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SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP02 (SAP BI 4.3 SP2) Released!

Patrick_Perrier
Contributor
‎2021 Dec 14 5:51 PM
25,682


Source: Webi4Me



SAP BusinessObjects 4.3 SP02 Released


December 10th, 2021


Ho Ho Ho!  Merry Xmas 🎄

Over the years I have written several blogs following the new releases of SAP BusinessObjects and its Service Packs.  In fact I started it back in 2013 with the announcement of SAP BI 4.1 SP02!

(I didn't see a point to start with SAP BI 4.0 😂)

Back then I was a BOBJ consultant for a boutique BI Consultancy in London (UK) and mostly on the road visiting customers at their workplace.  It was so painful to remember where to find all the resources I needed scattered around the different SAP sites or 3rd party resources from the community.

Having a one stop shop repository available on the internet where I could find all the useful documents, URLs and notes to do my job was very useful.

Hundreds of thousands of views and many years later, I hope some of you still find these useful and here I present you with my latest edition: SAP BI 4.3 SP02!

*********************************

A week earlier than planned (originally CW 50) SAP released last Friday: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 (14.3.2.4073).

SAP BusinessObjects - Maintenance Schedule Q4 2021


Source: Maintenance Schedule


This nicely follows the plan of releasing a Service Pack every year:


BI On Premise Active Maintenance - Release Roadmap


Source: ANALYTICS BI Maintenance Strategy







  • 12/2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP03 ?


 

What was released?


The usual suspects were released for a fresh Installation or Support Package:

  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Server



  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Client Tools



  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Live Office



  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Integration for SharePoint



  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 NET SDK Runtime



  • SBOP BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Crystal Reports for Enterprise



  • SAP Crystal Server 2020 SP02



  • SAP Crystal Reports 2020 SP02


⚠ Important: Crystal Reports 2020 services have been removed from the BI Platform 4.3 SP02 Linux and Unix packages.  This means you must have a Windows server and/or node to run Crystal Reports in your BI Launch Pad.


 

What's New?



SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP2 in a nutshell


Source: SAP


This time SAP has been great at releasing several blogs offering a lot of information:

  • gregory.botticchio (Director, Analytics Product Management at SAP) : Blog Now Available Blog






 

Download Locations


The packages are available from these locations:



SAP BI 4.3 SP02 - Download Locations


More Information: SAP Note 3129887

 

Installation Scenarios


You might doing a fresh installation on a new server which is the easy part.  Or of course performing an upgrade from an earlier version.

Here are some good resources to read more about upgrade methods, tips and their pros & cons:







 

Installation - How did it go?


My test environment is running on an AWS EC2 t3.2xlarge.  That's 8 VCPUs and 32GB RAM.  Went very smoothly as you would expect.

For a fresh installation of SAP BI 4.3 SP02, you will follow the exact same steps as in previous 4.x versions.


SAP BI 4.3 SP02 - Installed Products


Products Installed:

  • SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform Servers 4.3 SP02 - ONE





    • 1/2 BIPLATS4302_0-70002684_P1.EXE







    • 2/2 BIPLATS4302_0-70002684_P2.RAR





SAP BI 4.3 SP02 - BI Platform Installed




  • SBOP BI Platform Clients 4.3 SP02 - ONE





    • BIPLATCLNT4302_0-70005711.EXE





SAP BI 4.3 SP02 - Client Tools Installed


Important:

Tomcat has been updated to 9.0.52.  SAP Note 2112338 is not up-to-date but take my word for it!

⚠  If you do an in-place upgrade, this will affect your SSO and other customisations.

 

SAP BusinessObjects Private Cloud Edition (PCE)


Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few months, you must have heard of this offer which part of the RISE program.

In short:

"SAP Business Objects Private Cloud Edition is a new service from SAP that offers customers the opportunity to move their existing SAP BusinessObjects on-premise platform(s) to a private cloud environment managed for you by SAP."

