BI 4 LCM using CTS+ on SolMan, Simplified?

[bxiv]

I recently was tasked with setting up CTS+ for a BoE/BOBJ/BI 4.0 system.  I came across the following documentation which was extremely useful in setting up the majority of the infrastructure.

• http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/80e0c7e5-a684-2f10-adbf-d9850fae0...
• http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1872663

I met the following pre-reqs:

• CTS_PLUG 2.0 SP08
• BI 4.0 higher than Feature Pack 3

My setup was with a Solution Manager 7.1 system and two sandbox systems for BI 4.0 one had some data/reports from an actual BI 4 system and the second BI 4 system was a blank slate; the test consisting of obtaining a transport number and a successful import of the transport for BI 4 and Solution Manager's TMS.

SolMan Config

SOA Manager screenshot for the transport settings, the guide has you put in /001/export_cts_ws1; I instead chose to do it without the /001 part:

The next issue I ran into, was needing to confirm the TMS config for the BI systems; I have found these settings to work best for my situation:

TRANSDIR will be filled out by the system, along with the COMMUNICATION_SYSTEM which will be your SolMan SID ## The above is the "Development" system.

Below is the "Production" system:

Next comes the Application Types and Deployment methods, wasn't 100% what I needed to have configured as the Deployment method is unique for each Non-ABAP System!

The Application Type is populated by a previous step, and is accessed at the System Overview view, under the 'Extras' menu.

So the Deploy method being a drop down is the easy part as that is the EJB selection.  The URI/user/password are all unique values and depend upon how the BI system is setup:

Deploy URI:      http://<HOSTNAME.FQDN>/BOE/LCM/CTSServlet?&cmsName=<HOSTNAME.FQDN>:6400&authType=secSAPR3 (secSAPR3 can be changed to secEnterprise)

User:                  Will vary depending on the authType=secSAPR3 or secEnterprise (Critical info that must match BD1)

Password:        Will vary due to the username

Now my opinion is to use secEnterprise, if the SAP system that handles the authorizations then you will also have transport issues; may not be a problem for a Dev system, but a QA or Prod system and having workflow handling your transports could cause some issues down the road.

BI Config

This is probably where a lot of my troubleshooting took place as the final piece of the puzzle turned out to be an authorization issue to Solution Manager.  The below error for my situation was actually a false positive!

Now let me mention the following 2 notes as this may not be a false positive for everyone:

http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1763940

http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1809191

The following is useful for those running BI 4.0 Feature Pack 3 or higher:

Under the Web Service Settings (aka CTS+ login) you have 3 fields to populate:

• Web Service URL:  http://<HOSTNAME.FQDN>:80<NN>/EXPORT_CTS_WS1 ( Note the case sensitive /EXPORT_CTS_WS1)
• User:         This user needs to exist on SolMan, the guide uses BOPM_Proxy
• Password:  Password for the user

It was at this section that I had my authorization error that led to the false positive error, I was able to get things moving along by assigning SAP_ALL to the BOPM_Proxy user; I also understand this is not a desired result, and is something I am working on with the assistance of the security team.

Now the 'BW Systems' option, Im not entirely sure what needs to be done here; however I discovered a strange thing without any 'BW System' defined your BI developers will notify you about a second false positive!

Within the LCM/Promotion Mgmt when you add objects for the transport you will have the following buttons:

If you have not specified the 'BW Systems' and you click Add & Close you receive the following error:

The fix, supply a ABAP system under the 'BW Systems'; not sure if it has to be a BW system; and interesting enough the objects you are adding to the promotion job...are in the job, wasted a few hours on this error!

Now be warned, when you put in the info for a 'BW Systems' it will place a .properties file at the host level and EVERYTHING within the file is plain text including the password!

And the final important gotcha that I ran into is the LCM_SOURCE_CMS_SID_MAPPING.properties file!

