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SAP BW Complete Course

Here is the list of all posts labeled under SAP BW and you can browse all the topics here below.

Components of data ware house

How to construct data ware house?

How to get better performance with data ware house?

Data ware house building strategies

Data flow in SAP BW

Sample SAP BW report

SAP BW third party solutions

How to log on to SAP BW admin. environment

How to start SAP BW project ?

Data flow between SAP and BW

Activating BW business componets part one and two and three

Preparing SAP for BW

Preparing SAP for SAP BW

After installing the BW add-on in the SAP R/3 OLTP instance, we need to define the remote logon connection in SAP R/3 OLTP for the SAP BW instance. This is a five-step process for the SAP BW 1.2B add-on, as outlined here:

Create an ALE user, transaction SU01, to be used for remote logon to SAP BW from SAP R/3 OLTP. Make sure that this user, usually ALEREMOTE, has sufficient authorizations for the RFC and ALE components, as described in the installation guide. The ALE user must have profile S_BI-WX_RFC. This profile consists of sub-profiles such as B_ALE_ALL, S_APPL_LOG_A, S_IDOC_ALL, and S_RS_ALL.
Set up a logical system name for SAP BW. The logical system is used by SAP R/3 to connect the SAP BW instance for data transfer. To set up a logical system name on SAP R/3 OLTP, run transaction SM30 and edit table V_TBDLS. Create a new entry for the SAP BW logical name, such as XDWCLNT100.
Assign SAP BW client to the logical system name. Here you associate SAP BW client to a logical name. Using transaction SM30, edit table T000 and add entry.
Define an RFC destination for SAP BW. In Steps 1 and 2, you simply defined a logical system name and associated it to an SAP BW client, but you cannot connect to the remote SAP BW instance. This is because you have not defined the network-level information for such communication links. To make this happen, you need to define an RFC destination in SAP R/3 OLTP for SAP BW using transaction SM59. Here the DEST is your system logical name defined in Step 1, XDWCLNT100, and the connection type is 3; enter the IP address and other user information to log on. Select the Test Connection and Remote Logon options to make sure that you can access the remote BW instance. If the Test Connection option fails, check to make sure that SAP R/3 and SAP BW are on the network, that SAP BW is running, that both have the correct network configuration, and that both servers are visible on the network. Check with your networking support team to resolve these issues.
Verify the workflow basic setting. Run transaction SWU3 and create the workflow basic setting. Click the AutoCustomize menu option to verify that the workflow setting for SAP BW components is set properly, as shown below on SAP R/3 version 3.1H. Remember that only the Workflow runtime system needs to be confirmed here. Verify that the results show a green check mark or traffic lights for the following items:

An active plan version exists
RFC Destination Workflow
Workflow runtime customizing complete

Activating business content in SAP part three

SAP BW activacting business content part three

This part is in continuation with activation of SAP BW business content part one and two.

Loading Queries for the InfoCubes from the Business Content

To actually use an InfoCube for business analysis, you need queries. Four types of Query objects are provided in SAP BW business content:

REP: Query
STR: Templates
CKF: Calculated Key Figures
VAR: Variables

A REP is a complete query that is ready to perform an analytical function; for example, Sales Analysis by Geography. Moreover, REP-type queries are formatted specifically to customer needs.

The query template STR is simply a raw definition of a query to fetch data from an InfoCube. Because these templates are generic, they are not very sophisticated in terms of query formats and restrictions. These are used to quickly build queries for end users.

A query consists of several elements. Calculated Key Figures, CKF, and Variables, VAR, serve a unique role in query logic. The CKF are used to define a new key figure based on some existing key figures or by means of formulas. Calculated Key Figures can be defined at the InfoCube level or within a query.

If Calculated Key Figures need to be used by many queries or users, define them at the InfoCube level. You do this because when a key figure is defined in a query, it is limited to that specific query. However, when you define it at an InfoCube level, it is available to all users.

Calculated Key Figures in SAP BW queries are used to compute values for new data elements. For example, a new key figure sales tax is calculated based on an order taxable amount multiplied by the tax rate. However, the Variables, VAR, defined in SAP BW queries, are most often used to filter data for the queries.

Sometimes such variables are also used in formulas for Calculated Key Figures. For example, if you want to select data for a specific time period, you can define two variables to hold start and end dates for that selection criterion. Moreover, begin and end date periods can also be used by a Calculated Key Figure for average sales during that begin and end date period.

SAP BW business content consists of all of the preceding types of query objects for InfoCubes. To activate query objects for a specific InfoCube, select Query Objects from the Business Content menu, and select the query type and the InfoCube. The system displays all available queries. Select all queries and activate, as shown in the figure.

