Business Intelligence

SIMPLIFIED SOLUTIONS FOR ENTERPRISES TO PERFORM BETTER

Day 1: Basic Concepts & Data Modeling – Basic
Structures

Data warehousing concepts

 Star Schema , Extended Star Schema
 SAP BW Administration work bench
 BW Objects
 Master Data Objects
 Overview of SAP ECC Extraction
 SAP BW Business Content
 Exercise
Data Warehouse Overview
Data Warehouse Properties

■ Read Only Access

■ Cross-organizational focus : Data sources from organization and
external sources.
■ Data is stored on long term basis
■ Data is stored persistently over the period of time
■ Designed for efficient query processing
■ Immediate single point access to all relevant information
regardless of source
■ High quality of information
■ Decision making support – operative and strategic management

■ Short implementation time with less resources

 Characteristic of Data Warehouse

 Time variant. The data are kept for many years so they can be used for
trends, forecasting, and comparisons over time

 Nonvolatile. Once entered into the warehouse, data are not updated

 Relational. Typically the data warehouse uses a relational structure

 Client/server. The data warehouse uses the client/server architecture

mainly to provide the end user an easy access to its data

 Web-based. Data warehouses are designed to provide an efficient

computing environment for Web-based applications
 OLAP Vs OLTP

OLTP System Online Transaction Processing OLAP System Online Analytical Processing
(Operational System) (Data Warehouse)

Source of data Operational data ;OLTPs are the original Consolidation Data : OLAP data comes
source of the data (Relational Database) from the various OLTP databases (Multi
Dimensional)
Purpose of data To control and run fundamental business To help with planning, problem solving
task and decision support
What the data A snapshot of ongoing business process Multi-dimensional views of various
Reveals business activities
Inserts and Short and fast, insert and update initiates by Periodic long-running
Updates end user (Add, Delete, Modify & Read) Batch jobs refresh the data (Only Read)
Queries Relatively standardized and simple queries Often complex queries involves
Returning relatively few records aggregations

Processing Typically very fast for Insert, Modify & Typically Very quick
speed Delete
Space Can be relatively small if history data is Larger due to the existence of
Requirements achieved aggregation structure and history data ;
requires more indexes than OLTP

Database Design Highly normalized with many tables Typically de-normalized with fewer
tables
Dataflow between OLTP & OLAP
OLTP and OLAP Accounting example
Three-Dimensional View of Sales
BI Architecture
ETL : Extraction
 Day 1: Basic Concepts & Data Modeling – Basic
Structures

 Data warehousing concepts

 Star Schema , Extended Star Schema

 SAP BW Administration work bench

 BW Objects
 Master Data Objects
 Overview of SAP ECC Extraction
 SAP BW Business Content
 Exercise
Star Schema
Classic Star schema
Star schema : Functional view
Populated Cost center transaction star schema
Extended Star schema
Example for Extended star schema
Star schema Vs Extended star
Day 1: Basic Concepts & Data Modeling – Basic
Structures

 Data warehousing concepts

 Star Schema , Extended Star Schema

 SAP BW Administration Workbench

 BW Objects
 Master Data Objects
 Overview of SAP ECC Extraction
 SAP BW Business Content
 Exercise
Administrator Workbench(AWB) Functions
Administrator Workbench(AWB)
Functional Areas in AWB

■ Modeling
■ Monitoring
■ Reporting Agent
■ Transport Connection
■ Documents
■ Business Content
■ Translation
■ Metadata Repository
Modeling
Modeling Vs Administration
Business Content

Business Content is a pre-configured set of role and task-relevant

information models based on consistent Metadata in the SAP Business
Information Warehouse. These information models contains
 Roles

 Workbooks

 Queries

 InfoSources

 InfoCubes

 Key figures

 Characteristics

 Update rules

 Extractors for SAP R/3

 Translation

Using Translation function area in the Administrator Workbench, you can

translate short and long texts for Business Information Warehouse objects.
Metadata Repository

Use
 With the HTML-based metadata repository
 It includes important object properties and their relationships
with other objects.
 Access information from a central point about the metadata
objects from the Business Information Warehouse.
 Transport Connection

■ A SAP transport is a package used to transfer data from one SAP installation to
another. This data can be a simple printer driver or a whole SAP client.

