How PG&E implemented SAP BIA and did performance tuning
]
Darin Lemos
PG&E
[ ANUP MAHESHWARI
ASUG INSTALLATION MEMBER
MEMBER SINCE: 2008
[ SHERRYANNE MEYER
[ AJAY VONKARERY
ASUG INSTALLATION MEMBER
MEMBER SINCE: 1999
ASUG INSTALLATION MEMBER
MEMBER SINCE: 2000
Bjarne Berg
Director SAP BI
Comerit Inc.
[ Learning Points
 See a practical example from PG&E and
understand what you can expect on your
implementation
 Learn how BI-A works
 Explore benefits and limitations of the
tool
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
2
[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Pacific Gas & Electric Project Overview
 What is SAP BI-A
 Overview
 Building aggregates
 Benefits
 How we implemented BI-A
 Sizing the environment
 Team organization and project plan
 Testing
 BI-A Limitations
 PG&E - Our top-10 Lessons Learned
 Wrap-up
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
3
[
In this session.
 We will look what SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator can—
and cannot—do to optimize dashboard performance.
 Explore how we PG&E planned, and implemented SAP
NetWeaver BI Accelerator.
 Examine performance benchmarks for SAP NetWeaver BI
Accelerator
 Explore the top 10 lessons learned from the project team
and see a sample work plan and an organization chart
from this project as a reference for your own SAP
NetWeaver BI Accelerator initiative…
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
4
[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Pacific Gas & Electric Project Overview
 What is SAP BI-A
 Overview
 Building aggregates
 Benefits
 How we implemented BI-A
 Sizing the environment
 Team organization and project plan
 Testing




BI-A Limitations
PG&E - Our top-10 Lessons Learned
Other Query Performance tricks
Wrap-up
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
5
[
PG&E Company Overview

Pacific Gas and Electric
Company, incorporated in
California in 1905, is one of the
largest combination natural gas
and electric utilities in the United
States.
 There are approximately 20,000
employees who carry provide
natural gas and electric service to
15 million people throughout a
70,000-square-mile service area in
northern and central California.
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
6
[
PG&E Company Overview
 SAP since 1996
 Currently on SAP ERP 4.72, upgrade to ECC 6.0 in 2009
 8,500 users for all back office and field operations
–Finance/Controlling
–HR Org/Benefits/Personnel/Payroll
–Employee Self Service: 20,000 employees; 18,000 retirees
–Manager Self Service
–Supply Chain Management --Materials Management &
Supplier Relationship Management
–Equipment/Work Order Management in Plant Maintenance
–Business Warehouse
 First major go live was a 50,000 person day project in October
2007
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
7
[
PG&E SAP Project Overview
Detailed Design Phase
Roadmap Phase
• Design the foundation for the deployment
of new processes and tools
• Design SAP customizations
• Design training and performance support
• Vision and Strategy
• “To-be” business capabilities
• Build business case for change
Aug 04 - Nov 04
Feb 05 – Oct 05
Nov 05 – Sep 06
Design Phase
• Design Level 1 and Level 2
processes
• Application architecture
• Design “To be” organization
to enable future business
processes and technology
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
Oct 06 –
Foundational Release: Build, Test, and
Deployment Phases
•
•
•
•
•
•
Build Customizations
Build Procedures and Training
Convert master and transactional data
Assembly Test
Product Test
Deployment
8
PG&E Project Scope - EAM WRM
User Appt Availability
Short Cycle
Mobile
Lock appt on schedule
Application for Service
Customer web
application
Customer Billing
System
GIS work initiation
Perform and Close
Account number and budget
information
Work
Management
(PM)
As builts, material reqs,
s’ment rules
Resource
Management and
Scheduling
CATS
HR
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
Employee skills and availability
master data updates
Resource
Management &
Scheduling Tool
(e.g. CLICK)
WRM_I_14 Design and
asset data
Time reporting /
payroll
TBD
Graphic Work
Design Tool
(e.g. ITRON)
CUs and design standards
Plan and forecast Data
Contracts / Non
Energy Bills
(SD)
Status changes
Customer contracts
Status changes & updates
Material availability & Service
Contracts
IGIS
Plan & Design
Design / Work Order
Supply Chain
(MM)
Mark and Locate
Initiate Request
Planned maintenance and
inspection
SAP
Financials
(FI)
Initiate M&L work
FLEET
WRM_I_15 Design and
asset data
Asset
Management
(PM)
Work status & close/
cancel
Large capital
projects
Work cancellation
Project Systems
(SAP PS)
Initiate Case ID
Initiate NB/WRO
Work
Outage
Work order tasks
[
GIS
9
[
PG&E Project - Scope and Modules
SAP
 PG&E has used SAP for almost 10 years in various
Modules & forms
Versions
 R/3 4.7 utilized- (PM, PS, MM, SD,SRM)
 Modifications to existing FI and HR-CATS functionality
 Integration with third party applications:
ClickSoftware (ClickPlan, & ClickSchedule), ITRON
LD-Pro and ESRI GIS
 SAP BI 7.0
Impacted
Audience
8,500 (1,500 core EAM, rest for supply chain)
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
10
[
PG&E Project Benefits
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
11
[
PG&E Project BW and History - Performance Needs
Delivering High Performance Analytics to a potential
user community of 8,500 users requires special
considerations for design, technical architecture and
hardware.
