SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.X (BI 4.X) End-to-End Tracing - A GENIE

What is End-to End Tracing?

End-to-End tracing for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x has been not less than a GENIE in several critical circumstances where there was no way out and even SAP Support has not in a position to sail us through the state we and our clients were in.

Few Scenarios...

Before sharing the steps to configure and consume E2E, I would like to highlight a few scenarios where E2E can be utilized:

1. If an unexpected error is observed during execution of Publications.
2. If there is a performance issue with browsing application and/or report execution.
3. If Dashboard based on QAAWS or Live Office or BICS connectivity or Webi/Crystal Report or a Universe connection fails to load or refresh.
4. If any report/dashboard based on Multisource universe fails to load or refresh.
5. Any issue where we have a cluster or distribured deployment and we are unsure of which server could receive request.

There can be several other scenarios which I have missed where E2E tracing can be consumed.

Why E2E?

1. Need not to enable tracing on each and every server/component.
2. Need not to know which components/server should be traced.
3. Consolidated information sorted by time instead of traces being scattered across different log files.
4. Possibility to filter by user, thread etc.

How is this done?