Use :

■ The SAP transports are used to implement some new features in a production system.
■ As the production system cannot be used for development and testing, the
implementation process is divided into several phases:

1. A development and a testing installation is created using backups from the production
system

2. The new features are implemented into the development installation

3. This is imported into the testing or quality system using a transport

4. After the new features are fully tested, it is imported into the production system using
another transport

■ Despite this fact the transport system is the most convenient and effective way of
implementing new features into a production system with a minimal downtime.
Day 1: Basic Concepts & Data Modeling – Basic
Structures

Data warehousing concepts

 Star Schema , Extended Star Schema
 SAP BW Administration work bench

 BW Objects
 Master Data Objects
 Overview of SAP ECC Extraction
 SAP BW Business Content
 Exercise
BW Objects
 Infoarea

Infoarea are folders that organize InfoProviders and InfoObject Catalogs

 InfoObject
Business evaluation objects are known in BW as Info Objects.
They are divided into
 Characteristics
 key figures
 Units
 Time characteristics
 Technical characteristics.

Info Objects are the basic information providers of BW.

InfoObjects Usage
Infoobject: Characteristic

Characteristics hold business information which is used to analyze key

figures or these are business reference objects.
Infoobject: Key figures

 The key figures of an InfoObject form the data part.

 They deliver the values that you want to report on. Key figures can be
quantities, amounts or number of items.

 These values must have units to give them meaning.

 Unit characteristics provide a means of key figures values, stores

currencies or units of measure.

 Example,
– Sales Amount (in $, AED, EURO)

– Purchase Quantity (EA, Tones, etc.,)

– Employee Head Count

InfoProviders

An InfoProvider is an object for which queries can be created or

executed in BEx.

InfoProviders are the objects or views that are relevant for reporting.
 Infocube

 DSO

 Mutliprovider

 Infoset

 Virtual Provider (Remote Cube)

 Master data Infoobjects

InfoProvider
Data targets

Data targets are SAP BI objects that have their own data store (which
means they physically contain data).

These objects include

■ InfoCubes
■ DataStore Objects
■ InfoObjects (characteristics with attributes or texts).

The system supplies data targets with data from the source systems
using a load process.
Data Store Object(DSO)

 DSO is a two dimensional table

 Its an Infoprovider as well as data target.

 A DSO stores data at the granular level (document & item level)

 DSO normally used to resolve and consolidate datasets

 These datasets are often from various data sources and/or source systems.

 DSO can be used to store transaction data and for master data.

 BEx queries can be created from DSO

Types of DSO

■ Standard DataStore object

■ Direct Update DSO

■ Write-optimized DataStore object

Data Store Object(DSO)

Components of DSO

1. Key fields

2. Data fields

■ Key fields should be characteristics (such as document number,

document item)

■ Data fields contain characteristics & key figures. (i.e., customer,

material order qty, value, etc.,)

■ Data in DSO are stored in transparent and relational database

tables.
DSO Content
InfoCube

 InfoCube can physically stores data.

 InfoCube supports Multidimensional data model
 Data uploaded using BW Staging (ETL).
 It can be used as an Info Provider in BEx Reporting.
 InfoCube can also be updated into additional data targets or build a MultiProvider
together with other data targets.
 Analytical Processing is normally done using Infocube for better performance
 Types of Infocube
 Basic Cube
 Mutli dimensional modeling
 Data Physically Stored
 Remote (Virtual) Cube
 Mutli dimensional modeling
 No data stored
 Real Time cube
 Mutli dimensional modeling
 Data Physically Stored
 Used for Planning
 Read & Write Option
Central Fact table with Dimension tables
• Fact tables typically store atomic and aggregate transaction information, such
as quantitative amounts of goods sold. They are called facts.

• Facts are numeric values of a normally additive nature.

• Fact tables contain foreign keys to the most atomic dimension attribute of each
dimension table.

• Foreign keys tie the fact table rows to specific rows in each of the associated
dimension tables.

• Dimension tables store both attributes about the data stored in the fact table
and textual data.

• Dimension tables are de-normalized.

• The most atomic dimension attributes in the dimensions define the granularity
of the information, i.e. the number of records in the fact table
 Infocube
Fact Table

A infocube consist of precisely one fact table in which keyfigure values

are stored.