I the spring of 2008, PG&E therefore started an
examination of BI-A as potential tool for increasing
performance of the financial dashboards in SAP BI.
The scope of this effort was primarily finance, but the
benefits were also intended to benefit a larger user
community.
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
12
[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Pacific Gas & Electric Project Overview
 What is SAP BI-A
 Overview
 Building aggregates
 Benefits
 How we implemented BI-A
 Sizing the environment
 Team organization and project plan
 Testing
 BI-A Limitations
 PG&E - Our top-10 Lessons Learned
 Wrap-up
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
13
[
Why BI-A? Disk speed is growing slower than other HW
components
Architectural Drivers
Technology Drivers
1990
2009
CPU
0.05
8.30
MIPS/$
MIPS/$
Memory
0.02
8.51
MB/$
MB/$
Addressable
Memory
216
264
Network
Speed
100
10
Mbps
Gbps
Disk
Data Transfer
5
400
MBPS
MBPS
Improvement
166x
425x
248x
100 x
1990
2009
Disk based data
storage
In-memory data
stores
Simple
consumption of
apps (Fat client
UI, EDI)
Multi-channel
UI, high event
volume, cross
industry value
chains
Generalpurpose,
applicationagnostic
database
80x
Physical hard drive speeds only grew by 80 times since 1990.
All other hardware components grew faster.
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
Applicationaware and
intelligent data
management
Source: 1990 numbers SAP AG
2009 numbers Dr. Berg
14
[BI Accelerator Works by Indexing InfoCubes in Hardware memory
BI Accelerator has been simple
to install and operate for
established SAP BI teams
SAP
BW
Any
tool
You use process chains to
maintain the BI-A engine after
each data load
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
IBM, Sun, HP & Fujitsu have standard
solutions ranging from $32K to $300K+
that can be installed and tested in as
little as 2-4 weeks (+ SAP license fees)
32 GB Blades are
certified by SAP
15
[ BI Analytical Engine’s Query executing priorities
Information Broadcasting /
Precalculation
Information Broadcasting /
Precalculation
Query Cache
Query Cache
Aggregates
SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator
InfoProvider
Query Execution
Without BI Accelerator
Query Execution
With BI Accelerator
Aggregates can be replaced with BI-A, while
the memory cache is still useful.
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
16
[ Performance is Near-Linear: Benchmarks
BIA’s strength resides in its
near-linear scalability
Performance is measured in
terms of:
1. BI-A index creation time
2. Multi-user throughput per hour
3. Average report response time
4. Average number of records
touched by each report
BIA Currently reads data from
InfoCubes. DSOs & InfoObjects
are still read from base/physical
tables (even when the InfoObject
is indexed as part of master data).
