What is the CAST SAP BusinessObjects Extractor?

Background information

CAST AIP has provided support for analyzing SAP BusinessObjects source code via its BO Analyzer (provided out-of-the-box in CAST AIP) for some time now. This "legacy" analyzer requires the following:

• SAP BusinessObjects (the BO Designer module) must be installed on the workstation on which the CAST Management Studio is being run from.
• you must manually define a connection to the SAP BusinessObjects instance on which your Universe files are used - this instance must be available during the analysis process in the CAST Management Studio - this is known as an "online" analysis.

These requirements can sometimes present significant difficulties for the process of on-boarding a SAP BusinessObjects application into CAST AIP. As a direct result of this and wanting to simplify the approach, CAST has developed the SAP BusinessObjects Analyzer as a standalone extension. The extension provides a means to analyze SAP BusinessObjects source code "offline", i.e. no connection to the SAP BusinessObjects instance is required. In addition there is no longer any requirement to have BusinessObjects (the BO Designer module) installed on the workstation on which the CAST Management Studio is being run from.

Where does the SAP BusinessObjects Extractor come into play?

If you want to use the standalone SAP BusinessObjects Analyzer extension to analyze your SAP BusinessObjects source code, you must use the CAST SAP BusinessObjects Extractor first:

• The extractor connects to the SAP BusinessObjects instance and "extracts" the SAP BusinessObjects source code into a format that can be understood by the analyzer provided in the SAP BusinessObjects extension.
• The output of the SAP BusinessObjects Extractor is then fed into the CAST Delivery Manager Tool, packaged and delivered for analysis.

How does the standalone database extractor work?

The standalone database extractor is a command line tool which does not require installation. You can specify:

• the host SAP BusinessObjects instance you want to extract from
• the credentials you want to use to perform the extraction
• the location where you want to save the results

Where can I obtain the SAP BusinessObjects Extractor?

You can obtain the SAP BusinessObjects Extractor from the CAST Product Center - this requires a CAST login.