SAP Business Intelligence Admin: Basics Q&A

Admin is a person who is responsible to manage the entire server level tasks in Business Object/Intelligence. In this blog i would be sharing few of the question and answers at a beginner/entry level.

I expect that these question and answers on admin would help you during the interview. These are the set of basic questions that a interviewer can ask you in SAP BO/BI admin.

I would like you to know what are all the responsibilities that the admin must have in Business Object domain. I have classified the responsibilities as per "TIME HIERARCHY FORMAT" i.e. day to day, weekly, monthly, occasionally and rarely.  These are as follows - 

1. Daily duties:

• All BO users logins and Security checks (Who is accessing what) verification
• Monitoring BO server including Test (WMNTBO and WMNT BO1 ) running with optimal performance
• Monitoring all DB services
• Testing the availability of all Universe connections to respective Databases
• Verifying site properties/user activities/ BO module activities from Web intelligence Console
• Monitoring day to day scheduled jobs on Broadcast Agent (BCA)
• Attending regular ITs Calls for Business Objects
• Troubleshooting if any issues with Reports (Technical support to Users)

2. Weekly:

• Regular BO repository Maintenance like Cleaning Orphaned Connection/Universe/Documents
• Scan / Repair and Compact to all repository errors and Domain testing

3. Fortnightly

• Running Integrity Checks on all Universe (including Test once) to ensure through parsing (Syntax/Sematic Checking)
• Discuss performance issues with DBA

4. Monthly:

• Monitoring BO Licenses and Transfer issues

5. Occasionally:

• New Universes development / modification
• Data mapping to new tables in the universes (if and when required)
• BO resource allocation like linking universe / Documents to Users and User Groups (if and when required)

6. Rarely:

• Installation and upgrading BO server with new version of software (Business Objects)
• Meeting with BO users to discuss supporting issues
• End User training

 Question and Answers - 

1. What is node?

A node is a group of SAP Business Objects Business Intelligence platform servers that run on the same host and are managed by the same Server Intelligence Agent (SIA). All servers on a node run under the same user account.
One machine can contain many nodes, so you can run processes under different user accounts. One SIA manages and monitors all of the servers on a node, ensuring they operate properly
2. What are the components of SAP BO administration?
CMC – central management console
CCM – central configuration management
CMS – central management server [port number – 6400]
WAS – web application server [port number – 8080]
SIA – server intelligence agent [port number – 6410]
3. What is the default URL for SAP BO CMC & INFOVIEW?
In BO 3.1 PATH IS –
CMC Path: - http://hostname/cmcApp/login.jsp
Info view: - http://hostname/InfoViewApp/login.jsp
In BI 4.0 path is –
CMC Path: - http://servername/BOE/CMC/
Launch Pad: - http://servername/BOE/BI
4. What is the location of data folder in SAP BO?
C:/Program File/Business Objects/Business Objects Enterprise 12.0/
Data folder contain temp data
Logging folder contain log files
5. What are the components available in SAP BO 4.0 CMC?
User Attribute Management, Visual Difference, Auditing Monitoring Cryptography Key Promotion Management Version Management
6. What is Visual Difference?
Visual Difference enables you to view the differences between two versions of a supported file type (LCM BIAR) or a supported object type (LCM Job) or both. You can use this feature to determine the difference between files or objects to develop and maintain different report types. This feature gives a comparison status between the source and the destination versions.
For example, if a previous version of the user Report is accurate and the current version is inaccurate, you can compare and analyze the file to evaluate the exact issue.
7. Following are the three types of visual difference from which you can detect the file or an object:

• Removed – In a report, if an element is missing in one of the file versions, the type of difference is shown as Removed. For example, the element could be a row, section instance, or even a block.
• Modified – In a report, if there is a different value between the source version and the destination version, the type of difference is shown as Modified. For example, the value could be the cell content or the result of a local variable.
• Inserted – In a report, if there is an element in the destination version but is not present in the source version, the type of difference is shown as Inserted.

