SAP BW at Microsoft
Bill Faison
bfaison@microsoft.com
Agenda
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Overview of the Microsoft IT Landscape
Why SAP BW
What are we using in SAP BW 3.0B
Integration with Analysis Services
Feeding Data from BW using the SAP .NET
Connector
• Upgrading SAP R/3 4.7 and SAP BW
• Future Projects
Terminology
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OLAP: Online Analytical Processing. Dynamic multi-dimensional
aggregate slicing/dicing reporting
BW: SAP Business Information Warehouse. SAP’s OLAP product. v3.0
uses an SAP proprietary relational OLAP engine
DataSources: Structures in R/3 that contain the fields to be extracted
Analysis Services: OLAP component of Microsoft SQL Server
Star Schema: Relational schema with a central fact table and separate
dimension tables. Partially de-normalized to aid brows ability
ROLAP: Relational OLAP. A relational star schema with separate storage
of aggregates strictly within a relational database. Compromised
performance for storage
MOLAP: Multidimensional OLAP. No use of the relational database for
reporting. Redundant storage with highest analysis performance.
Supported via Analysis Services within BW 3.0
Office Web Components: Included in Office license. A collection of
ActiveX controls that enable interactive web access to pivot tables,
spreadsheets, and databases
Current Landscape
SAP R/3
Transactions Strategy:
• All Transactions processed in SAP
• Hardcore users use SAP GUI
• Casual users use Intranet GUIs
• Partners use EDI or Internet GUIs
Reporting Strategy:
• Extract data from R/3 one time, distribute via
Feedstore for business-owned datamarts
• Statutory reports directly in R/3
• Web front ends for real time inquiry and
document level reporting
• Use BW for new implementations where content
fits Microsoft requirements
R/3 Reporting Problems
• End to end extraction and data mart
builds take too long
• Massive extracts impose R/3 performance
burden
• Redundancy among R/3 extracts and
reporting solutions
• It is difficult to reverse engineer R/3
business rules and document data in a
custom reporting solution
Solution Requirements
• Business
 Fast ad hoc query performance
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Role and business function focused data
Measure policy adherence
Identify opportunities for using preferred vendors
KPI metrics reporting measuring effectiveness of
purchasing business strategy
 Health index - benchmarking across subs &
regions, identifying best practices
• Corporate standard user interface
Solution Requirements(2)
• IT
Pilot new SAP reporting technology
Reduce custom R/3 extracts
Integrates with SAP R/3
Why SAP BW
• Other options
 Custom centralized data warehouse
 3rd party tools (Acta, Information Builders)
 Status quo
• Why BW
 Reduced ABAP requirements
 Rapid deployment for R/3-savvy team
 SAP knows R/3 data best – we are betting they
will have the best extraction solution
 Easy deployment of standard content
Functionality used in BW 3.0B
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Transactional Data DataSources
ODS
Process Chains
D&B Integration
DataSources
• All data from R/3 use the SAP supplied datasources, or the
generic extractor
 As of 3.0B, we were able to retire all of our custom ABAP extracts
 Pull all fields from R/3, and only load what we need into the ODS
tables
 Populate data into BW from R/3 for any critical data feeds on your
production system well in advance before you go live
• 0FI_GL_4
 Used to extract data from BKPF/BSEG
 Did not have to use the BW R/3 user-exit to populate any fields
 Leverage the delta extract
• Cannot figure out why it sends a delta update for some records
 Performance has been very good
• Watch out when loading historical data from R/3 to BW. Has some issues
with parallel data extracts from R/3
 Be careful with any business rule processing
• Line items for a document may not be in the same data packet
DataSources
• 2LIS_02_ITM
 Source for all of our PO related data
 Leveraged the BW R/3 user-exit to populate fields not
part of the standard business content instead of turning
on another datasource
 Use the V3 update on R/3 for delta extractions
• Basis team does not like seeing updates piling up in
the update queue in R/3
 Performance has not been a issue
• R/3 to BW historical data load process can only
handle one data load at a time
ODS
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5 ODS tables to hold document line item level data
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Much improved since 2.0B
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Start Routine in update rules allows you to apply very complex
business rule logic to the data
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 Load data into PSA, then into ODS so we do tie the data extract from
R/3 to the successfully activation of data records into the ODS table
 Full repair request and selective delete adds much needed flexibility
 Take caution with the logic you apply and the size of internal tables,
or you might degrade data load performance
Field 0RECORDMODE in ODS indicates if the record is a insert,
change or delete
Lagniappe – Cajun for a little something extra
 Table RSSELDONE is very helpful since it holds parameters of the
infopackage
 Use RSSELDONE-UPDMODE to indicate if the job is a Full, Delta, etc.
Process Chains
• A process chain is a sequence of processes that
wait in the background for an event.
 Some of these processes trigger a separate event
that can start other processes in turn.
