1632820 - How to debug and trace Xcelsius dashboards connected to a web service

Symptom

When creating complex dashboards with Xcelsius, sometimes it's necessary to analyze and debug the behavior of the dashboard at runtime.

In order to trace and capture the information produced by the Adobe Flash Player on the computer where the dashboard is displayed follow the instructions below.

Environment

Adobe Flash Player 10x or above

Resolution

On the computer where the dashboard is displayed, download and install the debug version of Adobe Flash Player from the Adobe website.
Download both options - the ActiveX (for Internet Explorer) and projector content debugger.
Once installed, configure the Flash Player trace logging as follows:
Create the configuration file mm.cfg (using notepad or another text editor) in the user’s home directory (eg: %HOMEDRIVE%\%HOMEPATH% ). Usually on windows 7 it is at C:\Users\<Windows Logon Id without domain>, but if you type %HOMEDRIVE%\%HOMEPATH% in a command window or the run box of the start menu should take you to the proper location for the location of the file.
In the mm.fg file add two lines as follows:

ErrorReportingEnable=1

TraceOutputFileEnable=1

Save the mm.cfg file.
Connect to the swf file using IE (can be on the server or desktop.. probably best to connect to the deployed version on BPC server so there are no cross domain issues)
Run the dashboard until the symptom occurs. Note the log file will get cleared each flash player session, so it’s best to run the swf until the symptom occurs, then make a copy of the log files immediately.
The log files will be located in one of these directories: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\Logs on computers running Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP or C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\Logs on computers running Windows Vista/7.
The log files where the information is captured are Flashlog.txt and policyfiles.txt (double check they contain log information).

Note:

This method does not apply to BI 4.0 FP03 dashboards. The reason is that in BI 4.0 Dashboards FP03 and above, the Flex SDK was upgraded to Flex4.0. In Flex4.0, a new compiling parameter (omit-trace-statements) was introduced to disable output trace statements. The default value for this parameter is true. As a result, the trace log won’t be created.

By special request, customers requiring tracing of the dashboards for troubleshooting purposes should open an case with and request special debugging binaries from the development team.

Keywords

Xcelsius, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboard Design, SAP Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Add-In, debugging, complex dashboards, dashboard connection, web services error , KBA , EPM-BPC-MS , Microsoft Version , How To

Product