8. What is auditing in BO 4.0 version? 
Auditing allows you to keep a record of significant events on servers and applications, which helps give you a picture of what information is being accessed, how it’s being accessed and changed, and who is performing these operations. This information is recorded in a database called the Auditing Data Store (ADS). Once the data is in the ADS, you can design custom reports to suit your needs. You can look for sample universes and reports on the SAP Developer Network.
For the purposes of this chapter, an auditor is a system responsible for recording or storing information on an event, and an auditee is any system responsible for performing an auditable event. There are some circumstances where a single system can perform both functions.
9. What is Monitoring in BO 4.0?
Monitoring allows you to capture the runtime and historical metrics of SAP Business Objects Business Intelligence platform servers, for reporting and notification. The monitoring application helps system administrators to identify if an application is functioning normally and if the response times are as expected.
Monitoring allows you to:

1. Check the performance of each server
2. Check system availability and response time
3. View the entire BI platform deployment based on Sever Groups, Service Categories and Enterprise nodes in graphical and tabular format.
4. Check health of server

10. Which services must be in running mode at the time of up gradation of SP AND FP in business intelligence?
CMC, INPUT FILE REPOSITORY, OUTPUT FILE REPOSITORY.
11. What is the default session time out of SAP BO web tier?
20 minutes.-
12.  What are tables available In CMS database in BO?
There are 6 tables on the database level to store the metadata.

• CMS_VersionInfo
  The table contains the current version of BOE.
• CMS_InfoObjects6
  This is the main table in the repository. Each row in this table stores a single InfoObject. The table contains the following columns: ObjectID, ParentID, TypeID, OwnerID, Version, LastModifyTime, ScheduleStatus, NextRunTime, CRC, Properties, SI_GUID, SI_CUID, SIRUID, SI_INSTANCE_OBJECT, SI_PLUGIN_OBJECT, SI_TABLE, SI_HIDDEN_OBJECT, SI_NAMEDUSER, SI_RECURRING, SI_RUNNABLE_OBJECT, SI_PSS_SERVICE_ID, ObjName_TR, SI_KEYWORD, SI_KEYWORD_TR, LOV_KEY.
• CMS_Aliases6
  This table maps the user alias(es) to the corresponding user ID. A user has an alias for each security domain in which they are members. For example, a user may have both a Win NT alias and an LDAP alias. Regardless of the number of aliases a user may have, in the BI Platform each user has only one user ID. The map is stored in a separate table to enable fast logins.
• CMS_IdNumbers6
  The CMS uses this table to generate unique Object IDs and Type IDs. It has only two rows: an Object ID row and a Type ID row. The CMSs in a cluster use this table when generating unique ID numbers.
  GUIDs, RUIDs and CUID are generated with an algorithm that does not use the database.
• CMS_Relationships6
  Relationship tables are used to store the relations between InfoObjects. Each row in the table stores one edge in the relation. For example, the relation between a Web Intelligence document and a Universe would be stored in a row in the WebI – Universe Relation table. Each relationship table has these columns:
  Parent Object ID,Child Object ID,Relationship InfoObject ID ( this Default InfoObject “DFO” describes the properties of the link between the two objects.), member, version, ordinal, data. Relationship tables are defined by default objects.
• CMS_LOCKS6
  This is a auxiliary table of CMS_RELATIONS6

