Listout Webi Reports using a specific Universe Object

[Former Member]

Hello,

I am new to SAP BO and need your help in achiving below requirement:

Our requirement is to pull list of all Web Intelligence reports using a specific universe object in BI 4.1. Based on my research I got to know that this was possible using JAVA Enterprise SDKs in BO XI 3.1; however same is not supported BI 4.0 SP3 onward; and possible using RESTFul Web Services SDKs only.

I have followed few links where in same question were asked; however no one has documented RESTFul SDK code to achive this requirement for SAP BI 4.1 on Windows Platform.

Please suggest.

Regards,

Anamika

[daniel_paulsen]

Hi Anamika,

In BI 4.1 REST SDKs it is possible to get all of the Universes used in a Webi Document, but it is not possible to get a list of all of the reports using a universe.  This is still possible with the BI Platform Java and .NET sdks though.  You can create a query returning the properties of a universe and get a list of document IDs that reference that universe.

In BI 4.2, the Platform RESTful SDK has the ability to pass a query to the CMS database ( ../biprws/infostore/cmsQuery) so this can be used to achieve the same result.  Again this is only available in BI4.2.

I hope this helps,

Dan

[Former Member]

Thanks Daniel for addressing my issue.

I would like to re-frame my requirement again. we need to find a particular universe object is used in how many reports in BI 4.1. Because of some issues at database side, it has been decided to scrap a problematic universe object. If we change or delete that object definition in a universe it becomes necessary to know how many reports would get affected in BO by this change.

Is there any JAVA code/script/Excel Macro available to achieve this requirement? I am new to SDK and never used before. If Restful SDKs is the only solution then could you please provid more detail steps with code to achieve this?

Many thanks!

Regards,

Anamica

[Former Member]

This is possible. As you are new to SDKs, the best place to start is with the developers guide available at help.sap.com

Navigate to Analytics--> SAP BuisnessObjects Business Intellligence--> SAP BuisnessObjects Business Intelligence Platform--> Select the BO version you are using and go to Development Information section.

Refer to the 'SAP BusinessObjects RESTful Web Service SDK User Guide for Web Intelligence and the BI Semantic Layer' guides.

Logically for getting the objects used in a webi document, you would need to use the rest call to get the details of data providers as below

http://serverhost:6405/biprws/raylight/v1/documents/<doc ID>/dataproviders/<dataprovider id>

So first you would need to get the list of reports using the universe which contains that universe object and then you would need to use the above rest call to check whether that object is being used in any of the reports.

As mentioned its best to start with the developer guide to understand the SDKs better.

You can also refer to the blogs and documents available in this forum space to get more information about the Restful webservices

Thanks,

Prithvi

[daniel_paulsen]

Hi Anamika,

If this is a one-time thing where you know which universe you want to delete, there is a QueryBuilder tool that ships with BOE that you can use to get a list of report IDs using a universe.  If its something you will need to do more often, then an application would help.

If installed, the tool that ships with BOE (QueryBuilder) can be found at:

        http://<boeServerName>:8080/AdminTools

You can log on and run a query similar to: 

        Select * from CI_APPOBJECTS where SI_ID=<yourUniverseId>

The query will return the properties for the uinverse and one of the properties, SI_WEBI, will contain a list of webi document IDs which use the universe.

If you need to build an application to do this, the cmsQuery API in the BI Platform RESTful SDK will work in BI4.2.  If you don't have BI4.2, then you would need to write an application that executes this query using either the Java or .NET SDK.  All of our samples on SCN ( http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-51445 ) will show how to log on an execute a query.

Once you have the list of Webi Documents using the universe, you can follow Prithviraj's suggestion to loop through the elements of each report in each document using the REST SDK to see if the Universe object is used.

Dan