Installing Drivers for the SAP BW Connector

The Spotfire connector for SAP BW can employ either the BAPI interface, or the ODBO interface, for connecting to SAP BW systems. This depends on which data source driver you have installed on your computer.

Supported data source drivers

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

  • SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK (BAPI driver)
  • SAP BW OLE DB for OLAP provider (ODBO driver)
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.

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

Prerequisites

Download the appropriate installation files for your system from the Download Software area of the SAP Support Portal. You need the following:
  • SAP NW RFC SDK .sar file
  • SAPCAR utility .exe file

Procedure

  1. Create a new directory where you want to install SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK.
  2. Place 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
    This will unpack the .sar archive and place its contents in the same directory.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.

Creating the required environment variable

  1. To create the required environment variable, open System Properties, and, on the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables....
  2. In the Environment Variables dialog, create a new system variable or user variable.
    Note: For Web Player or Automation Services services, you must use a system variable.
  3. In the New System Variable dialog, enter the following Variable name: DXP_NWRFCSDKLIB
  4. For the Variable value, enter the full path to the directory in your SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK installation where the sapnwrfc.dll file is located.
    For example:C:\SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK\nwrfcsdk\lib

Which driver is my SAP BW connector running?

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.

If you are not sure what drivers you have installed on your computer, you can easily find out which driver the SAP BW connector is using.

Procedure

  1. In Spotfire, click Add Data Tables....
  2. In the Add data tables dialog, select Add > Connection to > SAP BW.
  3. In the title of the SAP BW Connection dialog, information about the driver that the connector is running is appended inside parentheses (BAPI or ODBO).