Technical Architecture biExport for SAC

This blog post shall explain the technical architecture of biExport, as well as the communication taking place between the user’s client, biExport service, SAC and (optionally) Live Connection systems.

The biExport solution in general consists of two parts:

1. The biExport Widget that is installed in SAP Analytics Cloud (left side).
2. The biExport Service, which can be either used as a cloud service or installed on premise (upper right side).

The biExport Service itself is an installation of open bi (see openbi.info for details), which is enhanced by the biExport Plugin for SAC. Open bi provides all core functionality such as scheduling, document generation, a web server and interfaces to mail servers and e.g. sharepoint. The biExport Plugin provides the SAC specific logic, such as Widget recognition, table parsing and background execution.

The communication between the components will now be explained in detail for three different setups.

Download export of the current view

In the simple scenario, the end user runs an SAC report in the web browser. When the export button is clicked…

1. An https request is triggered, which transfers the current HTML and SAC meta information to the biExport Service end point.
2. The biExport Service parses the HTML and applies the export properties set for the report.
3. The biExport Service generates the document in the requested format.
4. The biExport Service returns the document to the end user.

Export current view & store it

As an alternative to sending the document back to the user, the export can be configured to be send the document to a mail recipient, to save it to Sharepoint, etc. In this case, the sequence is alightly altered:

1. An https request is triggered, which transfers the current HTML and SAC meta information to the biExport Service end point.
2. The biExport Service parses the HTML and applies the export properties set for the report.
3. The biExport Service generates the document in the requested format and publishes it on the selected Output Channel.
4. The biExport Service returns a success message to the end user.

Briefing Books & Scheduling

biExport can also collect different views of the same report during the export process. The views can then be presented in one document, or a separate document for each view can be generated.

The different views are not selected at the frontend, but during the export process on the server side. The advantages of this are clear:

1. The user can continue working
2. Much less error-prone than remote controlling the user’s web browser
3. Centralized logic that can easily be monitored and updated

In this scenario the sequence is as follows:

1. An https request is triggered, which transfers the SAC meta information to the biExport Service end point.
2. The biExport Service executes the different views of the selected report on SAC. For this, biExport can use either an oAuth re-entry token or SSO. While oAuth is the best choice for Import Models, SSO should be used in combination with Live Connections that collect data from source systems.
3. The biExport Service generates the document in the requested format and publishes it on the selected Output Channel.
4. The biExport Service returns a success message to the end user.