A typical Migration from BO 5.X or BO 6.X to BOXI 3.1 SP X can be broken down into the following steps in order of priority:
1) Requirement gathering and documentation.
2) Hardware and software procurement.
3) Software installation
4) Implementing security in CMC.
5) Objects migration (e.g. Universe, reports, users, agnostic documents)
6) Unit testing.
7) Migrating to UAT
8) String testing
9) Migration to Production.
10) Production testing and signoff.
Note: Points 1 to 5 has been described in the article below. Points 6 to 10 has not been discussed as testing procedure varies from client to client.
1) Requirement gathering and documentation.
In the initial period (approx 20-25 working days) you should be able to analyse the existing BO system and complete the following documentations:
a) BO – Server Migration - Describes the existing BO architecture and the new BO architecture along with the infrastructure requirements.
b) BO - Security Migration - Describes the new security structure.
Tips : Get this document signed by client as in many instances the client might like to change the requirements or ask for new things (in future) once the client understands the security structure better . It is usually good practice to develop security from scratch especially if you are migrating from BO 5.X and BO 6.X.
c) BO – Inventory Migration - Gives a full list of report documents (webi , Deski, crystal , xcelcius) , universe and users.
d) BO – Migration process - Steps involved in migration and backup strategy.
e) BO Migration test plan - What we are going to test (e.g. no of reports, any stress testing of environment) and identify users from client side who will assist us on the same.
2) Hardware and software procurement.
Infrastructure procurement is a big problem to some clients specially in a short notice. You should make the client aware of this issue at the beginning of the project. Ask them to make a decision on whether you should start migration after you have provided them the documentation or whether they want you to come back in 6-8 weeks time once they have sorted out the infrastructure required for the project (unless you want to sit and bill them while they run around like headless chickens to sort the infrastructure issues).
Even before you go to the client side ask for some decent computers where you can install all versions of BO that you are migrating from and migrating to.
3) Software installation
After all the infrastructure is in place install Business Objects on the servers and test the same. If you have any issues during installations have a look at the BOBJ website. I will explain the security model in a different article in my blog . www.botalkshop.blogspot.com
4) Implementing security in CMC.
After completing the installation procedure implement the security structure in BOXI 3.1. I will explain the security model in a different article in my blog . www.botalkshop.blogspot.com
5) Objects migration
After completing the security structure migrate the reports, universe and users to the new system. Usually you will be able to migrate webi reports and users quite easily. Put the users in the respective groups in the security model and test the same. Try to convert all deski report to Webi (BO has announced that there will be no support of Deski after BOXi 3.X) . I have described a few common issues you might face while converting reports from Deski to Webi at the end of this section. Remember all the row level security and object level security is now in the universe instead of the repository.
Careful: The old BO repository in BO 5.0 and 6.0 repositories can be in Oracle 8i. BOXI 3.1 cannot talk to Oracle 8i. So you have to copy the old BO repository to an Oracle database in 11g and create a key file from BO 5 and 6 (please note that BO 5 and 6 can talk to some specific version/pack of oracle and not any latest version . So you might need to do an intermediate upgrade to 11g so that both BO 5 and BOXI 3.1 can talk to the same Oracle server). You should be able to generate the key from BO 5 to Oracle 11g and use the key in BOXI 3.3 to talk to the old BO repository.
Tip : Do remember that when you add a new row level security and hit the OK button it will automatically update the repository even though you might not have exported the universe to the repository. Also be very careful with the ‘Priorities’ in row level and object level security in the universe. If you put the wrong priorities you might see more data that you want. Thumb rule is set the highest priority to the lowest group in the group structure so that others cannot overwrite it (E.g. where you can go wrong is if you have Group Level 1 -> Group Level 2 -> Group Level 3 in a hierarchy, GP 1 being the highest level in the group, and you set the highest priority of Group Level 1 then Group Level 2 will automatically take the security rights assigned in GP 1 even if have forced some other security on GP 2)
Errors while converting Deski Reports to webi :
1) Partially Converted : XXX report - Objects cannot be hidden in Web Intelligence documents
2) Object No Longer Exists in Universe
3) Partially Converted : XXX report - Block filters on measures do not have the same behaviour in Web Intelligence
4) Partially Converted : XXX report - Page setup options are not implemented in Web Intelligence (First page number, page order, scale, Fit to N pages)
5) Not Converted : XXX report - Document cannot be read
6) Partially Converted : XXX report - Conditional or permanent Hide Header not available in Web Intelligence
7) Partially Converted : XXX report - Function not available in Web Intelligence
8) Partially Converted : XXX report - Blocks cannot be folded in Web Intelligence
9) Not Converted : XXX report - .wid document could not be generated due to unknown reason
10) Partially Converted : XXX report - Unsupported 'Do not regenerate SQL' option
11) Partially Converted : XXX report - Breaks in Web Intelligence can only be set on one dimension
12) Partially Converted : XXX report - Keyword not available in Web Intelligence
13) Partially Converted :XXX report - A formula from a Desktop Intelligence block filter cannot be migrated into a Web Intelligence block filter
14) Partially Converted : XXX report - Blocks cannot be folded in Web Intelligence
15) Partially Converted : XXX report - Block filters on measures do not have the same behavior in Web Intelligence
There is a bug in the software so if SIA crashes users are able to see all data instead of No data. This is a bug in SAP. SAP recommended us a workaround.
