessObjects Enterprise CMC.

Information:

Refer to the BusinessObjects Enterprise Administrator's Guide XI 3.1 available
at: http://help.sap.com.

To start SAP BusinessObjects Explorer:

1. Start your Web Application server.

2. Start your CMS database.

3. Start your SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise system.

If the Explorer servers are set to start up automatically, they are enabled
at startup.

System Management

4. If you need to start Explorer servers manually, log into the SAP

BusinessObjects Enterprise CMC, select the Servers option, navigate
through the categories to Explorer, and then Start or Restart enable the
appropriate Explorer servers.

The Explorer servers are listed (the servers are named "polestar").

Software Configuration

Web Application settings

Note:

In previous releases, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer was called SAP
BusinessObjects Polestar. The previous name, polestar, is used in the Web
Application settings properties file.

27

You can modify application settings via a single properties file:

default.settings.properties

The file is stored under the web application server directory, for example:

• C:\Program Files\Business

Objects\Tomcat55\webapps\polestar\WEB-INF\classes\

Table 5-1: Explorer Web Application settings

For internal use only.product.name

The default locale to

default.locale

use. For example, En­glish.

System Management

Default ValuesExampleDescriptionSetting

en

default.cms.name

show.cms.name

disable.cms.name

default.authentica

tion.method

The name and port
number of your CMS.

Determines if the value
stored in de

fault.cms.name is

displayed in the CMS
Name field of the Log

On page.

Disables the CMS
name textbox within the
Log On page. You can­not change the textbox
value.

The default log on au­thentication to use. The
value is displayed in the
Authentication list of
the Log On page.

myserv

er:6400

true

false

true

false

secEnter

prise

28

System Management

Default ValuesExampleDescriptionSetting

authentications

hide.authentica

tion.method

disable.authentica

tion.method

use.effects

request.timeout

The values that popu­late the Authentication
list.

Determines if the Au-
thentication list is dis­played in the Log On
page.

Disables the Authenti-
cation list within the
Log On page. You can­not change the value.

Determines if graphical
effects are to be used.
For example, after
clicking Log On the Log
On box has a graphical
effect applied to it.

The period of time in
seconds before Explor­er times out after an
operation, such as log­ging into the system.

sec Enter

prise,

secWindows

NT, secLDAP

true

false

true

false

true

false

30

100

help.url

tutorial.url

The root location for the
Explorer documenta­tion.

The root location for the
Explorer tutorial.

/polestar_help_

/polestar_tu

torial

29

System Management

Default ValuesExampleDescriptionSetting

disable.pass

word.encryption

opendoc.url

Note:

There are also several settings used for SAP authentication.

Related Topics

• Configuring SAP BusinessObjects Explorer for SAP authentication

Determines if password
encryption is to be
used.

The OpenDocument
URL of your Busines­sObjects Enterprise de­ployment. It is used
when a user exports In­formation Space data
to a Web Intelligence
query. Setting the value
opens the query via
OpenDocument. If you
do not set the value,
the query is not
launched.

true

false

http://serv

er:port/Open

Docu

ment/open

doc/openDocu

ment.jsp

Explorer server settings

You can configure the following settings:

• The number of Corba threads to improve server communication.

• The unit to use for validating bookmarks, possible values include: DAYS,

MINUTES, HOURS, or WEEKS.

• The period of time (based on the unit) that a bookmark is stored. For

example 365.

30