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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - File Service Overview

Applies to: SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 7.0, version for SAP NetWeaver

For more information, visit the Enterprise Performance Management homepage.

Summary This document is designed to give the reader an overview on the file service functionality which is delivered as part of the SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 7.0, version for SAP NetWeaver.

Author: Rich Heilman

Company: SAP Labs, LLC

Created on: 24 November 2008

Author Bio Rich Heilman is a solution manager with the SAP EPM for Finance Solution Management Group, at SAP Labs LLC. He is currently focused on the BPC, version for SAP NetWeaver solution. Before joining SAP in 2007, he worked for an SAP customer as an ABAP Developer for 6 years.

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Table of Contents What is File Service ............................................................................................................................................3

Definition .........................................................................................................................................................3 Comparison to SAP BPC 5.x ..........................................................................................................................4 How the files are stored ..................................................................................................................................5

How to use the File Service................................................................................................................................8 Creating a Directory ........................................................................................................................................8 Changing a Directory ......................................................................................................................................9 Copying a Directory.......................................................................................................................................10 Downloading All Documents .........................................................................................................................10 Deleting a Directory.......................................................................................................................................12 Uploading a Document..................................................................................................................................12 Renaming a Document .................................................................................................................................14 Copying a Document.....................................................................................................................................15 Locking a Document .....................................................................................................................................16 Unlocking a Document ..................................................................................................................................16 Downloading a Document.............................................................................................................................17 Deleting a Document.....................................................................................................................................18

Related Content................................................................................................................................................19 Copyright...........................................................................................................................................................20



What is File Service File Service in the SAP BPC 7.0, version for SAP NetWeaver product, is a central service for storing all related files of the BPC application. Made up of a handful of APIs, the file service is used in almost every process within the BPC, version for SAP Netweaver product. The SAP BPC, version for Microsoft product, still uses the windows file system to store its files. For these reason, it is important to understand how the file service works, and what functionality is provided.

Definition

File Service is a central service built directly into the SAP BPC 7.0, version for SAP NetWeaver product. It mimics a windows file system, but is persisted in the underlying database instead. Storing the files in the database provides operating system independence.

Files can be stored in two ways using File Service. First, and the most common method, is saving the file as a blob (Binary Large Object). A blob is a field definition which supports any digitized information, such as text, images, audio, or video. Storing as a blob means that the data is stored in a human unreadable format in a single string field in the database table. The second method is to store the data line by line, in a generated database table. This is commonly used for “Data Manager” files or other external files, which are comma delimited text files, where it is important for the system to be able to read a section of the file line by line.

The files are stored in a compressed format using the GZIP (GNU Zip) compression method. This helps in keeping the size of the files to a minimum. The service also has the ability to zip and unzip files. For example, when using the File Service interface program, transaction UJFS, the user can choose to zip the file when downloading to the PC, and can choose to unzip the file when uploading the file to the system as well. So if the user had ten files zipped up in a zip file, and he wanted to upload all ten at one time, and have each stored as separate files in the database, he could choose to “Splice” the ZIP file during upload. The system will then break the ZIP file up and store each file separately.

The file service can store any file types which can be stored by a windows based file system. This means all file extensions are supported, including word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, PDF documents, images files, video files, xml files, zip files, etc. File size limitations are enforced by the NetWeaver application server and depend on system configuration and performance optimization settings.

Figure 1

The BPC File Service also supports virus scanning. This is implemented by the NetWeaver stack and is not specific to the SAP BPC, version for SAP NetWeaver product. Virus scanning in NetWeaver comes delivered as “inactive”. This functionality must be configured by a NetWeaver Administrator. You can find the help document on the subject at help.sap.com.


http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/EN/e3/aa783f181b0866e10000000a114084/frameset.htm


Comparison to SAP BPC 5.x

All previous releases of BPC were based on the Microsoft platform, and hence the BPC files were stored in a windows file system. In previous releases, all files for all AppSets were stored under one global “Data” folder. (See Figure 2) This is not the case in SAP BPC 7.0, version for SAP NetWeaver. Each AppSet will now have its own root structure, which means that the “AdminTemplates” folder is now AppSet specific in SAP BPC 7.0, version for SAP NetWeaver.

Figure 2



How the files are stored

This section describes technically how the file service module has been implemented in SAP BPC 7.0, version for SAP NetWeaver. This level of detail is not necessary to know how to use the file service. This section was added for completeness and for those readers who want to know this level of detail. If the reader is not so technically inclined, he is suggested to skip to the next section, “How to use the File Service”.

