SAP Analytics Cloud - Private Versions Statistics and Analysis

[thomas_fery]

Update! Wave 2023.08 and 2023.Q2

Welcome to the next chapter in Private Version Analysis in your SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) Tenant.

Planning processes often involve processing and storing large amounts of data. The new version of this content to analyze the version sizes helps you to optimize resource usage and prevent unnecessary memory consumption. By tracking version sizes, you can identify and address data growth patterns, optimize housekeeping, and implement data archiving or purging strategies to ensure efficient storage utilization.

On the overview page, we present an overview of the currently active versions and their respective sizes, along with a time series analysis of version growth over time.

Below these charts, you will find two tables that provide additional details on selected dates and models, including information on the number of versions per model and their respective owners, for a comprehensive understanding of the data. This information helps you to address housekeeping tasks.

The analysis page facilitates the detection of planning cycles and identification of dates with high volumes of versions or large versions created. The tables located below the chart provide insights into how the version sizes are concluded, aiding in a deeper understanding of the data.

 

Private Versions Statistics and Analysis will be general available with Wave 2022.21 and 2022.Q4 QRC Release.

How will it be deployed?

It will be deployed automatically into the side navigation under System > Performance.

It will also be deployed automatically into Files > System > Common > SAC Content.

Alongside with the Story you will find the underlying Model VERSION_STATISTICS_BASE.

What is the purpose of the Private Versions Statistics and Analysis?

As part of the ongoing project SAC Content which helps administrators to answer various questions in regards to performance, housekeeping, usage and many more we introduce the new Story Private Versions Statistics and Analysis. It helps administrators and support to get an overview of the private versions that have been created in the SAP Analytics Cloud Tenant.

Please check the existing content for the big picture and learn how you can use the content:

SAP Analytics Cloud Performance Benchmark

SAP Analytics Cloud – Administration Cockpit

SAP Analytics Cloud Performance Statistics and Analysis

SAP Analytics Cloud Performance Analysis Tool

SAP Analytics Cloud Backend Error Messages

SAC Data Management Jobs Statistics and Analysis

The information helps the administrators in both performance and housekeeping.

Performance:

It aims to address potential performance issues caused by users who are currently working with planning models. We want to highlight the biggest models that are currently in use. This information enables you to make version creators aware of their versions size and the potential high memory consumption they might cause.

Example:

If a public version is in edit mode, a private version will also be created that allows you modify the data without interfering with the original version until it has been saved and thus, published. This edit mode suggests you work on the public data directly but you're working on a copy, a private version of the data container that is only visible for you. It is called "public edit mode". This kind of private versions created invisible during a public edit mode are known sources for potentially high memory consumption and expensive query processing because of the big amount of data. Whenever a user edits a public version, the whole data in the model is copied into an internal private version since the whole dataset needs to be prepared for potential modification. This is a common root cause for very big private versions.

To avoid this, we introduced the concept of planning areas last year. Please check the following blog post to check if you can apply it in your scenarios:

help.sap.com - Planning on Public Versions

help.sap.com - Optimize Planning Models Using the Planning Area

Blog - Introduction to the planning area optimization for SAP Analytics Cloud/

The new Private Versions Statistics and Analysis help you to identify the scenario above and other large versions.

Housekeeping:

This content will be extended with the next releases. Please stay tuned.

[JefB]

Hi thomas.fery

Very welcome addition that could finally give planning modelers (and users!) more insight in their operations!

We would like to share & use the content but we've noticed there is no authorization on the VERSIONS_STATISTICS_BASE model if the standard delivered SAC 'Admin' role is not granted...

This is not the case for the previously delivered statistics/performance models.
Is there any reason for this change in approach? As it will limit our adoption.

[thomas_fery]

Hi jefb,

there should not be any difference to any other model deployed in SAC Content folder. The logic is the same..

If you are facing an issue here please log an SAP Incident.

Thanks,

Thomas

[JefB]

Hi Thomas,

We found out reading data from the Version statistics model only works when assigning 'Full Data Access' option in SAC role setting, which is not acceptable for us as it poses security risk and should only be assigned to few users, as described in help document https://help.sap.com/doc/00f68c2e08b941f081002fd3691d86a7/2022.22/en-US/184b5d5493bb4919b06e60947868...

Other models in the 'SAC Content' folder did not require this, so as you suggested we have logged OSS incident (870708/2022).

[JefB]

A patch release following our OSS incident fixed this issue now.

[Charlotte]

Hi

Could you please add to this blog a definition of an "Active" and an "Inactive" version?

Could you please elaborate more in this blog about the concept of  internal private version (edit mode of any version) and the Private version created by the user ?

Thanks

Charlotte

[thomas_fery]

Hi charlotte.burnier,

A planning version becomes inactive when it is automatically unloaded from the memory. In this context, we are talking about working memory (RAM). It is persisted from RAM to the hard disc by automatic unload during the night.

An inactive private planning version is persisted on the hard drive. It is available for the following planning tasks. If it is published or deleted, it has the status deleted.

Thanks,

Thomas

[Charlotte]

Thanks for your answer Thomas very helpful !!!

[anna_maria_olczak_olusola]

Hi Thomas,

Just a follow-up question: is there a parameter or timeout on when it a p-model becomes inactive? 

[Noel_Munday]

Hi Thomas,

In the version size statistics there are two row count values, one for "Running total versions" and one for "Running total versions size" and I assume this means the number of versions e.g. 1 in my screen shot below and it's row size of 863 million rows. Why is this row count different from the version size in the top 10 version which also indicates that there is only 1 version but here it has a size of 133 million rows?

If the one total is aggregated rows and the other unaggregated rows then my second question would be is there a way to "compress" or "permanently aggregate" the rows so the row count can reduce to the necessary 133 million rows?

[Noel_Munday]

I'm answering my own question: The total version size in number of rows is 863,115,516 but the active version only contains 133,780,956 rows so the difference is rows that have been deleted and these can be seen if you goto page 2 where it shows the deleted number of rows per request ID.

Using this advanced formula code eliminated the zero records and returned the version to zero records although the historical stats still reflect the deleted versions and their sizes:

IF RESULTLOOKUP() = 0 THEN
	DELETE()
ENDIF