Hi everyone,
I would like to gather some feedback from the community on the conversion of FreehandSQL-DeskI-Reports and which experience you have made using the Report Conversion Tool (RCT).
We're in the progress of preparing a migration from XI3 to BI4.1
I would like to get an idea of how all this works and how much rework on existing reports I have to expect.
Therefore I've put the following testing scenario/workflow in place to get things moved from one place to the other:
BO XI3 env. --> Upgrade Management Tool --> BI 4.1 Migration env. --> RCT conversion of Deski Reports --> LCM --> BI 4.1 target env.
I decided to go for a migration instance in my migration scenario, as I can ensure all dependencies to be taken care of when using the Upgrade management tool and the LCM later on to transfer the content/User/security instead of using the XI environment as source for the RCT.
The Report conversion from DeskI to WebI happens within the migration environment.
We have various DeskI Reports which we will have to convert to WebI - We won't go for Desktop Compatibility Pack (DCP)
I have done some test conversions with a few DeskI Reports and ran into issues mainly with FreehandSQL Reports.
I have reviewed the discussions on "Comments in SQL breaking the conversion" and also did a manual correction of the SQL to have "as" aliases for each calculation.
As I last step I took the correctet SQL and put it into a derived Table and validated the SQL successfully.
But even after having done this corrections to the report-SQL the conversion doesn't work properly. A new Connection is being created but the Universe with derived table is not being created/exported.
Error is:
Type: Free Hand SQL
SubType: Free Hand SQL data provider
ErrorText: Free-hand SQL connection problem
Keyword: Free-hand SQL connection
Result: The free-hand SQL could not be recreated in the universe
BTW I've built a new FreehandSQL Report with a simple query and structure and it got converted fine - also universe based reports get converted without errors. So my scenario seems to work in general.
The other positive thing I have seen is that custom groupings within DeskI are converted fine and can be modified within WebI on 4.1.without any problem.
Thanks for your input on how the report conversion worked out for you and which issues you have seen.
Thanks - Johannes