Then activate the Templates, Calculated Key Figures, and Variables associated with each InfoCube.

Activating Channels

Channels are primary components of the SAP BW information delivery model. Channels are based on information objects, such as queries, that are managed within the InfoCatalog. To use SAP delivered channels, select Channels from the Business Content menu.

Select Channels from the Technical Name list, as shown in figure below. In this example, I selected 0SD_CH01, Sales and Distribution Channel to copy from the SAP delivered content. After successfully loading the selected channel in SAP BW, verify that InfoCatalog recognizes the added channels. To do so, go back to the Administrator Workbench and click the InfoCatalog icon.

To assign channels to users, click the User channel assignment tabstrip. All users defined in SAP BW are listed on the left under the User tree. All channels defined in the InfoCatalog are shown on the right. To assign channels to users, select a user from the left, then drag and drop to the User-channel assignment folder.

This completes the Business Content activation in the SAP BW instance. It is a very manual process. In SAP BW version 2.0, however, these processes are very much automated. Once you activate a higher level object (for example, an InfoCube), the system automatically activates everything needed to completely build and activate the InfoCube. In SAP BW 1.2A Patch 12, a similar automated process is used to activate the SD Demo InfoCube. (8)

SAP BW Activating Business Content part Two

This post is in continuation with SAP BW activating business content part one . Going through that article first will give you comfort in understanding the present topic.

Enabling Business Content in SAP BW

The enabling of business content is a long process. First you have SAP R/3 instances defined as a data source in SAP BW. Then select object categories one by one, transfer SAP versioned objects to your active client, and, depending on individual object types, construct or verify transfer/communication structures and update rules to populate the InfoCubes. Finally, activate queries and channels associated with an InfoCube.

From the Administrator Workbench, choose Tools. From the drop-down menu, select Business Content. This opens another submenu and displays a list of objects, as shown below.

Activating InfoObjects

To activate InfoObjects for a specific InfoCube, such as the Customer InfoCube, select InfoObjects from the Business Content menu. This launches the InfoObject display screen.

Select all InfoObjects, transfer the SAP delivered version, and save. Then go back to the InfoObject Edit window, select these new InfoObjects, and click the Activate icon. This activates all selected InfoObjects.

After you activate InfoObjects, SAP BW displays an activation report. Make sure that there are no activation errors. If there are, first correct the InfoObjects causing the problems and then activate only the inactive InfoObjects.

InfoObjectCatalogs

After activating the InfoObjects, activate the InfoObjectCatalogs. Select the InfoObject Catalogs option from the Business Content menu. The activation process is similar to activating the InfoObjects, but you select InfoCatalog for characteristic or key figure for individual InfoCubes.

Activating InfoCubes

Business Content (SAP BW 1.2B Patch 12) provides more than 45 InfoCubes . Again, not all customers need to activate all InfoCubes. Most customers will load specific InfoCubes to assess their functionality and enhance the content to meet their needs. You can create new InfoCubes based on SAP BW-provided InfoCubes as templates. Then you remove or add elements as needed to implement your analytical applications.

To activate an InfoCube, select InfoObjects from the Business Content menu, and then select an InfoCube to activate. For example, to activate the SD Customer InfoCube, select 0SD_C01 from the list of available InfoCubes, as shown below.

SAP BW Activating Business Content part one

Objects in SAP BW can have three versions: D, M, and A (delivered, maintained [revised], and active, respectively).

You cannot work directly with D-versioned objects; therefore, you need to make a copy of D-versioned objects in your active client and then modify as needed. The business content activation process consists of the following steps:

Transfer SAP-delivered content to the active client.
Make changes as needed.
Activate objects.

SAP BW business content consists of several InfoObjects, InfoSources, InfoCubes, transfer/update rules, queries, and channels. It takes several hours to activate hundreds of objects in the SAP BW data dictionary and SAP BW specific tables that you may not really need.

There is no need to activate the entire business content all at once. Instead, activate only those objects required to build a specific InfoCube, queries, and channels to implement your current requirements. For example, if you are implementing a sales analysis InfoCube for Customers, activate all objects ranging from InfoObjects through the channels needed for the Customer InfoCube and skip the rest.

Business content consists of complete, ready-to-run business analytical applications-data extracts, InfoSources, InfoCubes, queries, and solutions.

For example, if you activate Customer, Invoices, Billing and Orders InfoCubes and associated queries and reports. Soon after loading data in SAP BW, business analysts are ready to do typical business analysis, such as revenue analysis by customers, products, sales areas, and planned versus actual cost analysis.