A fact table can contains a maximum of 233 key figures and 248
characteristics

Dimension Table

A InfoCube usually has a four dimension and maximum of 16

dimension. Of these 13 of 16 are customer created and three are the
SAP supplied DIMs
 Units dimension table
 Data Package dimension table
 Time dimension table
Table Properties

■ All the key fields of a table must be stored together at the beginning
of the table. A non-key field may not occur between two key fields.

■ A maximum of 16 key fields per table is permitted. The maximum

length of the table key is 255.

■ If the key length is greater than 120, there are restrictions when
transporting table entries. The key can only be specified up to a
maximum of 120 places in a transport. If the key is larger than 120,
table entries must be transported generically.

■ A table may not have more than 249 fields. The sum of all field
lengths is limited to 1962
Multi Provider & Infoset

Multi Provider

■ A MultiProvider builds up a data union of basic InfoProviders. The

complete data of all basic InfoProviders are available for reporting.

■ A MultiProvider is interpreted at runtime as independent BI queries on

each basic InfoProvider where the results are merged into a single
result set.

InfoSet

■ An InfoSet builds up a data join of basic InfoProviders.

■ The valid combination of records from the basic InfoProviders is

determined by the join condition of the InfoSet.
Source System

A source system is any system that is available to BI for data extraction

and transfer purposes

Examples

 SAP ERP

 SAP CRM, SRM, etc.,

 Oracle Data warehouse

 Legacy Systems (Relational DB)

 Any 3rd party system

DataSource

■ DataSource are BI objects used to extract and stage data from

source systems.

■ A DataSource contains a number of logically-related fields that are

arranged in a flat structure and contain data to be transferred into BI

■ Example :
■ Cost Center master data

■ Purchase Order Transaction Datasources.

Transformation

■ Using the transformation, data is copied/transferred from a source

format to a target format in BI.

■ The transformation process allows to consolidate, cleanse, and

integrate data.

■ In the transformation, the fields of a DataSource are also assigned to

the InfoObjects of the BI system
 Process Chain
■ A process chain is a sequence
of processes that execute/wait in
the background

■ Some of these processes trigger

a subsequent events that can
start other processes

Use

■ Automate the complex

schedules in BW with the help of
the event-controlled processing

■ visualize the schedule by using

network applications

■ Centrally control and monitor the

processes.
Virtual Provider/Remote Cube

■ Virtual Info Cubes are Logical InfoProviders with transaction data.

■ Virtual Provider is not stored in the objects themselves, but is read

directly from source for analysis and reporting purposes

■ Virtual Providers using (Direct) DTP is used for Up-to-date information

from Source system

■ Recommended to use less volume dataset for reporting via Virtual

Provider
Day 1: Basic Concepts & Data Modeling – Basic
Structures

 Data warehousing concepts

 Star Schema , Extended Star Schema
 SAP BW Administration work bench
 BW Objects

 Master Data Objects

 Overview of SAP ECC Extraction
 SAP BW Business Content
 Exercise
Characteristic InfoObject
Master Data bearing characteristic Table
 Different types of tables

When we activate a characteristic, based on the settings we chose while

creating characteristic below tables will generate.

■ Master data table

■ Text table

■ SID Table

■ Attribute tables

■ Hierarchy tables.
 Master Data table

■ While creating characteristic if we select the option “with master data” in

“master data/text” tab, then a master table will be generated for that info object
upon activation.

■ For business content characteristics: /BIO/M<Info object name>

■ For customer created characteristic: /BIC/M<Info object name>

Compounding

Compounding is the process of combining a characteristics InfoObject

with another characteristics InfoObject to ensure the ability to uniquely
define values of the InfoObject

Example

Storage Location A for the refinery plant is a huge storage tank

Storage Location A for the frozen food manufacturing plant is a freezer

For reporting and data loading accuracy,

Storage location must be compounded with plant

SID Table

■ The system automatically generates the SID keys when the master
data is uploaded.

■ The SID table is generated when a characteristic is activated.

■ The key field for the SID table is numeric value (NUM 10) for better
performance

■ If the characteristic has compounding Info object, the key also

comprises the compounded characteristic.

