Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Applies to:
SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3. For more information, visit the SAP NW BW 730
Summary
This paper presents a sneak peek into the major enhancements and upgrades with SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NETWEAVER BW) 7.3, which is evolving to a fully In-Memory enabled Enterprise Data Warehouse. Author: Ashish Tewari
Author Bio
Ashish Tewari is currently working with Deloitte. He is a Business Intelligence Solution Consultant (NetWeaver 2004) with 4 years of experience in SAP BW space.
Table of Contents
SAP NetWeaver BW Evolution and product positioning ................................................................................. 3 Overview Evolution of SAP BW/BI ............................................................................................................. 3 Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms ....................................................................................................... 3 Forrester Wave: Enterprise BI Platforms, Q4 10 ........................................................................................ 4 Efficiency of BI Platforms ................................................................................................................................ 5 SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 Overview .................................................................................................................. 6 Introducing SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 .............................................................................................................. 6 SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 Overview ............................................................................................................ 6 SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 Investment in future ................................................................................................. 7 Major benefits of SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 are: .............................................................................................. 7 Performance and Scalability ........................................................................................................................... 7 Semantic partitioning....................................................................................................................................... 7 Development efficiency: .................................................................................................................................. 8 Graphical UI .................................................................................................................................................... 8 Real-time BI .................................................................................................................................................... 9 Data Staging ................................................................................................................................................... 9 Improvised data provisioning .......................................................................................................................... 9 ABAP-based Planning Modeler .................................................................................................................... 10 SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator 7.20 New capabilities ............................................................................... 11 SAP BusinessObjects integration with BW ................................................................................................... 11
SAP BusinessObjects Data Services: ........................................................................................................................ 11 Integration with SAP BusinessObjects Metadata Management: ................................................................................ 11
SAP BusinessObjects Data Services ............................................................................................................ 12 Upcoming trends and opportunities .................................................................................................................. 12 To-be approach ............................................................................................................................................. 13 Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 14 Disclaimer and Liability Notice .......................................................................................................................... 15
Growth with time: Enhanced scalability and performance for faster decision making Increased flexibility by further integration with SAP BusinessObjects BI and enterprise information management (EIM) tools Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) and higher development efficiency Simplified configuration and operations SAP NetWeaver BW evolving to a fully In-Memory-enabled enterprise data warehouse (EDW) solution on top of HANA
Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms According to Gartner: SAP supports among the largest deployment in terms of number of end users and data volume. SAP BusinessObjects provide leading-edge capabilities. SAP BWA continues to provide a much needed option for performance and implementation improvement to the SAP installed base of SAP NetWeaver BW Customers.
Forrester Wave: Enterprise BI Platforms, Q4 10 According to Forrester: SAP BusinessObjects believes in and delivers the best BI tool for each job. BWA appliance combines the flexibility of columnar and inverted index databases with the speed of in-memory database to provide a unique and powerful data base management system optimized for BI.
Efficiency of BI Platforms Gartner recommends that if you have not moved to the latest version of your BI platform, do not assume that upgrades will be simple. Research the cost and effort required to migrate.
Increased flexibility by further integration of SAP BusinessObjects BI and EIM tools Tighter integration with SAP BusinessObjects Data Services Tighter Integration with SAP BusinessObjects Metadata Management
Reduced TCO and higher development efficiency Automated data flow design tools Graphical data modeling and best practice data modeling patterns
Simplified configuration and operations Admin Cockpit integrated into SAP Solution Manager Wizard-based system configuration
Performance and Scalability Enhanced modeling capabilities to increase scalability and flexibility and reduce total cost of development Accelerated data loads for DataStore Objects and master data Expanding the data warehouse landscape with support for Teradata and HP Neoview
Semantic partitioning It is a new wizard that guides the user through automated creation of semantic partitions to create scalable data containers. Benefits: Reduced development and maintenance efforts Accelerated EDW implementation Better performance with mass data Better error handling Working with different time zones Improves Query Performance collaborate
Development efficiency: Graphical user interface (UI) for Data Flow Modeling empowers best practice modeling like the BW-Layered Scalable Architecture Graphical Data Flow Modeling Data Flow Templates
Reduced development efforts via automated tool support Data Flow Wizard Data Flow copy tool Data Flow migration tool
Graphical UI Top-down approach to build complex data flows Ability to create a graphic as data flows are built Predefined templates Data Flow Copy tool, Data Flow Migration tool, and Data Flow Wizard
Benefits: Simplified data flow design and modeling Accelerated EDW implementation
Real-time BI HybridProvider is a new InfoProvider that can combine real-time data with historical data. The main objective of HybridProvider is to improve performance and facilitate Real Time Reporting. It combines Mass data stored in BW with latest delta information (through Real-time Data Acquisition / Direct Access) at query runtime.
