Universe on a Lotus Notes/Domino Database

[Former Member]

I'm looking for information on whether it is possible to build a Universe on a Lotus Notes/Domino database. If you have any knowledge/experience on how you accomplished this, please respond.

Thanks,

DD

[PPaolo · Accepted solution]

Hello,

you can create a Universe based on Lotus Notes via the Generic ODBC connectivity.

You have to install the NotesSQL library on your system first.

In the ODBC manager you will see a Lotus Notes ODBC driver (it should be a free library on the IBM/Lotus sites). With it you can expose a Notes database as an ODBC connection.

From Universe Designer you create a new connectivity using Generic ODBC and you connect to the database you exposed with the NotesSQL driver.

You will be able to access both forms and views as if they were database tables, you can create joins between them as if they were from a plain relational database.

Please notice that we don't support specifically the Lotus Notes connectivity, if there are issues between the NotesSQL driver and our Generic ODBC interface (e.g. due to a non-standard use of Lotus of ODBC) then our Customer Support service might not be able to solve the problem.

Hope that it helps

PPaolo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thank you. I was able to connect to my Notes database. However, after adding a table/view to the Universe, when I click on it, it briefly flashes the "fetching columns" message but then disappears and I am unable to build any objects. If I right click on the table, and choose "View Table Values", I can see the values. The same ODBC connection works fine when I use Crystal Reports, I can view all tables and fields. Any ideas?

Thanks,

DD

[PPaolo · Accepted solution]

Hello,

what is your version of BusinessObjects ? Checking on the knowledge base (http://service.sap.com/notes) I have seen that there were some issues in the past (e.g. note 1199457 fixed in BOBJ XIr2 SP2).

Regards

PPaolo

[debra_deisher3 · Accepted solution]

We are at XIR2SP2. Any advice you have on how to troubleshoot this further would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Debra

[PPaolo · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I installed the trial verison of Notes8 and NotesSQL but there seems to be some issues with the sw available on the IBM site and I NotesSQL could not connect to the nsf files, so I couldn't test it with BOBJ.

One thing I notice is that in a document, NotesSQL is said to be ODBC 2.0 compatible, we are ODBC 3.0 compatible, there might be a glitch there.

At this point the only suggestion I can give is to open a case with our Support and see if they can reproduce the issue and suggest a workaround.

Given the fact that we don't have a specific support for Notes but only for ODBC, if there is a specific Connection Server-Notes SQL bug which does not appear in a Connection Server-Generic ODBC connection, then engineering might not be fixing the issue.

[former_member192334 · Accepted solution]

I have a doubt regarding this.

In our case, our SAP Business Objects is installe on a IBM -AIX server. And we need connect to a Lotus Notes Database of another server (Windows server)

There is not ODBC driver for AIX. How can we reach this connection?

Thanks and regards

Javier

[Former Member]

Debra - Did you ever get this resolved. I am about to start building a Universe from a LotusNotes db and am researching issues to prepare myself for.