Turn Back Time – Looking back at TechEd 2007 BI Bootcamp
My first TechEd was in 2007. Before that, I mostly attended ASUG events such as ASUG forums and once in a while ASUG Annual Conference. Back then, I never felt I was technical enough to attend. I was wrong.
My first day at TechEd 2007 was a BI Bootcamp ASUG pre-conference session. I found my notes while cleaning off an old PC. Read below:
SAP TechEd
BI Boot Camp
October 1, 2007
BI Upgrades (now known as BW)
Ron Silberstein, SAP NetWeaver RIG
When upgrading to 7.0, SAP supports a “coexistence” strategy except with BI Statistics content – that is only available on 7.0. BIA – Business Information Accelerator is a big driver for the upgrade.
The focus of the upgrade is on Basis procedures. Some core steps:
- Project Prep
- Technical Prep
- Technical Upgrade – Prepare
- Post technical steps
- Statistics
Ron is publishing an upgrade paper on SDN with a sample project timeline.
Usage types drive need for the front end. BI Java, EP, AS-Java.
Technical steps of upgrade 2 options, one where users can stay on the system, the other users are out of the system:
- PREPARE – can run one week ahead of time
- SAPUp – downtime
End time is shorter if the users are out of the system and dataloads are stopped. Application Specific Upgrade (ASU) toolbox is available in December through Solution Manager.
BIA only works on InfoCubes; query response times are 100X faster. BIA is an appliance. Index is on rows and columns (instead of just rows). BIA has 2 blade CPU’s.
BIA at Wawa
John Langan, SAP
Wawa used 7.0 from the start; this was not an upgrade.
Uses Analysis Process Designer
They have thousands of broadcasts to the portal each day
570 Stores do not have e-mail, and no Excel
They have 600 active queries
BIA is a transparent bolt on application that uses TREX to boost query performance.
It has a common index for master data.
It uses Delta indexing
Wawa has a two terabyte warehouse
Logical partitioning
Average 2 years on Accelerator, older will use aggregates
Has 1 BIA index per cube
Rollup times are reduced
Change run is less work
BIA has a new process type
They are running BIA on 5 C class blades (4 are running, 1 is a failover)
Standalone TREX is installed
BI Roadmap
Ingo Brenckmann, SAP Product Strategist
Roadmap is for 3-5 years
By 2010 want a “process-centric” BI, where BI is part of the business process
Respond to change
BI is complex
- Has multiple tools
- Steep learning curve
- There is a disconnect between business and IT, with fragmented information
- Disconnect between analytics and operations
BI is a management discipline focused on analyzing business activities to augment business processes with actionable intelligence
Embed analytics in composite applications
Future there will be three major lines of BI:
- Standard Reporting
- Create queries
- Publish to Web
- Agile BI
- Create new analytics
- Explore information
- Plan business activities
- Embedded BI
- Embed BI
- Create dashboards
Future direction is human centric
Three design principles of an agile BI structure:
- simplicity for the users
- flexibility
- integration
Embedded BI
Only SAP provides
Uses Enterprise Services
Integrate BI into business processes
Create reusable BI components
Uses Composite Applications
Visual Composer to create information dashboards and to personalize content
Detailed view on Embedded BI
From an “embedded BI dashboard” can jump to standard reports or to Agile BI
Can access BI from Enterprise Search
Enhanced backend to reduce time of development
Transformations
Test tool
Copy transformations
Find attributes
Context Menu in Data Flow
Enhanced alert handling
Process chain dependency management
2009 – access BI from MS Office
************************************************************
End of notes.
How far have we com since 2007? Embedded BI now means something else in SAP.
If you have read this far, please consider submitting an abstract for an ASUG session at SAP TechEd. Here is the link to submit.