Installation Steps for biExport On-Premise

If you want to use biExport productively with an on-premise installation of the biExport service, these are the necessary configuration steps.

Software Requirements

The server, on which you install the biExport service, does not have to meet high system requirements. The basic requirements are:

  • Windows Server OS
  • 4 GB memory
  • 2 core CPU

If you expect high productive usage, the number of CPU cores mainly drives performance. If exported PDFs contain a lot of pages with tabular data, it makes sense to think about a dedicated server with a GPU, in order to get the highest rendering performance. The export load can be distributed over several biExport service instances by the use of the biExport Load Balancer.

Installation

  1. Please register your user on www.biexcellence.com/register and tell us that you are interested in biExport for Lumira Designer. Also leave us a message that you would like to install the product on premise.
  2. After successful registration, you can find the downloads for your installation on www.biexcellence.com/downloads.
  3. Download the package biExport Component 4 Lumira Designer / Design Studio.
  4. Install the component to Lumira Designer and publish it to the SAP BO platform as shown in the SAP documentation.
  5. Download the package openbi Repository Server.
  6. Decompress the package and install it.
  7. Download the package biExport openbi Plugin Installer.
  8. Decompress the package and execute the EXE file.
  9. The Export openbi Plugin Installer automatically finds the open bi installation. Choose only Lumira Designer & Design Studio and start the installation.
  10. Make sure the firewall does allow communication from and to the Export Service: Export Service uses the following ports by default:

    9091 http 9092 https 9093 Configuration

    Make sure these ports are not yet used and opened. Otherwise change the default ports in the Web Configurator.

  11. Find the bi excellence openbi Repository service in the Windows Services and open it.
  12. Choose start automatically.
  13. Optional: You might want to change the account that executes the service.
  14. Start the service.

Configuration

You can configure and monitor the biExort service via configurator.biexcellence.com.

  1. Login to your server

    For the first login use user "admin" and password "Initial".

  2. Navigate to Settings ...

    ... and add the following recommended parameter value for the tracing:

    Name: EXPORT_TRACE on Productive Server: ERRORS on Development & Test: BASIC for Support Cases: ALL (stores all trace files in the export_temp subdirectory of OPENBI installation)
  3. Activate https support

    Open bi requires a PKCS#12/PFX (.pfx or .p12) server certificate, which includes any intermediate certificates and the private key in one encryptable file.

    Commands to convert different certificate formats to PKCS#12/PFX using OpenSSL:

    1. Convert PEM to PFX: $ openssl pkcs12 -export -out certificate.pfx -inkey privateKey.key -in certificate.crt -certfile CAcert.crt
    2. Convert P7B to PFX: $ openssl pkcs7 -print_certs -in certificate.p7b -out certificate.cer $ openssl pkcs12 -export -in certificate.cer -inkey privateKey.key -out certificate.pfx -certfile CACert.cer

      Install the certificate to the Windows Certificate Manager. Use Local Machine as store location and Personal as certificate store on the machine where the open bi Repository Server is installed.

      In the Web Configurator navigate to Settings and add parameter SSLPath. Set the parameter value to the Common Name (CN) of the certificate.

      Open bi will search for the certificate in the certificate store.

    After changing this setting the service must be restarted!
  4. In the Console you can always check what the service is currently doing:

Test

Now the service should already be up and running. You can test it by executing the following services, which are provided by the service:

  • Export Template Manager: https://[your server URI]/export_resources/templatemanager.html
  • Scheduling: https://[your server URI]/export_resources/lumirascheduler.html
  • When adding the component to your Lumira Designer Application...

    ... set the Server URL to

    https://[your server URI]

    and you can test the first export.

For Briefing Book Generation, Scheduling and Background Execution

In these scenarios, the biExport service must be able to re-login to the SAP BO system. Connection Templates are created in the Web configurator.

After logging in, navigate to "Connection Templates", choose "SAP BO"...

... and enter the parameters for your scenario (see below):

Depending on your scenario, there are three different ways to achieve the login:

  1. Trusted authentication
  2. In this scenario, SAP BO is configured to “trust” the biExport service, which is enabled to login with user only, without password.

