Issue loading text strings longer than 60 characters from SAP BW

[Anonymous]

Using SAP BW implementation 2.0 connector, anyone else having issue loading text longer than 60 characters from SAP BW?

We are running BW 7.5 and in the HANA database, column is defined as CHAR with length of 250 characters but after loading the column to Power BI Desktop, all we get is the first 60 characters. The 60 character issue has existed in older BW versions but should not be the case with 7.5. Is this a known issue with the implementation 2.0 connector and has someone found a workaround?

Or can someone confirm that they are or are not encountering similar issue?

[kkanda]

I have the same problem and I am working with October 2020 version.

Does anyone know whether this problem is addressed in Feb 2021 version of the Desktop?

[stayup_artist]

We are experiencing the same issue

It was previously commented by MS prod engineers it is SAP issue, but I disagree.  Long text data displayed properly in all SAP applications, but truncated loading to Power BI through the connector.

If an Excel contains long text but truncated when loading into Power BI, I can't blame Excel

If an SQL Server display long text correctly but truncated when loading into Power BI, I can't blame SQL

Please take the ownership of the issue, work with SAP and fix the issue

Thanks,

Rick

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

We had a ticket open for Microsoft regarding this and they studied the issue "with the help of SAP team" for a while. Ticket was solved 2019-09-25.

The conclusion at that time was that as Power BI uses BEx Queries to connect to BW (as do other 3rd party tools, but most SAP tools use different access method), there is a limitation with the character limit and there is no workaround as the limitation is in the MDX technology.

They referred to this kb article https://apps.support.sap.com/sap/support/knowledge/public/en/2096749
and that the same limitation applies to Power BI. BW version did not make a difference.

So at the time, solution would have been to split the data or get it from Hana directly.

[luisDamyller]

any solution to this?

[chrispybacon]

@luisDamyller : 
no, this seemed to be related to the BW connector. Data was showing correctly in the source, but after loading if would cut the string at 60 chars. So as mentioned in above post we split the field on BW side into chunks of 60 and then I concatonated them in Power BI. 

So no real solution, just a workaround 😉

[chrispybacon]

Hello, 

I am expieriencing the same... 
in the end we splited the string into parts of 60, which I then concatonated on the Power BI side.

Br,

Chris

[chrispybacon]

@Anonymous 
I am expiriencing the same issue.... 

I also think that it is related to the connector, as on PBI side this can not be changed at all.

[v-chuncz-msft]

@Anonymous 

To get faster and better technical support for this issue, you may directly create a support ticket.

[stayup_artist]

thank you, but we have done that and the prod engineers came back saying "this is an SAP issue and bye"