This file that you need to create manually is what controls the 3 character system that TMS utilizes; so if you setup your Development BI system as BD1, this file needs to have BD1 as the "<SID>" so your transport request starts with a "BD1K".

There are only 3 lines needed for this mapping file:

<HOSTNAME>.<FQDN>@6400=<SID>

<HOSTNAME>@6400=<SID>

<IP.Address>@6400=<SID>

bxiv/content?filterID=contentstatus[published]~objecttype~objecttype[blogpost]

bxiv/content?filterID=contentstatus[published]~objecttype~objecttype[document]

[Former Member]

Hi Billy,

Thanks for the configuration steps.

I am trying to configure LCM with CTS+ and followed all the steps mentioned by you and "how to configure LCM with CTS+" document. however I am not able see the option Promote via CTS in destination.

Is there anything I need to do to activate that option in destination?

Regards

Ankush Mittal

[bxiv]

What version of BoE are you working with?

[Former Member]

BOE 4.0 SP 08

[bxiv]

I would verify the URL that you supplied in the BI system as it may not be pointed to the correct one or its not setup correctly on SolMan?  What happens if you put the SolMan URL into a web browser on SolMan/your system/BI/BoE system?

[Former Member]

URL setup in BOE system - http://<hostname>:<Port>/export_cts_ws

when I use same link in my browser, it doesn't throws any error just the page is blank.

[bxiv]

Did you also try uppercase as this may be a case sensitivity issue?

Web Service URL:  http://<HOSTNAME.FQDN>:80<NN>/EXPORT_CTS_WS1 ( Note the case sensitive /EXPORT_CTS_WS1)

[Former Member]

Yes I tried both upper and lower case.

[bxiv]

Under Promotion Mgmt after submitting the CTS settings it should be the only thing needed to have CTS show up as a destination.  You may have better results opening a incident with SAP, as they would be able to view your landscape and/or pull logs.

I will also update the document with the solution that fixes you, so future readers can benefit!  :wink:

[Lluis]

Hi Billy,  just discover that post.

Thanks for sharing it.

[Former Member]

Hey Billy! Was hunting down content on the ChaRM/BOBJ integration and came across your post. Good stuff1

Our issue: Just set up ChaRM in SolMan 7.1 SP11 and things are AOK on the ABAP side but running into issue on the Non-ABAP front, specifically trying to get BOBJ/BODS logical components to show up.

The systems are setup as managed systems successfully. But the check in ChaRM is failing with following error message:

Any

Have you run into similar issues? Suggestions much appreciated.

Cheers.

Darryl

[bxiv]

Updated darryl.michael2 post found here - Can ChaRM 7.1 SP11 handle BOBJ/BODS using CTS+?

[Former Member]

Thanks very much, Billy. There are a couple of parallel issues being tackled so it isn't  closed yet. Will document the solution when done.

Darryl

[Former Member]

Hi Billy,

Thank you very much for sharing.

I am setting up CTS+ and I got an error while importing.

The version of my BOBJ is 4.1 SP6 . Communication system is Solman 7.1 Netweaver 702 SP14.

I am getting en Java exception at the Import process.
Parameters of the import system are as follow:



The deployment method is EJB.
Does anyone has an idea where the issue could be?

Thank you

[bxiv]

If the error is on the importing of the TR, I would suggest reviewing the logs on the destination BOBJ system, feel free to post what you find.  It's been awhile since I reviewed the WBO_*_REQ_STRATEGY tp settings.

I would also verify the user ID in the destination system to ensure it has rights to promotion management.

[Former Member]

Hi Billy,

thank you for your answer. I finally managed to have it work. It was due to CMS name/IP not defined.

[batwoman]

Hi Billy,

We have SolMan in the company although I have no experience with it. I have been tasked with an initial look at the options, pros and cons of using Solman (CTS+) for promoting jobs with Bobj and BODS.

Your article is very interesting, wondered if you have any pointers that would help with my task?

Thanks in advance

Batwoman