"Commercially the SAP BusinessObjects Private Cloud Edition offers customers the opportunity to cancel their existing on-premise agreement and replace with a simple cloud subscription (per user or concurrent user). The subscription includes the software licence + infrastructure + operational services required to run SAP Business Objects."

Full introduction from the one and only jfreeland (Senior Director, Commercial Office, SAP Platform & Technologies, Customer Success at SAP) : Moving SAP BusinessObjects to the Cloud with SAP BusinessObjects Private Cloud Edition and SAP Analy...

Here are some extra good resources:




ℹ Did you know that Wiiisdom is the best and prefered partner to accelerate and simplify your move to SAP BOBJ PCE?  Thanks to our solution 360Suite we will automate and run in bulk your regression testing, update your Universe Connections, help with converting to UNV > UNX, repointing your Webi reports, and much more.  Get in touch!

 

Documentation


The usual documents have been made available on the SAP Help Portal.  My most useful ones are:






  • Business Intelligence Platform Installation Guide






 

SAP Support Packs (SPs) and Patches Forward Fit Plan: SAP Note 1794601 can be very useful if you're wondering which release will include your bug fixes / patches from earlier updates.

"Though Support Packs (SPs) and Patches are cumulative, due to the overlapping release cycles of patches and Support Packs, the contents of the currently installed patch is not always available within the next numeric Support Pack (or subsequent patch on that SP) to be installed. This could mean that fixes that existed in the previous version are not existing in the version being upgraded to."


In this example, you see that everything released in SAP BI 4.2 SP08 Patch 7 is available in SAP BI 4.3 SP02.

 

Product Availability Matrix (PAM)


(Supported Platform)

Release to Customer (RTC): 12.06.2020

General Availability (GA): 12.06.2020

End of Mainstream Maintenance: 31.12.2025

End of Priority One Support Phase: 31.12.2027

  • URLs:







As always, make sure you have a look at what has been added or deprecated in this version.  There is a bit of both around Operating System, Browser, etc and Semantic Layer & Data sources.

ℹ I find it very useful to be aware of SAP's strategic direction:



 

Maintenance Schedule - What's Next?



  • SAP BI 4.3 SP02





    • 28.01.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 1 (14.3.2.4121)







    • 04.03.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 2 (14.3.2.4169)







    • 14.04.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 3 (14.3.2.4214)







    • 11.06.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 4 (14.3.2.4272)







    • 13.07.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 5 (14.3.2.4304)







    • 21.08.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 6 (14.3.2.4343)







    • 02.10.2022: SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 7 (14.3.2.4385)







    • Week 46 (November): SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 8







    • Week 52 (December): SAP BI 4.3 SP02 Patch 9




 

  • SAP BI 4.3 SP03: Week 49 (December)


Source: Maintenance Schedule


Source: BI Support Pack End of Life Dates


 

Conclusion


As far as I'm concerned, what a release!  Well worth the wait 👊  Contrats to all involved at #SAP.

Some will say that SAP BI 4.3 should have been released like this.  Maybe.  If we're honest though, the world was craving for anything from SAP giving a glimmer of hope that BOBJ wasn't dead.  An incomplete (rushed?) SAP BI 4.3 did the trick for many.

Keeping up with the PAM was another issue also and doing it in an aging SAP BI 4.2 made little sense.

Then we saw SAP BI 4.3 SP01 catching up a lot only to hear that SP02 would be delayed by 6 months.  That was a pity.

Anyway, if you ask me (and I told some of the people mentioned in this blog at SAP) that this Service Pack is amazing enough to have called it SAP BI 4.4 😎  You heard it here first!

 

Keep in Touch!


Hope this blog was useful.   It's an iterative process and I'll keep updating it from time to time.  Please do share your thoughts and comments.

And feel free to "like" and share it on social media!

If you'd like to connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pperrier/

Have a great Christmas and New Year holidays.  See you for SAP BI 4.3 SP03 next Christmas!

Take care and stay safe.

A+

 

 
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