Benefits: Fast and easy modeling for reporting scenarios that require real-time and historical data.
Data Staging Integration of hierarchies into process flow (Data Transfer Process (DTP), Transformation) DTP supports data extraction from MultiProviders SAP NetWeaver BW data can be exported in XML format Semantic grouping possible in Transformations (in addition to semantic grouping in DTPs) ABAP program for controlled suspension and restarting of all process chains
Additional flexibility within data flow modeling with enhancements to various objects . Improvised data provisioning
Data extraction
Administration I
Administration II
Administration III
Wizard-based system Configuration New Monitors in BW Administration Cockpit Further Enhancements of the technical content
Generic Delta functionalities for further types of DataSources Automatic switch of InfoPackage modes from Init- to Delta Load New DataSource Adapter-Type Web Service Pull
Support of complex development landscapes Data request archiving for DTP requests General search in Data Warehousing Workbench extended Mass Change function for authorizations
Delete content of table holding warehouse managementrelated statistics data Version Management for Metadata objects Integration of BW search into Enterprise Search New tool for structuring, testing, and debugging of Multi-Dimentional Expressions (MDX) Statements
Wizard-based templates for system configuration to reduce TCO Flexible deletion of Persistent Staging Area (PSA) / Change Log Disable delta consistency check for write-optimized DataStore objects Archiving of uncompressed InfoCube data
ABAP-based Planning Modeler Java Stack for Business Explorer Analyzer-based planning applications is not required Nondisruptive customizing of planning objects and their related BW objects
SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator 7.20 New capabilities Taking the BW Accelerator to the next level of performance Analyze BW and any data using the Search and Explore paradigm Optional persistency for InfoCube data in SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator only Introduction of Analytical Index and QueryProvider with SAP NetWeaver BW Ad hoc joins/unions of analytical indexes in SAP NetWeaver BWA
Benefits: Faster access to data in DataStore Objects Enhanced performance related to analytical capabilities Shorter response times leading to faster, more accurate decision making
SAP BusinessObjects integration with BW SAP BusinessObjects Data Services: New Source System type in BW: Data Services with access to Data Services DataStores and generation of metadata and Data Services data flows (i.e., simple dataflow from DataStore to BW DataSource) Tighter integration of BusinessObjects Data Services into extended SAP NetWeaver BW data flow concept
Benefits: Increased flexibility with non-SAP systems Full functionality of an extract, transform, and load ETL tool SAP BusinessObjects Metadata Management
Integration with SAP BusinessObjects Metadata Management: New impact analysis and data lineage capabilities
SAP BusinessObjects Data Services SAP BusinessObjects Data Services is SAPs strategic solution for adding flexibility in extracting non-SAP data. As of today: Data Services to schedule loading processes of SAP NetWeaver BW Execute and control process chains from Data Services to extract data via Open Hub Service
To-be approach This is a time when analytical landscapes are flooded with diverse players and it is becoming difficult to have single vendor sourcing for all reporting solutions. In such times it becomes very important to have a Data Warehousing solution, which provides ease of design, capability of rapid deployment and integration with multiple sources while maintaining performance benchmarks. SAP is investing heavily in performance improvement of its analytical tools and providing new features and functionalities for faster deployment of BW data models. SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 offers additional flexibility and modeling capabilities to highly reduce development efforts and provides the next level of performance via increased usage of SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator for SAP NetWeaver BW objects. On the similar note, Gartner has also recommended that if you have not moved to the latest version of your BI platform, do not assume that upgrades will be simple. Research the cost and effort required to migrate. Organizations, who will be early adaptors of SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3, will be in position to execute value-driven implementation/upgrades for their business users, which leads to greater return of investment from SAPs NetWeaver suite of products.
Forrester Wave evaluation emphasizes on data usage, while giving credit to the data preparation functionality. Data preparation i.e., staging of data is handled in a better way with SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3, which helps in improving performance and reducing implantation difficulties.
Considering all these facts: Organizations should start to evaluate the integration and implementation solutions with experimentation/prototype projects on SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 and request help or the best practices guide available from SAP. Firms should also plan to invest in some form of hardware-based query acceleration, such as the BWA while anticipating HANA offerings, which are also released in market.
Related Content
SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse 7.30 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms Report The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Business Intelligence Platforms Q4 2010