13. How to enable tracing without restarting servers?
By modifying BO_trace.ini file.
14. What Admin activities have you done?
Till date in administration I have done the following work which are as follows –
creation of users and groups
granting rights and user administration
password recovery
scheduling, promotion management
up-gradation
playing with the servers [configuration]
creation of log files
15. Explain more about Server, capacity. Load etc.
Servers – it is a computer program or device that provides functionality for other programs or devices called as clients.
Ex- CMS (Central Management Server), APS (adaptive processing server), and ADJS (adaptive job processing server) etc.…
Capacity – capacity refers to the load the server can take. While generating the log files for checking any sort of error then we raise the capacity of the server as high to get all the details of the server.
Load – I could define load as the thing that is on server level. For example how much work is been done by APS in your system. So the number of work could be counted as load on APS.
16. How comfortable are you in UNIX/Solaris.Do you know Unix commands ?
I am not much comfortable with UNIX/ SOLARIS. I know few Unix commands but never used much of it. Few commands are as follows –
Is – list the files in current directory.
Cd – change directory to tempdir
Rmdir – remove directory
More – look at a file, one page at a time
grep <str><files> - Find which files contain a certain word
 chmod <opt> <file> - Change file permissions read only or Change file permissions to executable
17. Have you created User groups?
Creating a user group is a very common task in administration.
For this log on to CMC.
Then under organize section i.e. the first column under which there will be list of options and the 5^th option will be users and group.
Click on it and all the users and groups you can view present there.
Now on the LHS top corner there will be an option for creating user and group.
Click on it and give the credentials that it ask such as name and the password and click ok
After this your user and groups both can be created.
Under a group you can keep as many as users you like to keep.
18. Have you created Custom access levels?
Yes I do have created custom access level in CMC. The steps are as follows
Open the CMC homepage and select access level in that.
A new window will get opened in which name of the access levels and the description will be given below.
Ex – view, view on demand, schedule etc..
Now go to top in the LHS and under manage there will be option to create new access level.
Once clicked it will re direct to new page of new access level in which you can give a name as owner view or something like that.
Once done with that now you can see 2 panes one one in LHS and other the RHS. In the LHS you can see properties, user security, included rights.
Click on included rights and on RHS pane now you could able to see view and schedule rights with the status marked as denied or granted or undefined.
You can modify them and save it as a new access level right.
19.What happens if Job Adaptive Server is down ?
If it is shut down then following things can’t able to get done which are as follows -
Business Process BI Service
Client Auditing Proxy Service (collects auditing information from connected
Rich Desktop and Web Intelligence Clients).
Publishing Post Processing Service (responsible for any post processing
of a publication job, including PDF merging and publication extension
processing).
Publishing Service (coordinates the publication of an object by
communicating with other services).
Search Service (processes search requests and executes the indexing
20. If User mistakenly deleted any of public or Personal folder/reports what’s your steps to recover?
In my working career as an administrator it happened few times that the user by mistake delete the public or personal folder then the steps that I carry out are as follows-
First of all I check that is there any back up of database along with the backup of file store. If then I suggest the following steps such as-
- Dump de CMS DB setup into a seperate shema
- copy the backup of the filestore to the file system of the server
- point the sia to the backup of the CMS DB backup shema
- point input and output frs to the backup directory of the frs backup
- via import wizard import the folder to a .biar file
- point the sia and frs back to its original location
- import the biar
Or I could suggest that in simple –
Go to application – recycle bin – properties – enable it by clicking on to and set the days like 180.
Then you can get the list of things those are deleted and are at recycle bin
Click on the desired ones and restore it back.
21. If user gets ‘Timed Out’ Error what will you do?
Changing the default session timeout value for the Java CMC
The default session timeout value is 20 minutes in the CMC. Use this
procedure if you want to modify the default session timeout value.
&#56256;&#56408; To change the sesion timeout value
1. Verify that the Java SDK is installed and its location is in your PATH environement variable.
If you are able to execucute the jar command, and receive usage information on the command, proceed to the next step. If you receive a error message, install the JAVA SDK and add is location to your PATH.
2. Stop the Web application server on the machine where webcompadapter.war is deployed.
3. Extract the web.xml file from the directory where webcompadapter.war is deployed.
jar -xvf webcompadapter.war WEB-INF/web.xml
4. Open web.xml in a text editor like Notepad and search for the following section:
<session-config> 
<session-timeout>20</session-timeout>
</session-config>
5. Change the value between <session-timeout> to the number of minutes
you require for the session to timeout.
6. Save web.xml.
7. Update the webcompadapter.war with the modified web.xml file. Use the
following command:
jar -uvf webcompadapter.war WEB-INF/web.xml
8. Restart you web application server and reploy webcompadapter.war.
22. What will you do if critical errors occurs?
If so happens then I discuss with my team and sometime I consult SAP support portal for this.
Have you migrated CMS from one database to another database ?
23. What is PID?
It referes to process id in cmc in SAP BI. SIA recognizes by operating system and has a process id which could be view if we go to task manager.
24. How will you resolve SMTP error ?
I could suggest to fix SMTP error by one of the following methods.
. By disable the antivirus.
. Changing the smtp port.
. repair and create new profile.
25. What is the procedure to move reports from DEV/QA/Prod
With the help of life cycle manager
26. What are Input file repository server and output file repository server?
The Input File Repository Server manages all of the report objects and program objects that have been published to the repository. It can store .RPT, .CAR, .EXE, .BAT, .JS, .XLS, .DOC, .PPT, .RTF, .TXT, .PDF, .WID files. In the case of .RPT files, they are stored as report definition files only which do not contain any data.The Report Properties page of the CMC shows you the location of the Input report files. The RPT report template can be found at frs://Input/a_084/004/000/1108/ca067d4f1710cbc.rpt
The Output File Repository Server manages all of the report instances (saved data copy of the report)generated by the Report Job Server or the Web Intelligence Report Server, and the program instances generated by the Program Job Server. It also manages instances generated by the Web Intelligence Report Server and the LOV Job Server. It can store the following files: .RPT, .CSV, .XLS, .DOC, .RTF, .TXT, .PDF, .WID. For .RPT and .WID files are stored as reports/documents with saved data.
Since Output FRS stores the report instances, deleting instances would remove instances not the actual reports. However the report structure will be stored in the Input FRS.
Using Query Builder we can find the location of the Output File repository files. The following query may be handy if you already know the report name.
SELECT SI_NAME, SI_KIND, SI_FILES, SI_INSTANCE from CI_INFOOBJECTS
Where SI_NAME =’xxxx’
If the SI_INSTANCE value is false then the InfoObject is the actual report and SI_PATH will be in Input FRS. If SI_INSTANCE is true then the InfoObject would be an Instance and the SI_PATH will be in Output FRS.
Limitations for File Repository Servers

