BEx under the hood, BPC 10 Body work
In this short ‘How-to’ I’d like to illustrate the ease of reporting on a BEx query inside the BPC 10 EPM Add-In.
First off, we’d have to create our BEx query:
Simply log on to BEx Query, found in programs:
Secondly, Create a new query, be certain to query your BPC InfoProvider:
Right, you should now have a query saved.
The final step in the process is adding the SAP BW OLE connection via EPM Add-in
Open Excel, go to EPM Add-In -> log on
After the connection dialogue box pops up, hit the ellipses dots to the right
Then select create. We will be adding our own connection to BW.
After selecting you should see the following:
For the selection prompt ‘Connection Type’ select local.
You will notice that several connections are now available to you. Select SAP BW OLE DB connection.
The next window should pop up
These prompts are details of your local BW installation, Application Server, System Number and Client can be found when logging on to your SAP GUI BW instance and as well as under the properties in your BW connection.
Stepping through the wizard will now prompt you for a few log in credentials (including browsing the BEx query created , and hey presto, you now have an active connection via BPC 10 to your cube)
Hope this short blurb helps (please excuse brevity)
Devon Abraham
Follow: @_Devon_Abraham
Hi Devon,
Interesting post. Any particular reason why you'd want to use a BEx query inside of the EPM Add-in, especially when connecting to a BPC InfoProvider? Just wondering what the potential business problem one would be trying to resolve by utilizing the two tools in this manner.
Thanks,
Jim Link
Hi Devon,
Nice post and something I was already looking for. Your brevity makes things slightly difficult especially when there is no access to system. hope to see more posts.
@ Jim Link,
If the Bex reporting is built very well and adoption rate is high then this will be needed for sure. Imagine you are doing the sales planning and someone wants to see customer level or material level report for the previous year which already exist in BW. This is equivalent option for RRI from the BW space.
Thanks,
Deepesh
@ Deepesh. Thank you for your comment. It is challenging to add detail to my blogs while consulting for the duration of the day, but I will definitely try to improve and dedicate more time to the posts 🙂
@ Jim, Thanks for the comment. I take your point, I think that in my illustration a query to the BPC cube is doing the exact same thing as a BPC report query would, however, as Deepesh points out - We can drill down into queries away from the BPC InfoProvider. This may be useful for a finer granularity of planning detail.
Hope this helps and I appreciate the feedback.
Devon
Hi Devon,
Thank you for the response. Would this capability of drilling down from the BEx report in EPM not be possible through the standard EPM report functionality of Drill Through (as configured in the BPC administration console)?
Jim
Hi James,
Great thread, appreciate the thought process. Correct me if I'm wrong, the Drill Through functionality is dependant on a URL linking to the BEx query. The EPM Add-in connection doesn't depend on this.
I would then take your thought-provoking question down an architectural layer and ask why BEx would allow for both published queries and indeed excel exportable queries. A single view may be the fact that for majority of business a published BEx query holds a bigger footprint than the excel export. Adding duel functionality may make navigation around IT policy simpler.
I'd invite your opinion on this as a conversation starter. I do feel there is power in a single report holding connections to different Info Providers without web publishing,- data reconciliation or dashboarding may become more easily adopted by business.
Devon
Hi Devon,
Nice post. One of the things to keep in mind is that if you create a query directly off a BPC generated InfoCube the technical name of the Cube could change when adding new dimensions or doing a full optimize with more than 13 dimensions. So I would rather create the query off the BPC multiprovider whose technical name should stay consistent.
Lars
Hi Lars,
Thank you for the comment. Excellent point! I have heard through the development team on BPC 10 NW ramp up that their latest patch resolves the changing of technical names, to keep this consistent.
I will revert back once I have more clarity.
Devon
Hi Devon,
Yes, the stabilized cube name is planned for BPC10 SP7, it will be delivered in an sap note allowing you to make a parameter change which will stabilize the cube names.
Regards,
Lars
Therein lies our answer! Thanks for the info Lars
Interesting article..actually once the dimension technical name changes are stabilized then BW query (which already very robust and dynamic) would supplement the BPC reporting manifold.
Also when I see the BPC EPM add-on it makes me nostalgic about BEx Workbook menu bar.
I guess some inspiration has been derived from there...
Regards,
Rakesh Kumar
Hi Rakesh,
Thank you for your insight. I can relate to your thoughts around the EPM Add-in borrowing a little something from what we all know.
Devon
Hi Devon, the idea is good, but how would you manage security? I think this is a major limitation in the usage of your solution.
Regards
Andrea
Hi Andrea,
Appreciate the comment. I have not yet looked into setting this up and rolling out to a broad user base. Interesting point. Thanks.
Devon
Hi All,
I have gone through all the posts above and in my project we are using Bex in parallel with EPM add-in. The reason we have to do that is because of the various analytic features of Bex( like slice and dice) which is not available in EPM or not as user friendly as Bex.
But we have run into a roadblock in this approach, we have built the query on Multiprovider and hence the problem of Technical names is resolved somewhat. But in our reporting we primarily use the properties of the dimensions as well(nav attr), and these properties have different technical names in different systems. When we raised a message with OSS, they claim that this is the intended behaviour and they dont intend to change it in the near future. Anyone here has faced this issue and how did u overcome it?.
Saravanan