Can I Connect/Use Oracle 11g Database with Business Objects XI?
The answer is “Yes”, but it depends on which version of BOXI you are running.
Business Objects Enterprise XI Release 2
Any version of BOXI R2 equal to or greater than Business Objects XI R2 Service Pack 5 includes an Oracle 11g driver. However, if you find your instance is still lurking below SP5 you are not without hope. According to Oracle, 10g drivers can successfully be used to connect to Oracle 11g databases. Business Objects does not support using R2 SP4, or lower, to connect to and Oracle 11g database, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do it. It only means they won’t take any “Customer Messages” on any issues related to such connections, unless the issues can be recreated on database supported for your BO XI service pack level.
Be sure to check your service pack’s “Support Platforms” for the particular supported implementation of Oracle 11g middleware. For example, XI 3.1 SP2 states clearly for Linux/Unix machines running CMS you must install Oracle 10.2 middleware to connect to your Oracle 11.1 database. 
Business Objects Enterprise XI 3.X
Starting with Business Objects XI Release 3.1 Business Objects has included an Oracle 11g driver. Now if you are on XI 3.0 and you can’t jump to 3.1 just yet, you might want to borrow a trick from Administrator’s of XIR2 systems lower than XI R2 SP5 and use an Oracle 10g driver to connect to that cutting edge 11g database. Just don’t expect BO to support you on that venture.
Hi Julian!
I just wonder, if there is a way to connect to SAS data? I’ve got BOEX3.1 FP1.2 running.
Hi Andrew,
Good question. As far as I know SAS does not make their proprietary data sets available for access externally. I am not very knowledgeable about SAS, so I would only take this as limited opinion. BO does not distribute an SAS driver either, as far as I know. Now, you may be able to hack the SAS data with a programming language and get some snapshot extracts you could load to a BO supported database, but this would be a significant effort and it may not be very reliable.
Good Luck,
Julian
Hello Andrew,
yes there is: You can use the BO Data Federator, use the SAS ODBC driver or the SAS/ACCESS to e.g. Oracle.
Kind Regards,
Joerg
Good morning,
I’m writing in order to ask an opinion about this strange situation…
We have migrated to Oracle 11 and since then some problems are happening.
There are different versions of Bo (don’t ask me why…): 6.1, 10, XI 3.1
Now since the migration we are incurring in this troubles:
1) XI 3.1 it’s impossible to see or insert new tables (but even old…) in the universe it look like we don’t have the grants on the objects (but we have the BO user has dba privileges)
2) In the version 6.1 the tables in the universe work well, but they don’t show the attributes, they are simply… blank, and after opening the Designer, BO shows an error statiting that there is a “Connect By” problem.
Any advice please?
Thank u in advance
Hi Nik, you are treading on shaky ground, no, I would say they are more like unstable radio-active isotopes. As far as I know BO does not support 11g CMS database, no way. “10″, that must be Crystal only, not BO, but I would doubt it is supported for 11g. Also XI 3.1 for windows still does not support using Oracle client 11g, but 11g databases are OK with Oracle 10.2 client/middleware.
What Oracle client are you using for each?
I am assuming that each BO instance has its own CMS database or at least separate schemas, right?
Please share more information.
What is the meaning of all Name/Value pairs we get from Connection() function? I am trying to use it to get the database name by using “SubStr()”, but between dev/uat/prod the database name has different position.
1. Is there any way to read name/value pair from this connection string?
2. Any other interesting way to get the database connection name ?
thanks
Hi Chris, the Connection() function in WebI is a bit sloppy. I need to test this out on my side to see if it strikes any memories.
I can tell you that the SDK would also allow you to retrieve this information. You could use the Java SDK and create a JSP page that extracts the data you need to the web page or to a file.
We want to upgrade our business Object CMS Repository Database from Oracle 9i to Oracle 11g.
We are using XIR3.1 Sp3 on Solaris, Clients and Deskis are on windows.
According to SAP; Oracle 11gR1 is directly supported with 11gR1 Native Client for XIR3.1.
