Business Objects Administration – Cache Management

Cache management in Business Objects is going to be our topic today. We can manage the cache in Server as well as client side. Let us see how this is being done.

1. Managing Cache in Server side

Changing the Business Objects Registry Parameter: MaximumObjectsToKeepInMemory

Memory usage is controlled by the number of objects stored in the object cache. This is controlled by the Windows registry key called “MaximumObjectsToKeepInMemory” and specifies the maximum number of objects that the CMS stores in its memory cache. Increasing the number of objects reduces the number of database calls required and greatly improves CMS performance. However, placing too many objects in memory may result in the CMS having too little memory remaining to process queries. The upper limit is 100,000 and the default setting is 40,000.

The other place to enable this parameter is in the CMS server’s command line. The parameter is called “-maxobjectsincache”. This is invoked by adding it in CMC to the command line.

2. Managing Cache in Client side

In client side we can clear the cache in Web browser and Java control panel.

Clearing cache in web browser

To clear the cache in Internet Explorer (IE7) follow these instructions:
Tools > Internet Options > General > Browsing history > Delete…

Clearing cache in Java Control Panel

To clear the cache in Java Control Panel follow these instructions:
Control Panel > Java > General > Delete Files…

Hope you will be much comfortable dealing with Cache henceforth after reading this blog. Keep reading!

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Business Objects Administration – Managing Timeout settings

Hello Booglers,

From this Blog onwards we are going to see more in detail about Business Objects Administration and Best practices.

Let us start with timeout settings. As we started moving from 2-tier to 3-tier architecture (DeskI to WebI), the role of timeout becomes significant as it is associated with reports running time.This post will be handy for those who struggle with the timeout issue and various methods to apply itin a Business Objects Enterprise deployment.

Timeout can be configured at the below levels.

1. Designer level

In Designer Application Go to: File > Parameters > Controls

Configure the Limit execution time to setting which limits how long the SQL query is allowed to execute. This hasgreatimpact on reports that contain multiple queries.

Universe Parameters

2. Web Application Server level (Tomcat)

• In the Business Objects Installation server go to Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\warfiles\WebApps \InfoViewApp\WEB-INF
• Open web.xml in a text editor.
• Change the session-timeout value to the one desired. The default value is 20 minutes.

<session-config>

<session-timeout>60</session-timeout>

<!– 20 minutes for session objects –>

</session-config>

Similarly, modify web.xml on the following folders:

• AdminTools– for Query Builder
• CmcApp– for CMC
• CrystalReports– for Crystal reports
• InfoViewAppActions – for Infoview

3. Central Management Console

Go to: Home > Servers > Web Intelligence Processing Server > Properties

You can configure various timeout setting heresuch as cache timeout, idle document timeout, Idle Connection timeout.Configure these values to the desired.

Similarly, modify settings for Desktop Intelligence Processing Server and Crystal Reports Processing Server.

And finally configure the Auto-save time delay option for Web Intelligence under Business Objects Applications.

4. Central Configuration Manager

Go to: CCM > Web Intelligence Report Server > Properties > Command

Add “-RequestTimeoutxxx” to its command line (where xxx is the duration in milliseconds)

Configure this value to the desired one(for 60 minutes the value would be 3600000).

Similarly, modify settings for Web Intelligence Report Server.

Hope this will be useful for timeout setting in your BOE deployment.

Watch out this space as more to come on BOE Administration. Keep reading!

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Track Data Changes

What is Data tracking?

Data tracking is a new feature available in Web intelligence in BOXI 3.1. Data tracking places your current report data in context by highlighting changed data and displaying the previous value of a dimension or measure along with its current value.

Data Tracking Options:

Web Intelligence XI 3.1 highlights changed data according to parameters you set. You control the formatting of the changed data, the types of changed data highlighted and the amount of data change that triggers data highlighting.

Reference Data:

When you track data changes, you select a particular data refresh as a reference point. This data is known as the reference data. When you display the data changes, Web Intelligence places your current data in context by showing how it relates to the reference data.

Data Refresh with Data Tracking Options and Reference Data:

After some time, when we refresh the same report, it will check the new updated data with the reference report data (given above) and it will show the changes as per the parameters you set in data tracking options.

Advantages:

We can focus our analysis on key areas and avoid wasting time exploring irrelevant data.

Read More about  Data Tracking

Business Objects FRS Pruning

Hello Techies,

This is the continuation of Business Objects File Repository Servers Blog and we are going to see how to optimise the File Repository Servers by FRS pruning.

Have you ever got the chance to see how a Crystal or WebI document or Instance stored internally in the File System? Here it is.

The document will be saved internally in the file system with in one or more folders named based on random name generation.
What will happen if the report or the Instance deleted?

The report or the Instance alone will be deleted and leaving the temporary folders as it is. As a result of this over the period of time, there will be thousands of folders in the FRS and will be a intricacy for the Administrator when he goes for the FRS Backup. The Backup process will be very time consuming as well as occupy more space and finally the FRS will be inefficient.