 Huge improvement over the event chains
 GUI interface makes it easy to set up
 Ability to transport process chains eliminates set up
errors in other BW systems
 Some quirks in process chains do not allow you to do
everything
• Updating one ODS table per infopackage run from the PSA
does not work
D&B Integration
• Load 2 fields into R/3, then pass those fields to BW with the
0VENDOR datasource
• Rest of the fields are loaded into BW using a flat file from D&B
 Leveraged the standard business content infopackage, infocube and
Bex query
• Export the data to D&B using the SAP supplied program
 Kanji data could be corrupted when it is exported from the BW system
 Export program works, but we have found bugs that SAP had to fix
• D&B will supply you the files in any format you request
 Linkage from D&B a statutory perspective of the world does not
exactly match the linkage Microsoft wants to see from a negotiation
standpoint
• Example:HP bought Compaq but it will legally take a long time to have
every international Compaq site "officially" roll up under HP. Our business
team needs to see them rolled up now - not over time
 If you have Japanese customers, you will have to provide a file for
D&B with kanji names and address
Integration with Analysis
Services
• Tradeoffs–ROLAP & MOLAP
• Why Microsoft Analysis Services
• Deployment Architecture
Tradeoffs–ROLAP & MOLAP
• MOLAP
– Cube data and aggregations in MetaData store
+ Best query performance
+ Near-best processing performance
- Most additional storage
• ROLAP
– Cube data remains in relational store
– Aggregations in relational store
+ ROLAP dimensions
- Worst query performance
- Worst processing performance
- Highest load on data warehouse server
Why Microsoft Analysis
Services
• Complex calculated measures, aggregations and
usage based optimization possible
• Enhanced query performance
• Able to choose “best of breed” web front-end
• Native Excel front end support
• Cubes can be exported for off-line reporting
• Custom ad hoc grouping
• Custom total based on OLAP MDX queries
• Adjustable scope conditional filtering
• Data mining
Deployment Architecture
SAP R/3
SAP BW 3.0B
Persistent
Staging Area
BW
ROLAP
Cubes
SQL Server
Analysis Services
Microsoft
Custom SQL
Views
Fact Table
Drill-Through
Non-SAP
Applications
MOLAP
Reporting
Cubes
End User
IIS Server
MSInsight
Reporting
Front End
XML
Metadata
Internet Explorer
Office Web Components
Deployment Architecture
Deployment Architecture(2)
• Pros
 Fast queries
 Take advantage of new SQL Server functionality right
away
 We are able to meet Microsoft specific usability
requirements since we own the GUI
 Access multiple data sources from one reporting GUI
 Reporting GUI is not tied to BW support packs
• Cons
 Not supported by SAP
• MOLAP Bridge is SAP integration of Analysis Services
 Need to address SAP data storage formatting issues
 OWC can generate poor performing queries
 Pushing data into the MOLAP cubes adds another
potential point of failure
Feeding data from BW using the
SAP .NET Connector
• What is the SAP .NET Connector
• Project overview
What is the SAP .NET Connector
• From the SAP website:
 The SAP Connectors allow the integration of
different applications and technologies with
SAP Systems via open standards
 The SAP .NET Connector offers developers to
expose BAPIs and remotely-enabled function
modules to any .NET application (inside-out).
You now also can access .NET components
from within a mySAP.com application (outsidein)
What is the SAP .NET Connector
• SAP client solution, the SAP system is the
server and the .NET application is the
client that interacts with the RFC
Examples of some uses for the SAP .NET
Connector client application
• Windows form application that has a customized
and highly interactive user experience
• Console application to access information from the
SAP system as part of some NT batch processing
What is the SAP .NET Connector
• RFC server allows your SAP system
to execute .NET code as if the .NET
code were another SAP system
Examples of some uses for the
SAP .NET Connector server application
• Getting information such as maps, stock
prices or weather from an external service
to be used within a SAP report
• Sending emails from your SAP system
Design Overview
• Business case: Supply data that had
been transformed in SAP BW to a
non-SAP database
Other solutions considered
• Create a custom ABAP to create flat files to
be consumed by the source data warehouse
• Create a DTS package to extract and pump
the data over to the non-SAP database
• Use MS SQL replication to extract and feed
the data to the non-SAP database
• Hub and Spoke
Design Overview
Windows Service
SAP ABAP
Program
Call RFC with
destination
Convert
Income
table to
XML
SM 59
Destination
information table
XML
Schema
SAP BW
Layer
SQL XML
BULK
INSERT
Windows 2003
Server
Layer
External SQL Server
Upgrading SAP R/3 4.7 and SAP
BW
• Few Issues encountered
 Have not done any performance testing yet
 No new BW tcodes or changes found so far in
4.7
• Clear out set up tables used by logistic
cockpit before the ‘Prepare’ phase of the
upgrade
• Using new 4.7 functionality resulted in us
needing to add only 2 fields to our
datasource structures
Future Projects
• XStar
 SCM project based on the data in our APO system
 User will most probably use a SAP supported GUI
 We might migrate a datamart into the BW system
• Stage R/3 data to our central data store
 Leverage the SAP .NET Connector
• Real Estate
 Will be based on using the standard business content to
extract and store data in BW
 Not sure how the users will access data yet
• Project Systems
 Will use the standard business content to extract and
store data in BW
 Not sure how the users will access data yet
Future Projects
• Financial Insight Package with Enterprise Portal
and BW
 Analytics for the following areas
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Cost center and budgeting
Cash-Flow
Economic profit
Activity based costing
GL and Divisional balance sheets
• UNICODE for BW
 Should resolve our double byte characters issues
when we export data from BW
Future Projects
• Crystal Enterprise
 Investigating if this can be used for web based
reporting for SAP BW
 Tightly integrated with SAP BW
• Reports are based BW Query, so no formatting issues
• Need to have an aggregate defined over the datatarget, or
the report will not run efficiently.
– Investigating if the MOLAP bridge can manage the aggregates
in BW for Crystal Reports
 Have a clear understanding on the SAP authorization
requirements
• Did not match how Microsoft manages SAP authorizations
Useful Sites
• http://service.sap.com/CONNECTORS
 Requires a OSS log on
• http://www.microsoft-sap.com/
• http://www.sapgenie.com/interfaces/netc
onnector.htm
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Session Code: 211