■ SID table links between master data bearing characteristics,

navigational attributes and external hierarchies.
Master data tables/SID Tables
Text table
■ A text table is created if we flag the “With text” check box while creating and
activating the characteristic infoobject

■ Naming Standards
■ For Business Content characteristics: /BIO/T<Info object name>
■ For Customer Created characteristic: /BIC/T<Info object name>
SID table
Attribute Master data Tables

■ View of Master data Tables – M Table

■ Display attributes (Time independent) - P Table.
■ Display attributes (Time dependent) - Q Table.
■ Navigational attributes (Time independent) - X Table.
■ Navigation attributes (Time dependent) - Y Table.
 P Table
P Table will generate if we have time independent Display attributes for base info object.
The key fields in the P table are
 Characteristic value
 Object version

We will have 2 object version status.

 A - Active (The data is available for reporting)
 M - Modified/Revised ( The data is not available for reporting)

In the above screen shot we can see the field “Change flag”. This field will have 2 statuses.
 D - Deleted
 I - Inserted
Q Table
Q Table will generate if we have time dependent display attributes for base Info Object.
As it has time dependent master data we will get time intervals into the table structure.

The Key fields of Q Table are

■ Characteristic value

■ Object Version

■ DATETO (Valid to)

X Table
X Table is generated if at least one attribute is defined as time-independent
navigational attribute. The key for the X table of the navigation attributes (naming
convention S_<name of attribute>) is the SID for the SID table belonging to the
characteristic whose attribute is used here as navigation attribute.

E.g.Location is NAV attribute for 0Customer

If we have any navigational attributes then while reading data it has pick to data from
its SID table based on SID’s mapping.
Y Table

Y Table is generated if we have at least one attribute is defined as time-

dependent navigational attribute. The key for the Y table of the
navigation attributes (naming convention S_<name of attribute>) is the
SID for the SID table belonging to the characteristic

This behaves same as X Table, but the difference comes at the key
fields of the table. In this we will have one extra field as key field i.e.
DATETO (Valid to).

The key fields of Y table are

■ SID

■ DATETO (Valid to)

Hierarchies Table

Hierarchies are used in analysis to describe alternative views of the data

Hierarchies comprise a series of nodes that are joined to one another in a tree
structure.

Usually, the leaves of a hierarchy are represented by characteristic values.

Example: Sales Employees Hierarchy with Country, Region & Province

Three way of defining hierarchies are,

■ Internal hierarchies from the Characteristics in the Dimension tables.

■ Hierarchies from Characteristic Attributes

■ External hierarchies from the Hierarchy Tables.

Example: Version-Dependent Hierarchy
Example: Time dependent entire hierarchy
Example: Time-dependent hierarchy structure for cost
center
H Table
■ The Hierarchy table (H Table) is used to store the hierarchical relationships between
Characteristic values if external hierarchies are used for the characteristic.

■ Only one H Table is generated even if a characteristic contains several hierarchies. In other
words H table contains all hierarchies.

■ If the entire hierarchy is time-dependent, the DATETO and DATEFROM fields do not
appear in the H table. They appear as global fields (Meta information) in the RSHIEDIR
table instead. This also applies to the VERSION field in version-dependent hierarchies.

■ On the other hand, if the hierarchy structure is Time-dependent, two date fields appear in
the H table.
Hierarchy Tables

■ H Table -Base table for hierarchies and contains all the hierarchies.

■ K Table - with hierarchies

■ J Table - Intervals Permitted in Hierarchy

■ I Table - Time-Dependent Hierarchy Structure” option, then this table will

generate.

.
Day 1: Basic Concepts & Data Modeling – Basic
Structures

Data warehousing concepts

 Star Schema , Extended Star Schema
 SAP BW Administration work bench
 BW Objects

 Master Data Objects

 Overview of SAP ECC Extraction

 SAP BW Business Content

 Exercise
Source System

A source system is any system that is available to BI for data extraction

and transfer purposes.

Examples

 SAP ERP

 SAP CRM, SRM, etc.,

 Oracle Data warehouse

 Legacy Systems (Relational DB)

 Any 3rd party system

DataSource

DataSource are BI objects used to extract and stage data from source
systems.