All files in file service, are stored in one single database table, UJF_DOC. This table holds some other attributes about the file as well, such as creation date/time, last time modified date/time, the file’s owner, etc. Most files are stored as “blobs” or binary streams, which are stored in the DOC_CONTENT field (See image on the left in Figure 3). Other files, such as “Data Manager” files, or other data from external systems which are to be loaded into BPC, are stored as generated database tables. In the image on the right in Figure 3, you can see that instead of storing the file data in the DOC_CONTENT field, the name of the generated database table is stored in the DOC_CONTENT_DB field. This acts as a pointer to the data, which is stored line by line, as a string in the generated database table.

Figure 3



The structure of this generated database table includes a row index, and a string field to hold the data as show in Figure 4.

Figure 4

Figure 5 below, shows how the data looks via transaction SE16. Notice the row index column and the row data column which contains the actual data of the file.

Figure 5



The BPC file service must also provide a hierarchical tree structure exactly the way in which the windows file system is implemented. This allows us to organize the files into specific folders and subfolders. This hierarchical data is stored in the UJF_DOCTREE table. All files and directories are represented here, and each can be determined by the DIR_DOC field. If the value is “F”, then the record represents a file, if the DIR_DOC field value is “D”, then the record represents a directory. The PARENT_DOC field represents which parent directory, that the file or directory belongs to.

Figure 6

One other table which is part of the BPC file service is the UJF_DOCMAP table. This table is used internally by the file service API to determine what specific file paths are defined for a particular module/sub module of the product. For example, all data files for data manager are stored in a specific folder within the file service. So the data manager API would call the file service API, to get the path which is assigned for “DATAFILES”. The data manager API would then replace the %APPSET% and %APP% placeholders with the current values at runtime, and then use that path to manipulate the files in the folder.

Figure 7



How to use the File Service In this section, we will go over some of the features of the UJFS transaction in the BPC product. The functionality provided is basically everything that you would expect from a file system, including uploading, downloading, copying, deleting, etc. We can manipulate the file service from the backend NetWeaver ABAP system via SAP GUI.

Log on to the system, and run transaction UJFS. The initial screen of this transaction allows the user to enter an AppSet name. Only one AppSet’s root directory can be displayed at a time. Enter an AppSet name and click the “Execute” button.

Figure 8

Creating a Directory

The “Create Directory” function allows the user to create a new folder or directory at any place of the hierarchical tree structure. Right click on any folder within the structure, and select “Create Directory”. A dialog is presented which allows the user to enter the name of the directory. Enter the name of the new folder, and click the green check mark to continue.

Figure 9

The new directory will then be created in the appropriate folder. Folders and files are displayed in alphabetical order and the names use all lowercase characters in this user interface.

Figure 10



Changing a Directory

The “Change Directory” function allows the user to move the selected folder to a different location in the folder/file structure. This function can also be used to rename a particular directory as well. All files and subfolders of the directory will be reassigned to the new directory. Right-click on the specific directory or folder name, and choose “Change Directory”. A dialog is presented which allows the user to enter the new name of the directory path. The full path is required here, as the user can assign the folder to a totally different directory path, as well as change the folder name. Enter the path, and click the green checkmark to continue.

Figure 11

The result is the folder has been renamed, and the file structure is refreshed, with the new name showing in alphabetical order.

Figure 12



Copying a Directory

The “Copy Directory” function allows the user to copy a folder and its contents, including subfolders and files, to another folder with a new name. Right-click on the specific directory or folder name and choose “Copy Directory”. A dialog is presented which allows the user to enter the directory path. Here it is also important to specify the full directory path, since the user can copy a folder to any node of the directory structure. Enter the path, and click the green checkmark to continue.

Figure 13

The result is the folders contents have been copied to a new folder with a new folder name.

Figure 14

Downloading All Documents

The “Download All Documents” function allows the user to download all documents, subfolders, and documents of those subfolders as a ZIP file, all at one time. This function does not support files which had been uploaded as “Data Manager” documents. Right-click on a folder and choose “Download All Documents”. Choose whether to include all sub-folders, or not. The user will then be presented with a “File Save” dialog where he can specify the file path, and file name in which to save the zip file. Enter the name of the zip file and click “Save” to save the document to the PC.



Figure 15

The result is that all files and subfolders of the selected folder have been downloaded to a zip file. Only subfolders that actually have contents will be included in the ZIP file. There always needs to be at least one physical file in the bottom most folder of a structure in order for the ZIP utility to create the nodes correctly in the ZIP file.