How to get rid of this?

The “-Prune” command, added at the end of the command line of the File repository servers will be handy at this moment.

Working with FRS Pruning and Tracing

-Prune command, added at the end of the command line of servers triggers the server to go through the ‘Input’ or ‘Output’ folders in the internal ‘Filestore’ folder of Business Objects Enterprise to clean up all the empty directories.

-Trace command, added at the end of the command lines of the servers logs the activity of that specific server in the ‘Logging’ folder of the BOE installation directory.

We need to periodically delete the empty FRS directories to cleanup the disk but not to be manually. Instead the FRS server should be started with the -Prune command line switch. When this switch is used, the FRS servers’ status will remain ‘Starting’ till the deletion is done. Once deletion is done, the servers will stop. The -Prune switch will have to be removed manually to allow the servers to start normally.

Working with FRS Pruning and Tracing

Add -Trace and -Prune

1. Stop File Servers (both IFRS and OFRS) in CCM (XIR2) or in CMC (XI 3.x).

2. Add -Prune command at the end of the line to FRS (Input and Output) and also –Trace Command at the end of the line to check it is cleaning up files and folders that are empty.

3. Start the servers and Monitor the pruning process, you should gain more hard disk space.

Remove -Trace and -Prune

1. Stop the Servers and remove -trace and -prune commands from the command line Parameters of FRS.

2. Start the Servers again normally.

Viewing Log files

You can find the log files in the below location (for XI 3.x)

C:\Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\Logging

Points to remember

• After the Pruning process if any empty folders still exists, they may be used by BO to keep for its housekeeping process.

• Don’t leave the prune option enabled even after the prune completed. Once pruning completed successfully the FRS will be stopped. We have to re-modify the command line by removing –Prune and -Trace and Server has to be started manually.

• Pruning process does not clean-up any CMS object that lost the FRS files that they need to point to.

Please Note -Prune is an undocumented feature in Business Objects.

We will see more about the Business Objects Servers Tuning in the upcoming blogs.

Happy Blogging!!  Keep reading!!

Windows AD authentication for Business Objects using Kerberos – Part II

This is our continuation of our SSO configuration from starting from SIA configuration.

4.     Configuring the Server Intelligence Agent to use the service account

In order to support Kerberos, Server Intelligence Agent must be configured in CCM to log on as the service account:

To configure a Server Intelligence Agent

1)  Start the CCM.

2)  Stop the Server Intelligence Agent.

3)  Double-click the Server Intelligence Agent and the Properties dialog box is displayed.

4)  On the Properties tab:

• In the Log On As area, deselect the System Account check box.
• Enter the user name and password for the service account.
• Click Apply, and click OK.

5)       Start the server again.

5.     Configure the AD plug-in

In order to support Kerberos, we have to configure the Windows AD security plug-in the CMC to use Kerberos authentication.

To configure the Windows AD security plug-in for Kerberos

• Go to the Authentication management area of the CMC and Click the Windows AD tab.

• Ensure that the Windows Active Directory Authentication is enabled check box is selected.
• In the Windows AD Configuration Summary area of the page, click the link beside AD Administration Name.
• Enter the credentials that have read access to Active Directory in the Name and Password fields.

Note:

Use the format Domain\Account in the Name field LIKE NA\ BOLab-Admin.

• Enter the default domain in the Default AD Domain field.

Note:

Use FQDN format and enter the domain in uppercase, here it is NA.HEXAWARE.COM

• In the Mapped AD Member Group area, enter the name of an AD group whose users require access to Business Objects Enterprise, and then click Add.

• In the Authentication Options area, select Use Kerberos authentication.
• In the Service Principal Name field, enter the account and domain of the service account or the SPN mapping to the service account which was created

In this case, BOBJCentralMS/TESTSERVER.NA.HEXAWARE.COM.

• Click Update

6.     Configure Tomcat web.xml file

Modify the web.config file to ensure Windows authentication is enabled.

To configure InfoView for AD authentication mode, configure the web.config file in the

\Tomcat55\webapps\InfoViewApp\WEB-INF directory.

Edit the web.xml. Then, change the authentication default value to secWinAD.

7.     Configure the Krb5AuthLoginModule and krb5.ini

Create a folder in C:\WINNT to store the following two files:

1. krb5.ini
2. bscLogin.conf

The contents of the krb5.ini and the bscLogin.conf were the following:

Note: 1. This should be done on all computers that run application servers.

2.  KDC is the Domain Controller(s) of the particular domain.

8.     Configure the Tomcat Java option

Launch the Tomcat Configuration program & add the following Java command in the Java Optionsof the Java tab.

-Djava.security.auth.login.config=C:\WINNT\bscLogin.conf

-Djava.security.krb5.conf= C:\WINNT \krb5.ini

Hope this will be useful for Kerberos based windows AD authentication. Feel free to get back to me in case of any issues. I am privileged to helping you all. Happy Blogging!