SAP BW 7.4 Powered by HANA — Promising Features (Part 1)

Hi All,

Recently, I got a chance to work on a project which involved SAP BW 7.4 SP5.

The latest SP5 of SAP BW 7.4 powered by HANA comes up with a lot of new and enhanced features.

I have tried to explore the so called new features and has taken the help of HELP.SAP wherever required.

This would be the First in the 4 part series of documents which will take you through the various new features.

Part 2 of the series can be found in the link :  http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-53210

Part 3 of the series can be found in the link :  http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-53527

Part 4 of the series can be found in the link :  http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-53505

1) Implementation Methodology:

2) System status

3)  2 New entries in Modelling Tab:

a) History: In modeling, a new view has been introduced for the history of actions performed on BW objects. In the history, the navigatable actions on objects (display and change for example) are displayed for the current Data Warehousing Workbench session. These actions can be called from the history. This provides you for example with quick access to the maintenance screen for objects that you have already worked on during this session.

b)  SAP HANA Analysis Process (HAP):   You can use a SAP HANA analysis process to analyze data from certain perspectives, for example to   calculate ABC classes or to find scoring information. You can use the functions of the SAP HANA database, which you can combine with the functions of the BW system.

Please find the SAP documentation link on HAP:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw74/helpdata/en/75/55bb05654c49398f07a038a2ff2c06/content.htm?frameset=/en/10/c0666ed4a24e9d81e90e78d9a21fca/frameset.htm

Please find the navigation path how to create a new HANA analysis process tab:

1. Double click on the SAP HANA Analysis process under the modelling tab.
2. All the Info areas and the available HAP’s would be shown in the right side.
3. Create a new HAP under the required Info Area.

  d.   A screen like below with 4 tabs will be shown.

       
  e. You need to model your HAP based on data source, data analysis and data target.

  f.   The Following are the options available under the Data source:

  g.   Following are some of the functions available under Data Analysis: 

   h.   The following are the screens under the different tabs:

i.   The HAP Process can now be included in Process Chain

4)  OPEN ODS View:

a.  Right Click on Info Area –> Create Open ODS view.              

b.  Enter the name, description, Semantics and Type

c.  Following are the various screens under different tabs.

Note: In BW, you can use SAP HANA Smart Data Access as the source for Open ODS views and for query access to data in Sybase IQ as a near-line storage solution.

SAP HANA Smart Data Access make it possible to access external data, without having to replicate the data to the SAP HANA database beforehand. You can connect supported databases – such as SAP Sybase ASE, SAP Sybase IQ, Intel Distribution for Apache Hadoop, Teradata and SAP HANA – to the BW SAP HANA database. SAP HANA handles the data sources like local tables on the database (known as “virtual tables”).

If you use SAP HANA Smart Data Access, query execution is optimized by moving processing (whenever possible) to the database connected by SAP HANA Smart Data Access. In addition, SAP HANA Smart Data Access provides more options to consume external data sources using Open ODS views and integrate these sources into BW.

  Please find some links which shows the Open ODS concept in detail with real time examples:

https://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw74/helpdata/en/3c/2501f075cb42b1aef74b6b4e5fa9de/content.htm

http://scn.sap.com/community/data-warehousing/netweaver-bw/blog/2013/12/29/teched2013-bw-74-feature–ods-view

  http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/40f377fd-194d-3110-469b-82a4131689cf?  =index&overridelayout=true&58987080855969

5)  The characteristics definition screen has changed and now we have some additions aswell.

6)   Now we have some additional help while creating the Characteristics Objects:

Hope  you got a glimpse of some of the  new features that has come up in BW7.4.

Regards,

Prabhith