WebI rich Client Web Service - Prompts value not working

[Former Member]

Hi all,

I'm testing Xcelsius with a "WebI Rich Client Table" Web Service.

My WebI Rich Client report has prompts values

I've set-up all those prompt in my Xcelsius but the web service response is still the same, my prompts are not applied.

I think the return values are always the first i run, when i build the report.

I use Fiddler to see informations sent to the web service -->

In the web request : all is ok, my prompts values are good.

In the web response : no data change

Do you have an idea ?

Thx

JC

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi JC,

WebI web service had an issue with prompts, which was fixed with FP3, ensure you have applied the most recent patch level, as this issue is typical of the XI 3.1 SP2 limitation.

Ensure also that input parameter refresh is correctly set to true so document is actually refresh upon web service invocation.

Hope that helps,

David.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thx David

Concerning the refresh option, it is set to true.

Concenring the fFP3, unfortunately i' can't upgrade the server myself.

I must ask the production department to execute this FP.

May be i can directly ask them to install the FP2.5

i'm not aware of server side, is this fix pack is the good one : ENTERPRISE02_5-10007443.EXE

we have a BO Enterprise Premium Contract .

Best regards.

JC

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

FP5 (or SP2.5) includes FP3 with prompt fix, so you can directly get to the latest update.

David.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thx for your answer,

but now i have another bug :

When i don't have prompts, all is ok.

When i put a prompt (the year for example), i get this error : "string index out of range : -1"

This error occured when i'm on WebI Rich Client, when i try tot test my WS

So thi error occured too when iI consume this WS via Xcelsius.

JCMilhot

[liliana_gil · Accepted solution]

Hi David, I´m with BOE XI 3.1 SP3, and I have publish a webi with BI Services. I can call it with a QaaWS connection in Xcelsius 2008 SP3, but I can´t refresh the prompts values. In Rich Client, I make the prompt available, and I can see it in Xcelsius. I set valueofPrompt=, index=0,refresh=true and getFromLatestDocumentInstance=false, but the QaaWS always retrieve the same data (the data of the lastest instance), it is ignoring the prompt value. My connection is set to refresh on load and when the value of the triger cell changes.

Do you know any solution for that?

Thanks in advance.

Liliana

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Liliana,

1. You should leave parameter index blank

2. Try to replace all the boolean parameter values with 1 for true and 0 for false, as we have noticed that these values are sometimes wrongly parsed between Xcelsius and servlet (without being actually able to identify where it fails).

Besides, if you really need prompts instead of report filters, I'd suggest you use a simple QaaWS query (since document refresh looses all the scalability & performance brought by BI Services)

Hope that helps,

David.

[liliana_gil · Accepted solution]

Thank you David, that works. The point is that when you test in rich client, you have to use true and false, but in xcelsius, as you said, is 1 and 0.

Now, i have another problem. I have a webi with a universe from bw Query. In this Query, I have variables, so, the prompts needed are included in the webi query. But when I publish this webi as BI Service, I can´t see these prompts. Is there any problem with prompts that come from the bw universe?

Thanks again.

Liliana

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Liliana,

We unfortunately have a design restriction which prevents BI Services from correctly supporting universe defined prompts : they cannot be exposed in the Web Service WSDL API for the user to change values, so they always will be defaulted to the previous document values.

This will be release noted.

Hope that helps,

David.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I have a simple Fiscal Year Prompt and I am getting the following error:

Cannot Access External Data

String index out of range: -1

Can someone please help?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello,

From the other posts in the thread, I guess you've checked that fiscal year prompt is not a universe prompt, but a query filter.

You then need to ensure that you are actually providing the value when needed, ie when the document is refreshed, so you should ensure that BI Service input parameter refresh is set to true (default value being false) to request document to be refreshed upon web service invocation.

Once you've ensured this, you need to identify where issue is generated, it can either come from prompt value formatting as it is submitted in Xcelsius, when transfered to WebI server or when value is parsed by BOBJ semantic layer.

This step can be quite tricky, so I suggest you use an http sniffing tool like Fiddler (www.fiddler2.com) so you can check how prompt value is passed from Xcelsius to the BI Service...you will therefore be able to know whether your Xcelsius modelling has to be fixed or WebI query to be modified.

Anyway, scalability and performance best practises recommend that you use report filter instead of query filters if your users need to filter dashboard content (and refreshing document is not so critical in the dashboard workflow).

Hope that helps,

David.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Not sure this is an active thread, let me know and I will post a new one...but it is the same issue.

This is for WebI Rich Client with BOXI 3.1 SP3 FP 3.2

-Trying to use a BI Service against a WebI report block that includes a query prompt

-Would like to use this web service in Xcelsius 2008 SP3 FP 3.5

-Unable to get Rich Client to successfully test the Web Service. The data comes back but does not recognize the prompt. I can put in jibberish and it returns a full result set.

-In Rich Client I have my settings as...

valueofPrompt <TEXTOFVALUE>

index <nothing entered here>

resetState FALSE

refresh TRUE

get fromLatestDocumentInstance FALSE

getfromUserInstance FALSE

yurnOutputToVTable FALSE

No matter what I put in 'valueofPrompt' I get a successful refresh with full results. BTW, if I remove all TRUE/FALSE settings...the query correctly brings back an empty result set (as I saved report with no data). So something appears to be working.

When I import the WSDL into Xcelsius...I map the cells accordingly and have valueofPrompt mapped to a single cell with a "hardcoded" value...just to see if it would work. I map all the TRUE/FALSE to cells containin 1 or 0 respectively.

Xcelsius returns empty data. Does not even give me a full result set.

Fiddler shows that the prompt value is correctly being passed.

So, any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Kevin,

I'm interested to see if you discovered the issue. I've been struggling with the same problem you described and our server is at the same patch level. My multi value prompts do not appear to parse correctly with the webi BI services.

However, I believe I will follow David's advice and do the filtering in the report rather than in the query.

Thanks,

Allison

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Kevin,

Firstly, I've found the test function in the rich client a little unreliable, so always skip straight to testing in Xcelsius.

What is the prompt you are trying to filter on? What is the format? Date, number, string? And I assume this is a prompt you have created in Webi, not the universe.

Are you using the EQUAL operator or something else? Are you using drill or get report block?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi David,

Could you please let me know if this issue is fixed in any fixpack or service pack.

Customer is not ready to follow the workaround provided and asking for a fix.

Regards,

Aswini

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Aswini,

Universe prompts will be supported by WebI BI Services in version 4.0

Hope that helps,

David.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thank you David.

[Former Member]

HI

I think the next FP should be out by the end of may

[Former Member]

Hi

after investigating a bit more on the following issues i think i know what the problem is and if so i hope everyone can benefit

form it

after cheking the report that the web service is built on comparing it to the xcelsius

i saw that only the ws built on the first query in the webi report was working

when i created a new report with the same ws but not as part of a muli query report it worked

another problem i had is a prompt value that did not work and i think i know why:

i have a person id that defined as integer in the db and also in the universe and indeed in the webi report i see

it as a number but comming to xcelsius through web service i get the same number devided by a very large number

for example: webi number=4824942 xcelsius number= 4.824942e6 which means that somthing happened to the numer

while creating the ws and that is why the prompt value did not work because it expects to get the devided number

is that a known problem ?

any solution for it ?

[Former Member]

Hi all,

i've made another test.

A prompt for a number value --> error

A prompt for an string value --> OK

A new fp ?

JC

[Former Member]

I run a sniffer to determine if the problem comes from the networking area and I see that both web services the one that return data

And the one that apparently does not return data both rich the BO server and back successfully

both actions create tcp connection exactlly the same way