CE 10 - SAP 4.71 reports -error retrieving data from server

[peaches1240]

I am working within a CE 10 clustered environment reporting with CR 10 against an SAP 4.71 system. I have SP1 applied. My server OS is Win2003. All my CE services are running with a domain account that belongs to the local Administrators group for each server.

My issue is this: Periodically throughout the day users are experiencing the following error when they try to view SAP reports 'There was an error retrieving data from the server: The database logon information for this report is either incomplete or incorrect. Scheduled reports are fine and a report run from Crystal Reports is fine. Reports run against an informix database are also fine.

Any suggestions?

 

[MJRBIM]

Is this only for VIEW-ON-DEMAND reports...?

If so, confirm that none of your ReportObjects have the "Prompt the user for database logon when viewing" box checked if you want to pass through the default values as set in the Crystal Management Console.

 

[peaches1240]

I've setup my reports to a SAP user created just for running reports and deselected the 'prompt the user for database logon when viewing'.

And yes, it's only for view-on-demand. If the user schedules the report it completes successfully.

 

[MJRBIM]

How are you connecting to the SAP data-source?

Is it through a regular "off the shelf" ODBC connection to SAP, or is it through a proprietary driver from SAP or Crystal?

If you are using a Crystal "Solution Kit" for SAP - I would suggest that you contact the BO Tech Support office...

We have had a numebr of issues with the "Solution Kit" for PeopleSoft not always doing what it is supposed to do when passing SQL.

 

[peaches1240]

I am connecting via the Solution kit. I'll contact BO Tech Support and update this thread when I get an answer.

Thanks for your help,

 

[khartman]

peaches1240,

Interestingly enough I am having a similar problem. We are running reports against SAP R/3 4.6c - the reports will run on-demand fine and schedule fine. However, if the designer has incorporated one or more subreports into the main report whenever a user tries to run an on-demand report or view a historical instance they are given the same error message you describe above. The subreports are NOT on-demand. The funny thing is that it seems to be isolated to all of the viewers with the exception of the Advanced DHTML viewer. If the user uses this it works fine. To make matters worse - if the user tries to use the ADHTML viewer to view an ondemand report against any database other than SAP they get the following error "There was an error retrieving data from the server: Failed to retrieve initial report values. For example, the database information for this report could be incomplete or incorrect. This is a configuration problem. Please contact your system administrator".

I have their support team trying to figure this one out.



Kenneth Hartman
Manager, EIS
Hughes Network Systems

http://www.hns.com

 

[peaches1240]

Good afternoon Ken.

Thanks for that information. My users are currently only using the DHTML viewer. The report I think triggers the problem has a sub-report and it takes 3 to 5 minutes to complete where the other reports take about 30 seconds to 1 minute. All of the reports that are run after it do not have sub-reports. And the error is not generated every time. All view on demand report requests might fail for about 1/2 hr and then the request might complete successfully for the next 1/2 hr. A server reboot clears the problem for a few days and then something triggers it again. I'm currently monitoring the system hoping to find the trigger report for certain.

I also have BO Tech Support looking at this issue. Hopefully I will be able to post an update soon.

 

[khartman]

Peaches1240,

When I get some feedback from Tech Support I will post as well. Ironically, this problem only occurs with SAP reports containing subreports, and like you, when the users view it the report takes about four times longer to complete.

When users view the scheduled instances it is as if the report is rehitting the database even though the report - being a scheduled run - should have all of the data and not need to hit the DB unless it is refreshed.

I will le t you know what they find out. I gave them a couple of our reports to run against their system.

--Ken

Kenneth Hartman
Manager, EIS
Hughes Network Systems

http://www.hns.com

 

[peaches1240]

Good Morning Ken.

I have some further information after doing some troubleshooting on my own. I've sent this information to BO Tech support.

During report conversion from CR 8.5 to CR 10
- there were two people working on the conversion
- SAP connection description in the logon pad was sapr3pr for 1st person
- SAP connection description in the logon pad was SAPR3pr for 2nd person (caps being the only difference)
- when the 1st person tries to run the 2nd person's report in CR 10 an error is generated "the attempt to logon without a password failed"
- the 1st person changes the datasource to sapr3pr, the report then runs successfully

During troubleshooting this morning:
- I found a report that will generate the error in the page server trace file, "The database logon information for this report is either incomplete or incorrect."
- it was converted by the 2nd person and the datasource description does not match the server datasource description
- I changed the datasource for this report to match the 1st person's datasource description, the report runs successfully, both in CE and in CR

Please keep in mind that although the description in the SAP logon pad is different only by caps, the server name is exactly the same.

I'm curious to find out if you have the same situation.

 

[khartman]

Peaches,

Did BO ever come up with a solution to your problem or did your workaround correct it for you? I am still experiencing this problem and it is really getting frustrating. BO does not seem to be able to figure out what the issue is even though I have sent them samples of these reports and from what I can gather they see the same issue.

--Ken

Kenneth Hartman
Manager, EIS
Hughes Network Systems

http://www.hns.com

 

[peaches1240]

Hi Ken.

I haven't gotten a satisfactory answer yet. I think I have the issue narrowed down to one report but I haven't been successful in getting the attention of our SAP Team in house. We are in the middle of an upgrade. The error occurs during the account authorization phase of view-on-demand. The error does not occur daily and the last time it happened I wasn't in the office. The servers were rebooted before I could take a look and have the SAP Team look on their side.

I'll keep you posted.