Figure 16



Deleting a Directory

The “Delete Directory” function allows the user to delete a folder from the directory structure, including all subfolders and files. Right-click on the specific directory or folder name and choose “Delete Directory”. The user will then be asked to confirm the deletion with a dialog box. Choose “Yes” to continue.

Figure 17

The result is the folder is now removed from the directory structure. All files and subfolders under that folder have also been removed.

Figure 18

Uploading a Document

There are actually four different options when uploading a document to the BPC file service. All of them basically do the same thing, but a little differently.

• Upload Document from PC – this function will present the user with a “File Open” dialog in which he can specify which file is to be uploaded from the presentation layer, or PC. The file will then be stored in file service as a “blob” or binary stream.

• Upload Document from FTP – this function will present the user with a dialog to enter the URL of the FTP document which is to be uploaded. The file will then be stored in file service as a “blob” or binary stream. The FTP site must be accessible by the NetWeaver application server.

• Upload Document for DM (Data Manager) - this function will present the user with a “File Open” dialog in which he can specify which file is to be uploaded from the presentation layer, or PC. In this case, the data from the file will be stored in a generated database table, row by row instead of being stored as a binary stream. The file must be a delimited text file, for example, a .csv or .txt file.

• Upload Document from FTP for DM (Data Manager) - this function will present the user with a dialog to enter the URL of the FTP document which is to be uploaded. Again, the data from the file will be stored in a generated database table, row by row instead of being stored as a binary stream.



The file must be a delimited text file, for example, a .csv or .txt file. The FTP site must be accessible by the NetWeaver application server.

Right-click on the directory or folder name where the file is to be uploaded to, and select one of the upload functions described above. As mentioned earlier, depending on which function is chosen, the next dialog will be different. If FTP related, then the dialog box to enter the URL will be shown, otherwise, the PC “File Open” dialog is presented. Specify the path to the file, and either click “Open” to continue or the green checkmark to continue.

Figure 19

The result is the file has been uploaded to file service in the specific directory.

Figure 20



Renaming a Document

The “Rename Document” function allows the user to rename a specific document in the directory structure. Right-click on the specific document and choose “Rename Document”. A dialog is presented which allows the user to enter the new name of the document. Only enter the name of the document here, the full path is NOT required. Enter the new document name, and click the green checkmark to continue.

Figure 21

The result is the file is renamed using the new name.

Figure 22



Copying a Document

The “Copy Document” function allows the user to copy the document either to the same folder, or to a totally different folder within the AppSet root structure. Right-click on the specific document and choose “Copy Document”. A dialog is presented which allows the user to enter the name of the copied document. Again, here the user must specify the full path, since he can copy the document to any part of the structure. Enter the full path, and click the green checkmark to continue.

Figure 23

The result is the file has been copied with the new name.

Figure 24



Locking a Document

The “Lock Document” function allows the user to set a lock on a particular document. Right-click on the document and choose “Lock Document”. This will set a lock flag in the document record in UJF_DOC. The document will then show as locked with the corresponding icon.

Figure 25

Unlocking a Document

The “Unlock Document” function allows the user to release a lock on a particular document. This functionality could be very useful if a BPC user’s client session crashes, and an administrator needs to “unlock” a document which had been locked by that user. Right-click on a locked document and choose “Unlock Document”. This will clear a lock flag in the document record. The document will then show with its normal corresponding icon.

Figure 26



Downloading a Document

There are two different options when downloading a document from the BPC file service.

• Download Document to PC – this function will present the user with an option to zip the document before downloading and throw a “File Save” dialog box in which he can specify where the file is to be downloaded to on the presentation layer, or PC.

• Download Document for DM (Data Manager) - this function will present the user with a “File Save” dialog in which he can specify where the file is to be downloaded to on the presentation layer, or PC. Only files that had been saved as “Data Manager” documents can be downloaded as “Data Manager” documents. An error will occur if the user tries to download a document which has been stored as a “blob” when using this option. The option to zip the file before downloading is not supported with this download function.

Right-click on the document name, and select one of the download functions described above. At the “File Save” dialog, choose a directory where the file is to be downloaded and specify the name. Make sure to type the name of the file correctly, including the correct file extension. If the zip option had been selected previously, the extension may be omitted. Otherwise, make sure to include the name, and its explicit file extension. Click “Save”.

Figure 27



Deleting a Document

The “Delete Document” function allows the user to delete a document from a folder or directory. Right-click on a document and choose “Delete Document”. The user will then be asked to confirm the deletion with a dialog box. Choose “Yes” to continue.

Figure 28

The result is the document is now removed from the folder.

Figure 29



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