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
17
[ Most customers have found BIA Admin to be minimal
The training & admin to run
BI Accelerator has proven to
be minimal. Training is
included in the SAP courses:
BW310, BW360 and in the
online course BW361
Many companies, have spent 2-5 days in
BIA training (total for 1-2 administrators)
and a work through a single interface:
RSDDBIAMON (Checks available at: RSRV)
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
In the past, SAP has also offered a 2 day workshop
called “BI Upgrade & Accelerator” (WNABIA)
18
[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Pacific Gas & Electric Project Overview
 What is SAP BI-A
 Overview
 Building aggregates
 Benefits
 How we implemented BI-A
 Sizing the environment
 Team organization and project plan
 Testing
 BI-A Limitations
 PG&E - Our top-10 Lessons Learned
 Wrap-up
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
19
[ Sizing was critical, but good tools were available to help
SAP has integrated key sizing parameters for BIA in the new
QuickSizer. You can give it a try at: http://service.sap.com/quicksizer
Customer with existing BI systems and data loaded can get good sizing
estimates by running the SAP program available in SAP Note: 917803
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
20
[ Some Hardware options we looked at
Operating Systems and Storage
SUSE Linux 64-bit, Intel based
Memory based and file storage (no database for
Accelerator)
Available Hardware Platforms
HP (HP ProLiant and HP StorageWorks)
IBM (IBM Blade Center and IBM Total Storage)
FujitsuSiemens (FSC Blade Server and EMC Storage)
SUN Microsystems (SUN Blade Server and StorageTek)
The hardware implementation is done by the vendors. Be prepared for
lead times on delivery of large systems (Made-to-Order is common).
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
21
[PG&E - Our Initial Hardware sizing (July 2008)
Environment
Production
Production
Production
Production
Production
Production
Production
Production
QA
QA
QA
QA
QA
QA
QA
QA
Development
Development
Development
Development
Development
Development
Development
Development
Area
Blade servers
Memory
Processors
Processor speed
Network cards
External storage
File system
Chassis
Blade servers
Memory
Processors
Processor speed
Network cards
External storage
File system
Chassis
Blade servers
Memory
Processors
Processor speed
Network cards
External storage
File system
Chassis
Recommended size
14 Blades
2x8 GB (2x4) DDR2 total 16 GB
2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor
3.00 GHz+
2 x Gigabit Cisco cards
Dedicated disks (500 GB+)
General Parallel file system (GPFS)
14 blades capacity
14 Blades
2x8 GB (2x4) DDR2 total 16 GB
2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor
3.00 GHz+
2 x Gigabit Cisco cards
Dedicated disks (500 GB+)
General Parallel file system (GPFS)
14 blades capacity
4 Blades
2x8 GB (2x4) DDR2 total 16 GB
2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor
3.00 GHz+
2 x Gigabit Cisco cards
Dedicated disks (300 GB+)
General Parallel file system (GPFS)
14 blades capacity
IBM example*
BladeCenter HS21 -8853G6U
39M5797
2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor
3.00 GHz
32R1760
DS-4800
GPFS
H-series (rack-mount/9U) 88524XU
BladeCenter HS21 -8853G6U
39M5797
2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor
3.00 GHz
32R1760
DS-4800
GPFS
H-series (rack-mount/9U) 88524XU
BladeCenter HS21 -8853G6U
39M5797
2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor
3.00 GHz
32R1760
DS-4800
GPFS
H-series (rack-mount/9U) 88524XU
We found that the BIA should be sized for critical applications. Most companies
use BIA only for Production, while others have a complete landscape
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
22
[
PG&E - Our Query Performance Improvments
Queries
CS Expense - 5 Year History
Charges to Partners via Orders - Units
Charges to Partners via Orders $
Std Cst Var - PCC Count
ActPlan vs Target by MWC - Summary
BU Expense - 5 Year History
CR - Expense Order Cost In
Labor Cost In Hours
24 Month Rolling FC - Amounts
ActPlan vs Target by MWC - Expense
SR_RCC_Order Costs by Planning and Actual Orders
Labor Prod ST Hours
CWIP - LOB
Paid OT Hours
ActPlan vs Target by MWC - Non Earnings
PCC Labor $/Qty by CE, Plan, Act - Mid-Year
ActPlan vs Target by MWC - OBS
CR - PCC Costs Billed Out
Annual Amt by MWC
Monthly Run Rate vs Annual EOY
Monthly Run Rate by Primary Cost Elem
Activity Price Report (KSBT)
PCC Non-Labor $ by CE, Plan, Act - Mid-Year
Month/YTD/Annual Amt by MWC
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (Material & Service)
CR - PCC Costs
ActPlan vs Target by MWC - Capital
CR - PCC Costs Billed Out to CC
Order: Actuals since Inception
Paid Labor Hours (excludes Overtime)
SR_PCC Costs_In_Out - Graph
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (Other CO Postings)
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (Non-PO Invoices)
Billable Hours
PCC StdReal
CstExperience.
