Time outs

I recently changed setting in web.xml for all apps to be 60 from 20, and interestingly enough the timeout was increased to somewhere between 80 and 150 min. Does anyone have any insight into this? Anyone ever really tested this out?

A client asked me how to get the version number for their BOE installation. I did the most obvious thing I could think of. Logged into the CMC and clicked on "About" I saw something that looked like this (highlighting is my own):

I had to go searching to "Settings" to get the information I needed:


TADA the REAL version number. For those of you who may not be so familiar 11 is "XI" and 12 is "XI 3.x" the following two is for the service pack and then the 1 is the fix pack. Therefore I am using BusinessObjects XI 3.1 SP2 FP 1. Easy right?

Excel Not Opening Things

For some reason when Xcelsius installs it screws with the Excel options. Specifically double clicking on Excel files NOT opening. Interestingly enough this is a well documented problem. Here's a reference on BOB concerning Xcelsius. Here's another slightly outdated one from a Microsoft blog.

Crystal Reports from a Universe

My current project is to build a universe and a Crystal Report on top of it. Any suggestions? Is this a good idea? Or is it better to rebuild the table structure in Crystal itself? The clients hope is to have a "pixel perfect" report as well as a universe to do some ad hoc reporting on top of it. There should also be a lot of fun OpenDoc calls in this short little project.

LCM Universe Connection Change

Problem: User has a test database and a production data base and Business Objects instances. They need to use LCM to migrate the universe from one environment to another. Is it possible? What is the best practice?

Answer: YES!  The connection should have the same name in both places even though the connection behind it will be different. Make sure you map the connection as well in LCM in the promotion screen. Remember to beware of LCM unmapping!