A DataSource contains a number of logically-related fields that are

arranged in a flat structure and contain data to be transferred into BI

Example : Cost center includes cost center texts, master data, and Cost
Center Transaction Datasources from two different source systems.
Source system types
BI Dataflow details
More complex ETL
Loading SAP Source System Master Data Scenario
Types of Extractions
Generic(Custom) Datasource

■ A Generic datasource is created when no standard

business content datasource is available that
meets business reporting requirements

■ 3 methods to create Generic DataSource.

■ View/Table
■ From Standard Tables & Views
■ From Custom Tables & Views
■ SAP Query
■ Queries created in SQ01/SQ02
■ Function Module
■ Using Custom comprehensive ABAP Codes
 Customer Generated Extractors
Customer generated extractors are running on top of statistics data
collection process in R/3. They extract data from statistical tables already
available in R/3 and also use the mechanism already provided in R/3 to
capture the delta.

Example : COPA and LIS

COPA:
■ CO/PA collects all the OLTP data for calculating contribution margins (sales, cost of sales, overhead
costs).

■ Structures and tables are defined specifically for each customer when the organizational unit for CO-PA is
defined as part of Customizing
Day 1: Basic Concepts & Data Modeling – Basic
Structures

Data warehousing concepts

 Star Schema , Extended Star Schema
 SAP BW Administration work bench
 BW Objects

 Master Data Objects

 Overview of SAP ECC Extraction

 SAP BW Business Content

 Exercise
Introduction

Business Content is a pre-configured set of role and task-relevant

information models based on consistent metadata in the SAP Business
Information Warehouse.

Business Content can:

■ Be used in particular industries without being modified

■ Be modified, meaning you can work with it to any degree of detail

■ Serve as a template or an example for customer-defined Business

Content
Business Content in SAP BI
■ ECC extractor programs

■ DataSources

■ InfoObjects

■ InfoSources

■ Infoproviders & Data targets

■ Process chains

■ Transformations

■ Variables

■ Queries

■ Workbooks

■ Crystal Reports

■ Web templates

■ Roles
Business Content Versions

■ SAP delivers Business Content in the SAP Delivery Version (D

version)

■ Activation of BCA required (A Version)

■ The different versions of business content are

■ D(Delivery) SAP delivery version
■ A(Active) Active version
■ M(Modified) Modified version
 Procedure to Install BCA …1

Step1 :Navigate to the Administrator Workbench to Install Business

Content
 Procedure to Install BCA …2
Step 2: Assign Relevant Source Systems

If you want to assign a source system, select the Source System

Assignment function. The Choose Default Source Systems dialog
window appears.

Select one or more source systems by setting the corresponding

indicators in the Default Assignment column.

Step 3 :Group Objects to Be Included, Determine Mode of Collection for

Objects

Grouping

The groupings combine the objects from a particular area

Only Necessary Objects (default setting)

Grouping
Grouping

■ In Data Flow Before

■ In Data Flow Afterwards

■ In Data Flow Before and Afterwards

Collection Mode

Collect Automatically (default setting): The data is collected directly when

the objects are selected.

Start Manual Collection: The data is collected only when you click on the
Gather Dependent Objects icon.
Transfer the Objects in Collected Objects

We will be installing an InfoCube 0EIH_C03 (Accidents: Safety

Measures). To activate the cube, we have to activate all the dependant
objects.
Check Settings for Collected Objects

Right click on the cube and select the „Insert Objects for Collection‟ option.

This will show you all the dependants of the cube

 Install
The following Business Content objects are highlighted in this column by default:

Objects that are being transferred for the first time. There is not an active version of
these objects in the system.

Business Content objects that have been redelivered in a new version. These

Objects are identified by the Content time stamp in the corresponding object tables.
Check on the install checkboxes for all the dependants.

The cube name is checked by default.

Procedure to Install Business Content

In the context menu, the following two options are available for the
installation:

Install all Below

The object in the selected hierarchy level and all objects in the lower
levels of the hierarchy are selected as to Install.

Do Not Install All Below

The Install indicators are removed for the object in the selected hierarchy
level and all objects in the lower levels of the hierarchy.
 Make Settings in the Selection List and
Install

Make the required settings in the Install selection list:

Installation Type