SAP BusinessObjects Connector: Overview

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

The SAP BusinessObjects (SAP BO) OCF connector was developed by Alation and is available as a Zip file that can be uploaded and installed in Manage Connectors.

To download the SAP BO OCF connector package, go to the Alation Connector Hub available from the Customer Portal. Go to Customer Portal > Connectors > Alation Connector Hub. Only Alation users with access to the Customer Portal can access the Alation Connector Hub. If you don’t have access to the Customer Portal, contact Alation Support.

This connector should be used to catalog BO as a Business Intelligence source in Alation. The connector catalogs SAP BO objects such as public folders, Webi documents, reports, report fields, report filters, data providers and data provider fields. It enables end users to search and find BO objects from the Alation user interface.

Team

The following administrators are required to install this connector:

  • Alation Administrator:

    • Installs the connector

    • Creates and configures a Business Intelligence source in the Catalog

  • BusinessObjects Administrator:

    • Creates a Service Account with the Enterprise authentication type

    • Provides the API URL to access metadata

    • Provides access to public folders to extract metadata.

Scope

The table below shows what features are covered by the connector.

Feature

Scope

Availability

BO Instance

Catalog SAP BO instance in an Azure Cloud Environment

Yes

Folders

Catalog public folders from BO

Yes

Filter Folders

Ability to include or exclude certain Folders

Yes

Documents

Catalog Webi Documents in a Folder

Yes*

Report Tabs

Catalog report tabs of a Document

Yes

Report fields, variables, calculations

Catalog dimensions, measures and measure expressions of report objects

Yes

Report Filters

Catalogs measures and dimensions

Yes

Report object lineage

Catalog the lineage of a report object

Yes**

Filter Reports

Ability to include or exclude certain reports

No

Report Owner

Owners or Authors who created a report

Yes

Data Providers

Catalog Data Providers of documents. If data provider is created from Universe, Universe name is appended in the data provider name

Yes

Universes

Universes are cataloged as separate objects

No

Image Preview

Ability to show a thumbnail image of reports and dashboards

No

Popularity

Popularity of Dashboards & Reports

No

Security Replication

Replicate access control to reports and dashboards

No

* - Catalogs only Webi type of Documents

** - Report object lineage is available only if the underlying data source is cataloged in Alation and fully qualified SQL is available from data providers details. The Universe name and host details should be provided in Settings. Lineage does not work for Snowflake data sources.

BusinessObjects Object Hierarchy

The following diagram shows the hierarchy of BOBJ objects and how they are cataloged in Alation:

../../../_images/SAPBOBJ_01.png

BusinessObjects APIs

The table below lists the BusinessObjects APIs used by this connector to extract metadata from the SAP BO server.

API Endpoint

Description

Authentication

<api-url>/logon/long

Gets the access token for authentication

Users

<api-url>/v1/users

Gets users

Folders

<api-url>/v1/folders

Gets Public folders

Documents

<api-url>/v1/infostore/<folderId>/children?type=webi&pagesize=500

Gets documents inside a folder

Document Details

<api-url>/v1/infostore/,folderId>/children?type=webi&pagesize=500

Gets documents inside a folder

Reports

<api-url>/raylight/v1/documents/<document id>/reports

Gets reports from a document

Report Specifications

<api-url>/raylight/v1/documents/{id}/reports/{id}/specification

Gets report specifications

Universes

<api-url>/raylight/v1/universes

Gets universes

Data Providers

<api-url>/raylight/v1/documents/<document id>/dataproviders

Gets data providers

for a document

Data Provider Details

<api-url>/raylight/v1/documents/{documentId}/dataproviders/{dataProviderId}

Gets details of data providers

Query Plan of Data Provider

<api-url>/raylight/v1/documents/{documentId}/dataproviders/{dataProviderId}/ queryplan

Fetches query plan of a data provider

Report Elements

<api-url>/raylight/v1/documents/<document id>/reports/<report id>/elements

Gets report elements for reports and documents

Report Element Details

<api-url>/raylight/v1/documents/{documentId}/reports/{reportId}/elements/ {elementId}

Gets report element details

Report Filters

<api-url>/raylight/v1/documents/<document id>/reports/<report id>/datafilter

Gets filters for reports

Document variables

<api-url>raylight/v1/documents/<document id>/variables

Gets variables for documents

Document Variable Details

<api-url>s/raylight/v1/documents/{documentId}/variables/{variableId}

Gets variable details

Logoff

<api-url>/logoff

Invalidates the token

Note

Starting SAP BO OCF Connector version 1.2.1, the connector will use the query plan API to fetch the query information of data providers.