• The Input and Output File Repository Servers cannot share the same directories. This is because one of the File Repository Servers could then delete files and directories belonging to the other.
• In larger deployments, there may be multiple Input and Output File Repository Servers, for redundancy. In this case, all Input File Repository Servers must share the same directory. Likewise, all Output File Repository Servers must share a directory.

27. What are the steps if user not able to login?
If a user is unable to log in then he have to reset the password. That’s what I found till date the log in issue with the users. Sometime it do happened that server is been crashed or shutdown then in that case user can’t able to log in.
As a administrator it also happened that I have reset the password then I followed the following steps which are as follows

1. Open the Crystal Configuration Manager (CCM).
2. Stop the Central Management Server (CMS).
3. Open the CMS database administrator application (for example: SQL server enterprise manager if you are using MS SQL2000).
4. Run the following SQL statement on the CMS database:

SELECT *
FROM CMS_InfoObjects5
WHERE (ObjectID = 12)

5. Delete the record that is returned.
6. Restart the CMS server from the CCM. This will recreate the administrator account with a blank password.
7. Log on to the Central Management Console (CMC) using Administrator as a user name and a blank password.
8. Now you can set the password for the Administrator account by navigating to Home -> Users -> Administrator. Once you type the password you can also check the option "Password never expires" and then click "Update"

28. What you will if schedule reports are failed?
Then in this case one have to re schedule it. Or follow the following steps.

1. In the Central Management Console (CMC), go toEvents
2. InSystem Events or a sub folder of System Events, create a new Event
3. SelectSchedule as the Type, and give it the appropriate name and description. Set the Result as Success because we only want the event to trigger when the trigger report is successful. You can either leave the Alerting Enabled checked or unchecked, depending if you want to be notified each time the trigger report was executed successfully.
4. And finally it will get done.

29. What is difference between Adaptive processing Server and Job processing server?
The basic difference is that, Job processing server do host of applications where as APS doesn't.
30.  What is the difference between View and View on demand?
The basic difference is that, in View on demand we can refresh the reports where as in View we can't perform refresh. We can only see the objects and do editing in the reports.