SAP BW Connector not working with new Desktop version 2.37.4464.361 64-bit (July 2016)

[fmazzoleni]

Hi all,

I just installed the new Power BI Desktop version 2.37.4464.361 and the SAP BW Connector is giving error

All Netweaver library are present and If I go back to the prior version 2.36 everything works.

Did anybody experience the same issue?

Thanks-

[fmazzoleni]

I found my issue. I didn't have the SAP RFC Library files installed on my laptop. (folder nwrfcsdk\lib under SAP). Once I installed them and added the path under SystemPropertiesAdvanced in Windows it worked for me

[Sokon]

Can you please specify what exactly needs to be installed? File names and/or SAP Portal search terms are greatly appreciated. The provided information "SAP Netweaver library" or "SAP Client Tools" don't seem to be specific enough for our SAP guys to find what I need. 😞

[fmazzoleni]

Here is the folder and the file I installed:

Then into cmd.exe  SystemPropertiesAdvanced-->Advanced-->Enviroment Variables I added the lib path into the Path session.

Hope this helps

[Sokon]

Thanks for the response! I probably need that information later on, but I am not even there yet. Our SAP guys look into SAP service market place and can't find the needed software to install.

The information i provided was: "Look for something called 'SAP NetWeaver library (32-bit or 64-bit)', 'SAP client tools', SAP Netweaver RFC', or 'SAP Netweaver driver'. The reason they can't find anything could be that the market place, in our case, is in german language. Nevertheless, i think there must be a precise name or ID by which one can find in the portal what is needed.

[Anonymous]

This was a frustration for us as well....especially since we were using the Preview feature (which used the old LIBRFC32.DLL) before.

I just got this working this morning.  64-bit here.

The item you need to get your SAP BASIS folks to download for you is:  SAP NW RFC SDK 7.20 - Patch 40.
Get them to search for SAP NW RFC SDK.

They'll need to download the SAR file , and then expand it using SAP's "SAPCAR" utility (basically ZIP, except SAP needed to brand it themselves).  The result will be a nwrfcsdk folder which contains the SAP Netweaver RFC SDK.

Put this nwrfcsdk folder into C:\Program Files\sap

Then update your PATH enviroment variable with C:\Program Files\sap\nwrfcsdk\lib

IMPORTANT NOTE: if you are upgrading from the version of PowerBI where SAP BW connectivity was a "preview feature", you'll need to REMOVE the old librfc32.dll from your C:\Windows\system32.  Normally, C:\Windows\System32 appears earlier in the PATH, so if you don't remove the DLL, the system will still pick it up before the new version which is at the end of the PATH.

Hope this is helpful.

[Sokon]

We finally made it. Mainly because @Anonymous's instructions - thank you a lot!

Additionally, we collected some more information on that subject - hope that helps others as well:

• Here is a Link to SAP with installation instructions for NW RFC SDK.
• You must add the path to the LIB-folder to the Path-Variable, not the one they mention on the SAP Website. (%ProgramFiles%\SAP\nwrfcsdk\lib)
• In my last post i added a screenshot showing files with strange endings - the reason is a corruput or wrong file from SAP. The SAP guys simply downloaded the sources a second time... If you have files like this you need another source - there must be DLLs according to the screenshots postet from others before. Check it!

[okalandia]

GREAT!!!! was Very helpfull !!!!

Tnks!!Tnks!!Tnks!!Tnks!!Tnks!!

[Sokon]

Thanks for your detailed information. Sadly, we didn't succeed. When we unzip the SAR file, we get a bunch of files with strange endings and the lib folder's content looks quite different from the screenshot in the earlier post of this thread:

SAP BW

I was expecting some DLLs - am i wrong? Any hints?

[dragos_oprisan]

Hi Folks,

I am using SAP Net Weaver 7.3 and BW client tools and I installed Power Bi Desktop version 2.39.4526.362 32-bit (September 2016).

NOTE: I installed previously Power BI Desktop July version but without using much or testing the BW connectivity.

Then I followed this thread, downloaded & installed NW RFC_60-20000067.SAR & applied all the notes presented in this topic.

Still, I cannot connect to SAP BW from Power BI Desktop. Here is the error message:

 

Any pieces of advise left ?

Dragos

[kotians]

Quick clarification, copy the entire folder (\nwrfcsdk) into the directory and it will work.  For example:  C:\Program Files\Microsoft Power BI Desktop\bin\nwrfcsdk

I also updated the environment path to point the LIB folder under this location :  C:\Program Files\Microsoft Power BI Desktop\bin\nwrfcsdk\lib

[Anonymous]

One other thing we ran into connecting to BW:

- we couldn't connect to our BW instance via SAP Gateway.  We had to directly connect to one of the BW servers in our landscape specifically.

[jonsnowboard]

I have the same issue. I have tried with 32 and 64 bit versions of Power BI desktop with no success. I am going back to the previous version of the desktop tool for now.

[tristanstcyr]

What versions of the tools do you have installed. Can you make sure that you have the latest ones (v7.40)? Other than that, did you make sure that the Netweaver components are selected in the installation?

Thanks,

Tristan