The order in which business content objects are activated is important :

InfoObjects
InfoObject catalogs
InfoSources
InfoCubes
Update procedures
Query objects
Channels

Preparing the SAP BW Instance for Business Content

First, you need to pull configuration information about a source SAP R/3 OLTP instance. This requires the following steps:

Verify that the SAP BW add-on has been installed on the Source SAP R/3 instance.
Create the Source SAP R/3 OLTP System in SAP BW .
Update metadata for InfoSources from the source system .
Transfer exchange rates from the source system to SAP BW; this is shown in figure. The system prompts for exchange rates and update mode for the exchange rate-a new exchange rate or an update to an existing exchange rate in SAP BW.
SAP BW leverages business rules available in SAP R/3 instances that can be used to process information in SAP BW. These exchange rates are used to perform currency conversion calculations at the transfer, communication, and update rules level. Moreover, currency conversion rules can be used within SAP BW Business Explorer to dynamically convert multi-currency figures to a standardized currency.

We have to transfer the global settings, as shown infigure below. You have the choice of transferring all currencies, units of measure, and fiscal variants defined in the SAP R/3 data source instance. This saves you some time by loading global settings automatically instead of defining them manually in SAP BW.

SAP BW uses the pull model to pull needed data from its data sources. Data extraction from within SAP BW shall be scheduled. SAP BW sends data extract requests to the appropriate data sources. The OLTP system collects/extracts and transports requested data to SAP BW. SAP BW loads its data in its data stores.

SAP BW staging engine needs to know full metadata and data content definitions (structures) from its SAP R/3 data source (extraction engine layer). This is achieved by importing metadata from the source SAP R/3.

The SAP BW specific content and environment setup process in SAP R/3 is very similar to the SAP R/3 OLTP release upgrade. To verify that the SAP R/3 OLTP instance is properly upgraded with the SAP BW add-on, list table AVERS using transaction SE16. It must list BW-BCT, as shown .

SAP provides several transports to load business content in SAP R/3. The actual number of transports varies based on your SAP R/3 version (3.0D through 4.6B) and the SAP BW version . These upgrade programs load objects in SAP R/3 for SAP BW data extractors in terms of database tables, InfoObject definitions, Extract structures, Extract programs, and other programs needed to build and set up data extraction schemes for SAP BW.

Metadata Management in SAP OLTP

After installing business content in SAP R/3, we need to create a logical system name using transaction SM59 for SAP R/3 instance as a data source. We will use this instance logical name to connect SAP BW to SAP R/3. Transaction SM59 requires special user privileges. In the SAP R/3 OLTP environment, the basis administrator usually has privileges to create logical system names.In the SAP BW development environment, a few SAP BW developers may require Basis-level privileges to define logical system names for data sources.Metadata is stored in several tables, both in SAP BW and SAP R/3.

Table RODIOBJ contains metadata for all InfoObjects in the source system defining its associated key figures, characteristics, time, and unit of measure in tables RODKYF, RODCHA, RODTIM, and RODUNI, respectively. Table RODIOBJCMP contains only the compounded InfoObjects associated with an InfoObject for the source system.

After defining a source system and testing RFC level connections to the source system, you are ready to load metadata for InfoSources and other SAP BW specific objects defined in SAP R/3. Click the Source systems tabstrip. Expand the Source systems tree, and then right-click the Source System you want to load metadata from.

After updating metadata in SAP BW, go to the InfoSources and InfoObjects tabstrips. Expand the respective object trees. Many new entries are now listed as a result of the metadata update. You need this metadata before activating predefined SAP business content such as InfoSources, transfer rules, communication structures, update rules, InfoCubes, queries, key performance indicators, and channels.

For non-SAP R/3 data sources, first you define a data source in SAP BW for a flat file. Then depending on the content of the flat file, you may create a new InfoSource for master or transaction data.

If the flat file contains master data, it must have only one type of master data InfoObject. In other words, from one file you cannot load master data for customers and material.

Data ware house building statagies

Components of data ware house

Construction of data ware house

How to get better performace with data ware house?

How to start SAP BW Project ?

Data Warehouse development methodologies :

1.Top-Down Approach

The top-down approach is usually business driven, meaning that the data warehouse is a corporate directive. It has full support, business and financial, from senior management of a company, who has a clear understanding of what to expect from a data warehouse. The hardest part of top-down methodology is that all business organizations have to agree on a common set of Key Performance Indicators and other analytical key measurements needed to make tactical and strategic business decisions.

The benefit of this approach is that you have full corporate-level sponsorship to implement a data warehouse. However, in a corporate-wide initiative, the initial scope of what to implement can be very broad. Also, it will take a long time before end users actually see the value of a data warehouse.

