Installing Drivers for the SAP BW Connector


The Spotfire connector for SAP BW supports the following data source drivers:

Note: If you have both the BAPI driver and the ODBO driver for the SAP BW connector installed on your computer, the connector will use the BAPI driver.

Which driver should I use?

It is recommended to use the BAPI driver (SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK).

With the BAPI driver installed, if you enable the preference setting UseNativeSapFunctionsAllowingMoreThanOneMillionCells in the Spotfire Administration manager, you can load data that exceeds 1M cells from SAP BW.

Note: To know which driver the SAP BW connector is using, click Add Data Tables, and, in the Add Data Tables dialog, select Add > Connection to > SAP BW. In the SAP BW Connection dialog, information about the driver that the connector is running (BAPI or ODBO) is appended inside parentheses in the title of the dialog.

Installing the BAPI driver (SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK) for the SAP BW connector

Preparations

Download the appropriate installation files for your system from the Download Software area of the SAP Support Portal. You need the following:

  1. Create a new directory where you want to install SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK.

  2. Put both the NWRFC .sar file and the SAPCAR utility .exe file in the directory you just created.

  3. Open a command-line interface (for example Command Prompt in Windows) and change the working directory to the directory where you placed the installation files.
    Example command: cd C:\SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK

  4. Run the following command: <SAPCAR utility file name> -xvf <NW RFC SDK file name>
    Example command: SAPCAR_712-80000938.exe -xvf NWRFC_42-20004568.sar

  5. Response: This will unpack the .sar file and put the files it contains in the same directory.

  6. In the directory where you opened the .sar file, you should see a new directory called ‘nwrfcsdk’. This is your installation of SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK.

  7. In the ‘nwrfcsdk’ directory, locate the directory that contains (among other files) the sapnwrfc.dll file. The directory is usually named ‘lib’. Note down the full path to this directory.

  8. To create the required environment variable, open System Properties in Windows and, on the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables….

  9. In the Environment Variables dialog, create a new system variable or user variable.
    Note: For Web Player or Automation Services services, you must use system variables.

  10. Give the variable the following name: DXP_NWRFCSDKLIB

  11. For the variable value, enter the full path to the directory in your SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK installation that contains the sapnwrfc.dll file.
    For example: C:\SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK\nwrfcsdk\lib

See also:

List of Connectors in this Version

Getting Started with Connectors