Var Plan - Real
Mid-Year
Advantage.
PCC Billable Hrs, $ by Actv, Plan, Act - Mid-Year
Current
performance
(seconds)
With
BIA
Improvement
169.25
243.40
171.39
136.84
179.09
201.90
166.37
84.66
173.60
122.91
171.31
91.01
45.06
83.37
96.28
69.32
107.86
163.16
100.94
98.82
62.01
52.59
32.99
76.94
24.48
62.43
108.49
46.38
25.87
27.39
42.83
36.18
24.60
26.55
21.98
20.51
14.54
21.37
18.28
15.72
21.25
25.23
24.59
14.39
29.82
21.40
29.86
18.12
9.43
17.55
23.52
17.73
28.58
45.07
28.18
29.56
19.35
17.52
11.44
28.46
9.55
24.49
42.84
18.86
11.09
11.83
18.98
16.51
11.34
12.54
10.60
10.09
1064%
1039%
838%
770%
743%
700%
577%
488%
482%
474%
474%
402%
378%
375%
309%
291%
277%
262%
258%
234%
220%
200%
188%
170%
156%
155%
153%
146%
133%
132%
126%
119%
117%
112%
107%
103%
The slowest
queries that
spent most of
their time on
the database
side benefited
the most
Overall 36 of
70 queries
were at least
twice as fast….
23
[
PG&E - Our Query Performance Improvments
Queries
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (CATS & Order Confm)
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (Other FI Postings)
Summary Removal Costs
Cost Report by Order/Cost Element (PORR/PORY)
SR_PCC Costs by Cost In and Cost Out
SR_PCC Costs by Cost In and Cost Out
SR_PCC Costs_In_Out - Graph
PCC Activity Prices
Spend - Tracked/Not Tracked
Savings %
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (NEBS)
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (Material & Service)
PCC Detail Planning Report (KSBL)
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (Other FI Postings)
PCC Headcount by Month - Classification
SR_PCC Costs by Cost In and Cost Out - 12 Months
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (Non-PO Invoices)
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (Other CO Postings)
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (NEBS)
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (CATS & Order Confm)
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (CO Reposting)
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (CO Reposting)
Conforming %
Activity Type Planning
Conforming %
PCC Headcount by Month - Classification (Graph)
Removal Costs
Resource Report by PCC/Activity Type (PORV)
PCC FTE Count by Planning Version - Mid-Year
CWIP - LOB & Orders
Savings $
Savings $
Savings Real
% Experience. Real Advantage.
Conforming % and Savings %
Current
performance
(seconds)
With
BIA
Improvement
21.17
38.13
11.36
63.62
34.33
34.33
17.00
16.66
14.79
8.23
32.81
30.41
49.62
32.81
21.39
17.66
27.19
17.18
24.89
24.48
18.34
25.43
6.68
24.52
6.01
15.43
6.15
39.63
17.80
93.04
4.57
4.10
3.63
10.37
10.74
19.44
5.90
33.55
18.28
18.34
9.19
9.18
8.23
4.58
18.35
17.12
28.09
18.86
12.34
10.51
16.25
10.43
15.33
15.59
11.90
16.55
4.50
16.68
4.23
11.58
4.77
35.42
15.91
85.98
4.29
4.02
3.94
11.99
97%
96%
93%
90%
88%
87%
85%
81%
80%
80%
79%
78%
77%
74%
73%
68%
67%
65%
62%
57%
54%
54%
48%
47%
42%
33%
29%
12%
12%
8%
7%
2%
-8%
-14%
58 of 70
queries were at
least 50%
faster
Before BIA the
average query
execution took
58.8 seconds,
after BIA the
average query
took 17.9
seconds
(295% faster).
