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Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas

Lumira SP12 – Can it Connect to BW

This has been a common question for Lumira – can it connect to BW?  In previous versions this was not supported unless you were using BW on HANA.

With SP12, SAP Lumira now supports connectivity against a BW Universe (BI4x .UNX).  First you need to create a BW Universe in the IDT.  You go to connections, log on to the BI4x platform, and select your BW Universe. 

I am using BW data from SAP Solution Manager Incident Management.

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In the above shows how I am filtering on date created

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In the above you see I am connecting using a .UNX file and I created a time hierarchy to separate the date by Year, Quarter, Month

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Then I create a storyboard of the various views of Incident Management – incidents by month, component, and message status.  I am using the Message Component as an input control to select the various incidents.

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I can “clone” the storyboard and change the input controls to check Message status.

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I publish the dataset to Lumira Cloud, where I can start interacting with the data there or using SAP BusinessObjects Mobile

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Above shows SolMan BW Universe data in the Lumira Cloud, and I can start exploring/analyzing visualizations there.

What are some of the downsides of connecting to the BW Universe?  You lose the BW hierarchy data and you need to filter the data effectively before you start building the visualization.

There is a step-by-step video on how to connect to BW here provided by SAP Lumira University.

Related Links:

Ashish Morzaria – #SAPTechEd 2013 Speaker of the Week – Lumira will be covered at TechEd

Meet the ASUG TechEd Speaker Dennis Scoville – Empowered Self-Service BI with SAP HANA and SAP Lumira

#DataGeek Weekly Update – SAP Lumira SP12 and Breaking Bad
Try Lumira Site

Official Product Tutorials – SAP BusinessObjects Lumira – now updated for SP12

Also SAP released this video featuring Lumira SP12 features:

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      9 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Fantastic.  Thanks, Tammy

      Author's profile photo Billy Warring
      Billy Warring

      Lumira just moved up on my priority list of things to start working on, I assume you can obtain any BW cube info on a Solution Manager; not just the ITSM?

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      Yes, any BW cube - but you need to create the Universe in the IDT first.

      Good luck

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Tammy,

      Good Day!

      Nice analysis! I appreciate.

      Especially I like this blog because you have compared with "Incident Management" I like this very very much! Keep rocking 🙂

      Keep sharing new things. Have a nice day!

      Regards,

      Hari Suseelan

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Tammy,

      Thanks for tackling this subject. There have been a lot of questions about this.

      Chris

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Tammy -

      I'm evaluating "tableau" against SAP Lumira.  Both products seem very similar, but I see that tableau can interpret our BW hierarchies very well.  It doesn't look like Lumira can.

      I see Lumira can only access UNX, so is a 3rd party application making more sense of the SAP BW back end then products that SAP is producing???  say it ain't so!

      Thanks,

      Matt

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      On today's SAP Self-Service BI webcast, SAP's Saskia Battersby said they (SAP) are looking into BICS connectivity...so hopefully it will come soon.

      I am also including Manikandan Srinivasan   in case he wants to add anything.

      Author's profile photo Henry Banks
      Henry Banks

      Hi Matt,

      Yes, unfortunately, this is the current state of play. This feature has been much requested during the past year.

      If you take a look at our roadmap here: https://websmp108.sap-ag.de/~sapidb/011000358700000212382013E.pdf   .. You'll see that MDX .unv are on the mid-term roadmap.  and that 'direct access' (i.e. BICS) is on the longer-term goals.

      I tested a preview of this internally recently, and yes, it handles hierarchies pretty well. That said, I don't have any visibility of an expected timelines, nor is one being communicated internally at this time.

      regards,

      H

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks for the update Henry.  There are some ambiguities around the future direction "greater visibility across organization".  To me, this implies Launch Pad / Mobile integration (not just with cloud).  I could be reading that incorrectly, but we have a division evaluating Tableau.  I think feature for feature it's probably ahead of Lumira at this point, but Launch Pad integration would level the playing field since our security model would stay in tact, and we wouldn't be tied to desktops...