 

[khartman]

Hi Peaches,

Thanks for the update. I am in the same boat over here, only this is a serious problem for me. We have a number of SAP reports that contain subreports. Whenever a user tries to drill-down into it they get the error messages and then can no longer maneuver through the report. This is a real pain since we never had these issues in CE 8.5 and I am getting a ton of flak from the user community on it. It is getting to the point where they are essentially thinking of scrapping the use of Crystal for SAP reports. At this point I can't blame them. The reports are taking about 10x longer to process in CE10 than CE8.5 and it is killing the resources I have to process the other reports in our queue.

I'll let you know if BO can get their heads out of their a#*es long enough to address this problem. I have been pursuing it for about three months now.

--Ken
--Ken

Kenneth Hartman
Manager, EIS
Hughes Network Systems

http://www.hns.com

 

[peaches1240]

Hi Ken.

I still haven't gotten anything back from BO but I have implemented a CE service shutdown every night via batch files and a scheduled task on each server in my cluster. It's been a week now and I haven't encountered any errors. I won't feel confident for another week or two but it looks good so far.

Carol Hathaway
Business Analyst, Information Technology

 

[khartman]

Hi Carol,

I actually had a conference call with BO yesterday - the top tech suuport guy on the SAP Customer Support team, his supervisor, The SAP Technical Alliance Manager (I actually worked with him before). We are going to be doing a WebEx session on Monday and if necessary they are going to send a consultant here to figure out some of our issues (performance degredation, etc.) I did receive the latest monthly hotfix from another tech support person and have tested it on our test environment. It is the latest (March) common10win_en file. The patch seems to have corrected the errors we were getting with the subreport/drill-down issue. If you have a test environment I suggest running the patch and see if it works for you as well. Maybe you will be able to do without the shutdown.

I will let you know how it goes over the next week. We should keep in touch since it seems that we are running close to the same systems and datasources. We are running reports against SAP 4.6, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Domino, and MSSQL. As you stated early on in this thread, the poblems revolve around SAP and not the other data systems.

One more question - did your users have any issues when they tried to open and drill around the scheduled instances in SAP-based reports that contained sub-reports?

-Ken

Kenneth Hartman
Manager, EIS
Hughes Network Systems

http://www.hns.com

 

[peaches1240]

Hi Ken.

My users haven't really shown any interest in drill down. They run their reports and almost immediately export them to pdf. I'll take your suggestion regarding the hot fix. I'm very interested to hear what you find out on Monday. Thanks for keeping this going.

Carol

 

[crystalsap]

Hi Guys

I've just read though the thread.

What are you linking on?
Are fields the same type and size?
Are the fields indexed?
Are the datasources using the correct authorizations,ie same un + pw.
Are you reporting off BW queries or R3 tables?

Give me some more info and I'll see if can help you.

 

[khartman]

The answer to all your questions for me is yes. The fields are indexed and the linking varies from report to report but they are the same type and size. The data sources is R/3 and we have the correct authorizations set up (based on the installation instructions). The UN/PWD is the same for all reports and across all subreports within the main report. We set it up with a specific ID/PWD which I use when we publish the report to production (I reset the datasource in Crystal Reports before publication to ensure that it is correctly propegated through the report).

My conversation with Business Objects and the ensuing WebEx session today should shed some more light on the issue.

Thanks for your interest. If you can think of anything I may want to look at let me know.

--Ken

Kenneth Hartman
Manager, EIS
Hughes Network Systems

http://www.hns.com

 

[crystalsap]

Hi Ken

We usually deal with Ingo at BO and he sorts us out. We have'nt really faced this problem, yet we do the same thing as what you are.

Let me know what BO say today. What I can say is that v X1 is a lot better than v10 according to initial testing this side. Do you face the same problem if you publish the reports to the portal than you do in CE? Correct me if I'm wrong; in a nutshell, what your saying is: The reports work and return data,but drilling down to subreports is slow?

I've work with one hotshot here who usually shows BO a thing or two. I'll ask him to look at this too thread too.

regards
Marc Burger
Crystal Competency Centre
Saudi Aramco

 

[khartman]

Marc,

Thanks for your feedback. Essentially what I have are two issues. The first issue I believe we have patched but I still have a problem with one report we are investigating.

Issue 1: SAP based reports published and scheduled to the CE environment are giving the users "need additional information" and "incorrect logon" error messages whenever they try to drill down into the underlying subreports. As I stated above the last patch we applied seems to have corrected this behavior.

Issue 2: Performance issue with above reports. Complex SAP based reports (contain multiple subreports and shared variables) are extremely slow in their performance. The same report in the CE 8.5 environment runs very fast. A user viewing an historical instance of the report can jump around the report fairly quickly (a few seconds to jump from one section of the report to another) as well as drill down into the report without issue. In CE10, the user waits for at least a minute before the report even goes to the next page. It is as if the report, even though it is an instance and not ondemand, it trying to reconnect with the SAP environment to refresh the data on the next page.

I would appreciate any guidance you can provide. We have not received our XI version yet so I have not been able to look at how it performs. I am glad to hear you see a marked improvement over CE10.

Thanks,
--Ken



Kenneth Hartman
Manager, EIS
Hughes Network Systems

http://www.hns.com

 

[crystalsap]

Hi Ken

Performance based issues are always the hardest to track. I saw this solution,maybe have a look at it too:

http://support.businessobjects.com/library/kbase/articles/c2016607.asp

I know it says BAPI failure, but sometimes the error handling in crystal does'nt always piont you in the right direction. The other thing I would try, is re-converting the reports from 8.5 - 10 again, and then redeploying them.

We have picked up a few issues when transporting updated versions of files to QA environment and Production environment i.e. the updated version does not seem to be transported correctly. To overcome this issue we delete the previous version of the file from QA and PRD prior to transporting the new version. Its is strange that it works well in 8.5 and not in 10 though.

I know I have'nt been much help and hope you get this resolved with some assistance from B.O.

regards
Marc