But before we do the installation we want to know what is the impact of Oracle upgrade from 9i to 11g on our repository.
Other than the performance, is there any impact that we need to know in advance? For example do we need to reschedule all the reports?
Is there any impact at all?
I have done an upgrade from 10g to 11g and I noticed nothing except for some trouble with the Oracle client upgrade on the BO machines, but that was just an Oracle install issue (not a fan of the Oracle installer). I would watch to make sure that your table stats get updated (SELECT * FROM User_Tables, I think) regularly. There is a known bug that prevents scheduled table stat updates from running on 11g. If you don’t have recent stats then performance will be terrible. Passwords might change, so watch for that. I will let you know if I think of anything else.
Julian,
Thank you so much for your answer. Please let me know if there are more impacts that we need to know ahead of the time. We have only 2 environments and we want to make this upgrade the most predictable and risk free database upgrade.
Thanks a lot,
Sherry
Hi Sherry, one thing that you need to know (if you don’t already) is that BO is fairly database independent. This makes database upgrades easy, but it also makes it so Business Objects does really leverage many of the innovations in that upgraded database.
Hi Julian/Sherry,
We are using BOXIR3.1 SP1 on Microsoft Windows server 2003,and Client and Deski are in windows as well. (We didn’t have successful implementation with SP2, thats the story for next time…)
We want to upgrade our business Object CMS Repository Database and also our Application Database from Oracle 10g to Oracle 11g.
Is BOXIR3.1 SP1, compliance against Oracle 11g and the possible upgrade implications/paths?
Is there any affect by the move from Oracle 10g to 11g?
Does it support 11g database with Oracle 11 client/middleware? OR do I need to use Oracle 10.2 client?
Lastly, Do I need to take care of whether it is 32-bit or 64-bit modes client?
Thanks
Hi Jharna, you have some serious questions there:
You need to get your hands on the SAP BO document called “BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 for Windows – Supported Platforms” that matches your patch level. I am looking at a base 3.1 version that I have and it says that for CMS 11.1 DB is supported using the Oracle 10.2 middleware on the CMS server, but Oracle 11.1 data sources are supported with 11.1 middleware. If you are running everything on one server then you probably want to just go with Oracle 10.2 client/middleware.
32-bit or 64-bit Windows Operating system won’t really matter. BOE XI 3.1 is still very much 32-bit and it will run just fine in production on a 64-bit Windows OS. Again, this information is also in the “Supported Platforms” document. You need to get this for your patch version, print it out, and memorize it.
My BO version is R3.1 Linux.
“BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 for Linux-Supported Platforms” document includes Oracle Client 11.1 as supported DataSource.
But last time I tried to upgrade from Oracle 9.2 to 11.1 & got the following error:
/opt/busobj/bobje//ccm.sh: line 83: 11414 Floating point exception(core dumped) $CE_CMDLINE_PREFIX mozjsshell “$CCMFILE” “$@”
err: ERROR Failed to get auditing data source name. (STU00164)
err: Error description: The data source name (DSN) could not be extracted from the connection string.
Creating session manager…
Logging onto CMS…
err: ERROR Couldn’t logon to CMS (STU00152)
err: Error description: The system xxservername can be contacted, but there is no Central Management Server running at port 6400.
Is there anyone having this problem or experience a success in installing Oracle Client 11.1 to XI R3.1?
Thx.
Hi Anna, (1) Are you using and ODBC connection or just the native Oracle middleware? This may not be possible (ODBC), but the mention of a DSN is a little strange to see when using Oracle. (2) Are you sure you are using the Oracle 11.1 32-bit client? I found that Oracle was no longer including 32-libraries with the 64-bit 11.1 client. (3) Passing all of this, I would try to add a new CMS SIA to your database and see what happens. Perhaps your existing SIA is locked into Oracle 9 and is having trouble trying to talk to an Oracle 11.1 database. SIA are disposable, so if you get one working against your DB then you could delete the other (making sure to take note of any parameter, registry changes before deletion.