    Trusted Authentication has to be set up by SAP BO server team:
    • In the SAP BO CMC activate Trusted Authentication under "Authentication" > "Enterprise" > "Trusted Authentication". Download the Shared Secret and put it in the "SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\win32_x86" or "SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\win64_x64" folder.
    • Go to "Servers" > "Servers List" > "WebApplicationContainerServer" > "Properties" and change the "-Dbobj.trustedauth.home" command line argument to the folder above.
      Example: "-Dbobj.trustedauth.home=E:/Programme/SAP BusinessObjects/SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0/win64_x64"
    • After that restart the "WebApplicationContainerServer".
    • Make sure that the "Include Metadata” property of the export component is set to "true".

    Please note: The following steps are just an example and may differ depending on your BusinessObjects setup. Tomcat installations are also supported.

    More information can be found on help.sap.com or in this SAP note. If you are already using other authentication types and you have maintained a restriction in the web application’s properties files, please read also this SAP note.

    For this scenario, maintain the following parameters in the Connection Template:

    Parameter
    Value
    Parameter
    CMS_URL
    Value
    The URL of the BO system, that is used to execute a dashboard. Example: http://boexec.biexcellence.com:8080
    Parameter
    WACS_URL
    Value
    The WACS URL provided by the BO system. Example: http://boexec.biexcellence.com:6405
  3. Session Cookies Reuse
  4. This scenario does not work for scheduled executions!

    The login cookie of the end user is transferred to the biExport service and reused for execution.

    • You must set up SAP BO platform and biExport service to run on the same (sub-)domain ("Same-Origin policy")
    • You must change the domain and path of the JSESSION cookie, so it can be shared between the sub-domains:
      The Session Cookie options can be maintained in file „META-INF/context.xml“ of the „BOE“ web app (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\tomcat\webapps\BOE\META-INF\context.xml): <Context path="/BOE" debug="0" reloadable="false" crossContext="false" trusted="false" sessionCookieDomain=".biexcellence.local" sessionCookiePath="/"> <CookieProcessor className="org.apache.tomcat.util.http.LegacyCookieProcessor"/> </Context> Further information can be found on stackoverflow here and here.

    For this scenario, maintain the following parameters in the Connection Template:

    Parameter
    Value
    Parameter
    CMS_URL
    Value
    The URL of the BO system, that is used to execute a dashboard. Example: http://boexec.biexcellence.com:8080
  5. Shared authentication
  6. This scenario does not work with 3rd party software such as site minder!

    A central user is used to execute the dashboards.

    The central user needs data and dashboard authorization for all views that shall be executed! The developer of the dashboard must take care that authorization relevant filters are passed via URL parameters.

    For this scenario, maintain the following parameters in the Connection Template:

    Parameter
    Value
    Parameter
    CMS_URL
    Value
    The URL of the BO system, that is used to execute a dashboard. Example: http://boexec.biexcellence.com:8080
    Parameter
    USERNAME
    Value
    The user that shall be used for the login
    Parameter
    PASSWORD
    Value
    The user’s password
    Parameter
    AUTH_MODE
    Value
    The authentication mode to be used for the user. Example: secEnterprise, secWinAD, secSAPR3
    Parameter
    WEB_SERVICE_URL
    Value
    Optional, if the URL used to login to Lumira Designer is different from the CMS URL. Example: http://bows.biexcellence.com:6400

For Mail delivery

If you want to connect to your SMTP server, create the following parameters in the Web configurator:

Parameter
Value
Parameter
SMTP_SERVER
Value
Domain address of your SMTP server
Parameter
SMTP_SSL
Value
Whether SSL/TLS should be used (X) or not ( ) to connect to the SMTP server
Parameter
SMTP_PORT
Value
The port your SMTP server is running on
Parameter
SMTP_USERNAME
Value
The username to authenticate on the SMTP server
Parameter
SMTP_PASSWORD
Value
The password to authenticate on the SMTP server
Parameter
SMTP_DOMAIN
Value
The domain to authenticate on the SMTP server
Parameter
SMTP_BIND_IP
Value
The network interface IP through which the E-Mails should be send (default: any network interface).

License

The evaluation license for the on premise installation is valid for 30 days.

Once you have successfully evaluated, you can start your license contract and we provide you with a license file that must be placed in the OPENBI installation folder.

Thilo Knötzele
Author: Thilo Knötzele
Creation date: 01.11.2022
Category: Installation & Configuration
back to overview