Tip : Always have a ‘NULL’ connection or a ‘Wrong’ connection as a default connection . Assign the right connections at the group level. Only issue with this is Administrators will not be able to create reports as it will default to a NULL connection. However if you add the users in the right group you will be able to view the right data.
Vijay Kumar Chandrashekara •
ReplyDeleteBased on my past experience following are the significant challenges in faced in a migration project :
1) Clients (specially the big ones) usually take a large amount of time in procuring infrastructure after you provide them the infrastructure requirement specification. Always make them aware of this issue. Otherwise a project will invariably go above budget. I one of my pervious projects the project missed a deadline by 4- 6 months just because of infrastructure reason.
2) I think the most difficult part of a migration project is the security setup in BOXI , specially if you are migrating from BO 5.X and BO 6.X (it is recommended that you design a security structure from scratch if you are migrating from BO 5 and 6) . The ideal way of designing a security in CMC is a matrix of two things (I will write an article on this in my blog in a few weeks). I) A group structure that will have access to different reports and 2) A group structure that will give BO functionality to users (like webi users who can refresh reports, webi users who can publish report in their favourites, webi users who can publish reports in corporate documents , power users, administrators , super admins etc). In majority cases I have found clients do not understand this concept at the beginning of the project and requests to new groups once the security has already been designed. This increases the timeline .
3) One of the biggest challenges I have faced is to convince clients that they should move away from Deski to Webi. (Deski will not be supported after BOXI 3.1 SP X and BO 4.0 which will hit the market in June –July this year does not have deski). Some of the clients have been using Deski for the last 15 years and have created weird and wonderful things in deski reports (specially macro etc). It’s helpful if higher management from the client side drives this message to the team members.
4) Converting Deski reports to Webi is a pain on the back side. Also (as per my opinion) the report conversion tool is not that stable and usually 65% of the reports are converted ok. The rest needs to be manually modified after conversion (I have provided a list of conversion problem in my blog www.botalkshop.blogspot.com) and this takes a lot of time and effort. So before migration it’s always good to make a list of deski report and analyse them into complex, medium and easy report. I use a thumb rule that 50% of the complex report, 30-35% for medium and 10-20% for the simple reports will need manual modification and 2-5% of all reports has to be developed from scratch. Add this time to project timelines unless client wants to put their own resource to make these modification.
5) One more challenge (which I realised at the middle of one of my projects) was a database incompatibility. BO 5 and BO 6 can have a repository on a database (e.g. Oracle 8i) that is not supported by BOXI 3.1.X. So you might need to migrate the repository to an intermediate database (like oracle 11g) which can talk to both the databases.
6) Develop the security structure is development , test it thoroughly in development and get a signoff before moving to the UAT or production environment. Any new changes should be propagated from dev to uat to prod. I made a mistake once (by conceding) to a clients request to make changes directly in production environment on a BOXI 3.1 rollout. It was a nightmare to propagate it back to UAT and development. Ultimately I had to take the prod environment and sync all other environments with production.
7) If you are using BO over BW try to upgrade to BOXI 3.1 SP 3 or higher. I think they have added a new functionality called query stripping which ‘they claim’ improves the performance drastically. Since I have not been involved in BW to BO migration in the last few month I can’t verify this (SP 3 has hit the market in the last 6 months).
I will add more once I get some time. If you have any specific queries fell free to ask.
Hi
ReplyDeleteAppreciated your article on migration. I have a question. If we have macros in deski report(5x or 6X) what would be the approch in Xi side to run those reports. How we can handle this kind of situvation. Please explain.
Thanks in advance
Naveen