Getting ready for SAP BusinessObjects 4.3 Support Pack 4

My client and I have been spending the year preparing our SAP BusinessObjects system for the upcoming BI 4.3 SP4, which according to the SAP calendar is scheduled for the week of December 4, 2023. First, the client completed a massive multi-year project to not only move the enterprise data warehouse from Teradata to Snowflake, but to migrate classic UNV universes to UNX at the same time. They used Infolytic Metaminer to reduce the scope of the effort by retiring instead of converting obsolete Web Intelligence documents and UNV universes.

Starting with BI 4.2 SP09 and BI 4.3, SAP deprecated BusinessObjects content types based on Adobe Flash, which was discontinued by Adobe at the end of 2020. This meant the end of Xcelsius/Dashboards and Explorer. While you’ve no doubt stopped using these applications long ago, they may still be lurking in your BusinessObjects repository. We discovered a small number of Xcelsius dashboards and (surprise!) a lone Desktop Intelligence document (who left that thing in there???). Thankfully, SAP has created a script that deletes deprecated content associated with Dashboards/Xcelsius, Desktop Intelligence, and Explorer from the repository.

If you’re unsure if these content types remain in your repository, you can use a metadata tool like Infolytik Metaminer. Or you can filter the object types from the Folders management area in the Central Management Console (CMC).

You can also run a query in Query Builder like this one:

SELECT SI_NAME, SI_KIND, SI_ID, SI_GUID FROM CI_INFOOBJECTS
WHERE SI_KIND IN (‘FullClient’, ‘FullClientAddin’, ‘FullClientTemplate’, ‘XL.XcelsiusEnterprise’,
‘Xcelsius’, ‘XL.Query’, ‘DataDiscovery’, ‘DataDiscoveryAlbum')
AND SI_RUNNABLE_OBJECT = 0 AND SI_INSTANCE_OBJECT = 0 AND SI_ANCESTOR = 23

The script ran perfectly for us – our only gripe was that it did not delete Adobe Flash content (SI_KIND = 'Flash') – possibly because SAP only wanted limit object deletion to their own proprietary content types. We’ve noticed that our Dashboards and Adobe Flash files are in folders that also contain Excel spreadsheets and other related artifacts that can be deleted from the repository, so we’ll probably delete these folders manually rather than simply looking for Adobe Flash objects.

How has your organization been dealing with SAP BI 4.3 in general and obsolete content types in particular? Share your experience in the comments below.