Bottom-Up Approach

The bottom-up approach has been the most common way of implementing data marts. In this case, either a business manager or a department manager steps up to launch a data warehouse project with full financial support. This approach has several advantages: limited scope of what to implement, control over what to analyze, and easier rollout at a department level.

The problem with this approach is that the implementation scope is very limited. The implementation is not visible at the corporate level and carries with it typical data-mart-related issues, such as inconsistent enterprise-wide data definitions and supporting technologies.

Hybrid Approach-SAP Approach

SAP proposes a hybrid approach for BW that takes advantage of the top-down and bottom-up methodologies.The corporate directive is one key feature of the top-down methodology. Here individual department business drivers can exploit SAP BW technology to implement a specific, business-focused data mart solution .These data marts do not become obsolete when a corporate-wide initiative is launched; instead, they become an integral component of the corporate information supply chain. The SAP Accelerated SAP (ASAP) methodology for BW is a hybrid of the top-down and bottom-up approaches in implementing data warehouses.

Initial Assessment-Making a Case for SAP BW

Initially, we have to limit the scope of an SAP BW project to one of the common business process areas, such as Sales and Distribution, Financial Accounting and Material Management, or Human Resources. Draft a project charter that articulates the value of SAP BW in terms of its data analysis flexibil ity, speed, manageability, and information delivery. Present a case for SAP BW to your senior management. Get commitment from a high-level business sponsor before doing further SAP BW project-detailed scoping.

The SAP BW project scope outlines what data analysis functionality will be delivered.Data analysis and reporting needs are classified in the following groups:

Operational Reporting : Requires real-time state-of-business operations, such as overdue orders, orders on hold, or released sales orders at the time of inquiry. These types of inquiries are very much transaction-centric.

Management Reporting and Analysis : Business managers or business analysts define what that time period should be and for what data set. This could be daily, weekly, or monthly.the management reporting and data analysis are subject-centric, such as sales, finance, and human resources.

Enterprise-Wide Reporting: Covers a broad range of data analysis needs across several subject areas spanning several years of data. Here, analysts and data-mining experts explore large amounts of data for strategic planning.(5.1)

Data ware house building statagies

Components of data ware house

Construction of data ware house

How to get better performace with data ware house?

How to log on SAP BW Admin. Env.

SAP R/3 and SAP BW share the same BASIS technology. SAP BW is installed as a separate instance. SAP R/3 and SAP BW cannot coexist on one database instance. Usually, the system administrator might configure one or more application servers to log on to SAP BW. The SAP BW administrator creates a logon account for you based on your role in the organization and SAP BW usage.

SAP user interface, SAPGUI, software is needed to make a connection to SAP BW for administration and to design data warehouse objects Along with the SAPGUI frontend, Microsoft Office 97 and special SAP BW frontend components are installed on the SAP BW developer and end-user workstation. After the SAPGUI installation, the system administrator sets up logon properties needed to connect the SAP BW instance from your workstation.

Depending on network and SAP BW server activity, the SAP BW startup screen might stay on the screen for a while until connection to SAP BW is established. SAP BW then sends a message back to the end user's workstation and displays the SAP BW session logon window requesting user log on information as shown below.

To complete the logon session to SAP BW, you need a client, user name, and password. SAP BW security administration staff assigns you this information based on your SAP BW interactions. Enter client, user name, and password information in the SAP BW user logon screen, as shown and Language entry is optional. SAP BW supports multiple languages. If you do not enter a language key, the default language is used. In figure below , the user is BWUSER, logged under client 100, and the selected language is English (EN). After entering this information, press the Enter key or double-click the check mark located in the upper-left corner of the logon screen.

When you log on to SAP BW for the first time, you are immediately prompted to change your password. You are asked for your initial and new password. Enter your old and new password and click OK. SAP BW confirms if your new password is valid and accepted.

SAP R/3 supports multiple clients within one instance, such as training, development, and testing. This is possible in SAP R/3 because all entities, except master data objects, are client dependent.

In SAP BW, you cannot have multiple clients because SAP BW data objects are client independent. Client 000 in SAP BW is reserved for SAP internal usage. One additional active client is defined for the rest of the SAP BW activities. The reason for a client-independent environment in SAP BW is that a data warehouse holds and shares information across all business units, organizations, or legal entities of an enterprise as well as data that does not belong to any organization such as industry business performance benchmarks and Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

Data consistency is another reason for having one single client in SAP BW. You need consistent business rules regardless of who owns the transaction data. Having clients in SAP BW will restrict or add complexity in data navigation and management across multiple clients and will introduce data quality problems.