24
[ PG&E - Query Performance Improvments OVERALL
Query execution time before BI-A
10
9
Number of Queries
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
60
70
80
90 100 110 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260
Seconds
Query execution time after BI-A
25
Number of Queries
20
15
The major
improvement
was to make
query
execution
more
predictable
and overall
faster
10
5
0
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
Seconds
25
[ PG&E - Workbook Performance Improvments with BIA
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Current
With BIA
Top 20 Workbooks
Improvement
performance
(seconds)
(seconds)
ORD205 Actual+Plan by MWC W/Plng Orders
614.63
94.75
649%
SR_RCC_202 -Order Costs by planning and Actual Orders
171.31
29.86
574%
ORD225 - Actuals since Inception
25.87
11.09
233%
Forecast Model (Summary Reports)
438.34
113.01
388%
ORD418 - Compliance & Savings
58.38
45.78
128%
ASM001 - CWIP (LOB, MWC, Order)
155.61
106.08
147%
ORD201 Reports
76.94
28.46
270%
ORD207 - 5 year historical & FCST
100.94
28.18
358%
PMG008_24Mo PRJ Fin by Area/Div/RCC/MWC/Ord/PrjMngr/Mo
173.60
29.82
582%
PMG005 Reports
63.62
33.55
190%
ORDPMG001-PORV
39.63
35.42
112%
ORD230 - Line Items for Order
209.31
119.23
176%
PCC130 - Line Items for Cost Center
168.79
88.73
190%
PCC016 - PCC Detail Planning Report (KSBL)
126.73
62.29
203%
PCC018 - Mid-Year PCC Planning Assumptions for SLSR
179.26
74.95
239%
PCC116 - Standard Cost & Labor Trend for SLSR Groups
136.84
15.72
870%
SR_PCC_102 - PCC Costs by In-Out Costs
94.82
47.77
198%
RCC209A - BU/CS Expense: 5 year history
371.15
39.77
933%
SR_PCC_401 - Charge-Out Cost Center Type A or E
815.92
165.53
493%
ORD209 - Plan vs Actual By MWC and primary CE
160.83
48.91
329%
Average run times (same selection criteria)
209.13
60.95
363%
Average performance improvement for workbooks was 363% faster
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
26
[Performance Info – PG&E BI-A Indexes build times
Infocubes
No of Records
ZMIM_C04
19,867,026
ZMIM_C03
19,200,412
ZMIM_C01
2,287,483
ZKCC_C26
125,570
ZKCC_C13
16,287,318
ZKCC_C12
32,808,858
ZKCC_C09
1,509,754
ZKCC_C06
25,346,239
ZKCC_C04
2,936,394
ZKCC_C03
35,154,491
ZKCC_C02
33,985,298
ZKCC_C01
27,747
ZFAA_C02
6,611,084
ZFAA_C01
765,838
KOD_C208
28
KOD_C207
3,059,811
KCC_C508
1,036,593
KCC_C408
3440
KCC_C407
1,350,169
KCC_C23
3,058,715
KCC_C22
20,745,219
KCC_C208
3,346,213
KCC_C207
2,784,692
Total
232,298,392
Realaverage
Experience. Real Advantage.
2,565,132
Time to build Indexes ( sec)
327
196
95
15
138
208
68
341
71
615
225
26
1520
113
10
148
63
11
84
677
149
168
166
90.56 minutes
records indexed per minute
232,298,392 records
in 23 infocubes were
indexed in 90.56
minutes.
On average we were
able to build indexes
on 2.56 million
records per minute
27
[ Team organization at PG&E
1. We had a small team of 3 people dedicated to
the BIA project supported by one basis
person, and the rest of the BW team
2. Hardware team supported by the vendor was
also involved in a part-time capacity.
3. Overall the effort was combined with a
performance tuning project that also included
building of aggregates, caching and query
redesigns.
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
28
[ PG&E - Testing
1. We had testers and requirements gathered
from the finance community. The goal was at
least 50% faster on the 38 web dashboards.
