Friday, July 11, 2008

DataStage and SAP BI 7 continues..

So, it has been a while but we are finally over the major hurdles of the transition from BW3 to BI7 (SAP Business Warehouse releases). To date here is a micro summary of the problems discovered along the way:
1. BW sends NULLS, BI doesn't (watch all those stored procedures that tested for NULL fail!)
2. BW was ASCII, BI7 is Unicode (DataStage needs NLS to work with this and it is buggy)
3. BW worked through a proprietary interface, BI uses RFC services. The RFC is a resource hog on the BI side and does not like to release connections when it is through. DataStage 7.5.1 wont get the OHREQUID,DATAPAKID, & RECORD unless you patch a variable on the BI side
4. Watch for special characters in the BI data set corrupting the data when it gets to DataStage, IBM is working on this one.
5. Study the process for Quelling a delta load after it fails, you are going to need it
6. Timing is everything. If you are initiating the load from the DataStage side, be prepared to wait a while and set the timeout variable high enough. Better yet, set it up so that the DataStage job is activated by the BI side, then all you have to worry about is permissions

OK- there were many more problems, most of them were just the steep learning curve I or the SAP team faced in the transition. It is mostly working now and if anyone wants to know more they can post something.

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