Google Chromageddon

June 5, 2019 is a day that will live in infamy for SAP BusinessObjects administrators. It was the date that Google released version 75 of its Chrome browser to the public. And in an instant, nearly every version of SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence stopped working.

Experienced SAP BusinessObjects administrators will remember the Javageddon crisis of 2013 (see my related article, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste). In some ways, Google Chromageddon was even worse. With Javageddon, something bad was going to happen in the future so there was time to plan around it. Chromageddon happened without warning and the help desk calls from users started pouring in.

Kudos to SAP for their response. The issue was documented in SAP KB 2801734 (Web Intelligence document hangs or displays no data when opened from Google Chrome version) and a workaround appeared shortly after. And SAP KB 2801625 (Web Intelligence document hangs or displays no data when opened from Google Chrome version 75.0.3770.80) charted the progress of fixes for SAP BI 4.2 SP5, SP6, and SP7, all of which have all been released.

The problem was apparently a pain for more than just Web Intelligence users, as Google halted the rollout of Chrome 75 (see related Chrome Unboxed article, Google Halts Rollout of Chrome 75). Some Web Intelligence customers were going through frantic patch cycles when Google released Chrome 76, which magically resolved Web Intelligence problems without patching. So life goes on and Google intends to release Chrome 77 on September 10 (see Google Chrome Platform Status page).

I’m not entirely sure what we’ve learned from this episode, other than the success of our BI platforms does not rest with SAP alone. The other lesson we’re learning is that we used to live in a world where Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) was the preferred browser for the corporate desktop. We now live in a world where Google Chrome is currently the best browser for SAP analytics customers, with Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox gunning for second place (see my related article, Which browser is best for SAP Analytics?). And this week, Microsoft put their Google Chromium revision of the Edge browser into beta (see Microsoft’s Edge Insider site). If your users still rely on IE, it’s definitely time to work with your organization’s desktop support team to insure better and modern browsers are available to your users.

Resources

What was your organization’s response to Google Chromageddon? Share a comment below.

Dallas Marks

Dallas Marks

I am an analytics and cloud architect, author, and trainer. An AWS certified blogger, SAP Mentor Alumni and co-author of the SAP Press book SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: The Comprehensive Guide, I prefer piano keyboards over computer keyboards when not blogging or tweeting.

One thought on “Google Chromageddon

  1. Dallas – Perfect title for your post. It was truly a massive challenge when suddenly with no warning WebI was no longer working. No errors messages. Just hanging. Here at SAP it certainly was a huge problem as some key reporting environments still rely on BusinessObjects as we continue our migration toward SAC. Vendor managed software updates seem like nirvana until something like this happens.

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