2. We achieved:
a) 363% faster for workbooks on average
b) 70% faster for queries on average
c) 58 of 70 queries were at least 50% faster
d) Index builds took about 1.5 hrs
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
29
[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Pacific Gas & Electric Project Overview
 What is SAP BI-A
 Overview
 Building aggregates
 Benefits
 How we implemented BI-A
 Sizing the environment
 Team organization and project plan
 Testing
 BI-A Limitations
 PG&E - Our top-10 Lessons Learned
 Wrap-up
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
30
[ PG&E - Top 10 Lessons Learned
1. Plan to order hardware early - lead times can
be long
2. Make sure you have a committed project
sponsor
3. Create benchmarks for workbooks, queries
and cockpits to document success
4. Update to latest service pack
5. Involve your basis team and environment
management team early
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
31
[ PG&E - Top 10 Lessons Learned
6. Be realistic, not all queries will benefit equally
from SAP BIA
7. Plan for testing and gradual rollout of BIA to
key users
8. Make sure failovers and spare blades are part
of your hardware sizing
9. Create a small dedicated team with access to
external expertise as needed
10. Perform query tuning and potential redesign
as part of a larger system performance tuning
effort.
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
32
[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Pacific Gas & Electric Project Overview
 What is SAP BI-A
 Overview
 Building aggregates
 Benefits
 How we implemented BI-A
 Sizing the environment
 Team organization and project plan
 Testing
 BI-A Limitations
 PG&E - Our top-10 Lessons Learned
 Wrap-up
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
33
[ How does it work in reality??
Currently, the BIA performs aggregation and data selection
for the query, all other processing is done by the OLAP
analytical engine. Not all query processing will be
dramatically faster…
In the next SAP NetWeaver release the BIA will handle more of the
analytics processing such as “top-5 products sales” which
is currently done in the OLAP analytical engine.
SAP BIA is not used when the result set exceeds 3 million records
(max. default). When the result set is less, the data is sent
as one large data package to the application server (need
fast network).
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
34
[ BIA is becoming mainstream
Some of SAP reference clients
BIA is no longer
something exotic.
Nike
Many of the large BI
systems have already
implemented BIA and
many more projects are
under way in Europe
and in the Americas.
Once you exceed a few hundred critical users and/or 34 TB of data you should seriously consider SAP BIA
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
35
[
The Future SAP BI-A RoadMap
Prior to 2008
SAP
NetWeaver
BI Accelerator
Accelerator for
InfoCube Read
Times
Low Cost of
Operations
High Availability
/ Backup &
Recovery
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
2008
Optimized
BusinessObjects
Webl integration
on top of SAP
NetWeaver BI/BIA
BusinessObjects
Polestar
integration: SelfService BI based
on search
paradigm
2009/2010
Analytic Capabilities
(e.g. top n)
DataStore Object
Acceleration
Standalone BIA for
source-independent
acceleration via
Business Objects
Agile BI: Local and
source-independent
innovation space for
departments
36
[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Pacific Gas & Electric Project Overview
 What is SAP BI-A
 Overview
 Building aggregates
 Benefits
 How we implemented BI-A
 Sizing the environment
 Team organization and project plan
 Testing




BI-A Limitations
PG&E - Our top-10 Lessons Learned
Wrap-up
Question and Answers
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
37
[
Key Learnings
 BI-A is a useful tool for performance tuning, but it is not a ‘solve-all’ solution for
poorly made queries
 It was easy to implement (very quick)
 Look at how your queries are executing (i.e. database or application server usage)
when estimating benefits of implementing BI-A
 Once you exceed a few hundred critical users and/or 3-4 TB of data you should
seriously consider SAP BIA
 The administration of BI-A is simple and anyone can learn it in a few days
 Plan on waiting for hardware, we found that most was made-to-order
 Make sure you have redundancies and check that what you order is what got
shipped.
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
38
[ Resources
Dr. Bjarne Berg's web page -- 85+ presentations, tutorials & articles
http://csc-studentweb.lrc.edu/swp/Berg/BB_index_main.htm
Large scale testing of SAP BI Accelerator on a NetWeaver Platform
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/b00e7bb5-3add-2a103890-e8582df5c70f
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
39
[ Questions and Answers
How to contact us:
Dr. Bjarne Berg
Darin Lemos
bberg@comerit.net
D4JLY@pge.com
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
40
[
]
 Thank you for participating.
Please remember to complete and return your
evaluation form following this session.
For ongoing education on this area of focus, visit the Year-Round
Community page at www.asug.com/yrc
[
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
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