About this Document

Business Case

This document is based on Sales Business case scenarios.

Purpose

This manual aims to help you to understand the modeling of HANA views into BW and reporting based on BW providers in SAP BW on HANA. This kind of processing is done in SAP BW on HANA. This manual also provides details of the steps involved in creating and modeling HANA views and migrating to BW and creating a report based BW providers. This document is created solely with the intention of sharing information.

Pre-requisites

Following are the pre-requisites for performing the tasks presented in this manual:

• SAP BW on HANA 7.4 installed on the server with packages sp4 (SAPKW74004).
• SAP BW on HANA 7.3.1 installed on the server with packages sp9 (SAPKW73109).
• SAP BW on HANA 7.3 installed on the server with packages sp10 (SAPKW73010).
• HANA database upgraded to version HANA SPS 06 and above.
• BW authorization and Analytic privileges.
• Knowledge of BO Objects.
• Knowledge of BO Data services.

Contents

1  Overview of Transient provider, Virtual provider and Composite provider in BW 7.4

     1.1 Transient Provider

     1.2 Composite Provider

     1.3 Virtual Provider

2  Source Data Extraction (using BO Data Services)

3  Source Data Extraction (LO Extraction)

4  Modeling BW Objects in BW 7.4

5  Modeling in HANA

6  Modeling in BW on HANA

     6.1 Transient Provider

     6.2 Composite Provider

     6.3 Virtual Provider

     6.4 BEx Query Designer

          6.4.1 Transient Provider

          6.4.2 Composite Provider

          6.4.3 Virtual Provider

7  Reporting in Web Intelligence

8  Conclusion

1  Overview of Transient provider, Virtual provider and Composite provider in BW 7.4

DSO and InfoCube in BW 7.4 are HANA-Optimized by default. This reduces the activation time and has a huge impact on the performance .Similarly modeling HANA Views in BW on HANA into Transient providers, Composite Providers and Virtual Providers also has a huge impact on performance if the underlying database is HANA.

1.1 Transient Provider

Key features

• Its metadata in BW is not persisted, but always generated at runtime.
• BEx Queries built on top can adapt to changes automatically as far as possible.
• Navigational attributes of an assigned Info Object can’t be used .
• It cannot be used in Multi provider.
• It can only be used in Composite Provider in order to merge with other InfoProvider.
• It is exposed to BEx and BI tools.

1.2 Composite Provider

• Its biggest advantage that it performs both union and joins operation which overcomes the limitation of Info Sets and Multi provider in BW .

1.3 Virtual Provider

Key features

• It offers a very flexible way of integrating data not stored in BW Objects into the consistent BW world.
• We can turn on Navigational Attributes for the Virtual Provider as usual. Then we can map the Navigational Attribute also to a field in the HANA model in the “Provider specific properties” – if you do not map it, the data comes from the Master data tables in BW.
• Virtual Provider can be transported as usual, it can be used in a Multi Provider and BEx Queries can be built on top, just like for any other Virtual Provider.
• The data read access at Query runtime is not via SQL, but it uses the same special Analytics API that we use to access data in InfoCubes, DSOs, and Multi Providers. This enables the BW Analytic Manager to push down operations to HANA instead of performing them in the application server.

2   Source Data Extraction (using BO Data Services)

We will now see the basic feature of Extraction and Loading from Flat file system to HANA using BO Data Services.

• Log in to BO Data Services with proper username and password.

• We create new Excel type format to load Sales Item data (VBAP Table).  

• Next we import schema and load the data .

• Next we create a new BW on HANA Data store that connects to HANA database.

• Next we create a batch job and template table in BW on HANA.

• Next we also mapped the fields in Query transform.

• We run a batch job by right clicking it.
• Next we see the data in the template table and import the table by right clicking it.

3  Source Data Extraction (LO Extraction)

We will now see the basic feature of Extraction for Sales Header data from EC6 system.

• Log in to EC6 with proper username and password.

• We will activate the data sources using a transaction code RSA5.

• Next we have to fill up the set up tables for the data sources. For doing this first we need to delete the contents that are already present in that setup tables.
• Go to the transaction code LBWG and select the application component whose content has to be deleted.

• To check whether the setup table is deleted or not go to the transaction code RSA3 and give the data source name and it will show Record 0 found which means data has been deleted from the setup table.
• Now using the transaction code LBWQ delete the extraction queue of the data source.
• Also delete the delta queue for the data sources using the transaction code RSA7.
• Next is to fill the setup table using the transaction code SBIW or OLI*BW where * denotes the application component

• Click on Logistics under Settings for Application-Specific Data Sources–> Managing Extract Structures —>Application-Specific Setup of Statistical Data.
• Now click on the execute button of Perform setup – Sales and do it for delivery.

• We will now see the set up table contents using transaction code RSA3.

4  Modeling BW Objects in BW 7.4

• We will locate the application component and replicate both the data sources.

• Next we will create the info package for the data sources 2LIS_11_VAHDR and activate it so that we can see all the data that are selected in the extract structure will be in the PSA table.

• Next we will create the DSO for data source and load all the data into it using the data transfer process and activate both the DSO.

5  Modeling in HANA

We will now see the basic steps of modeling in HANA.

• Log in to HANA Database via HANA Studio by clicking add system.

• Analytic view is created on item table (VBAP) replicated by BO Data Services.
• NOTE: Make sure to mention the measure type ‘Amount with Currency’ for measure attribute like for COST, NETVALUE, NETPRICE to avoid mismatch problem with the predefined Info Objects while creating transient or virtual provider.
• CURR is a currency field of Item table (VBAP).

6 Modeling in BW on HANA

We will now see the basic steps of modeling Data marts in BW on HANA.

6.1 Transient Provider

• Using T Code RSSDD_HM_PUBLISH, we create Analytic Index which is Transient Provider in BW on HANA .

• Using T Code RSSDD_LTIP, we see the transient provider that we have already created.

• Select the Analytic Index and click display.

• While creating it, mention the Info Area.

• Now we can mention the reference InfoObject for the attributes.
• Reference InfoObject are used to copy the metadata structure to attribute.

• NOTE: Reference InfoObject is not mandatory in transient provider.

6.2 Composite Provider

• Now we create a composite provider on Sales Header Data (HANA-Optimized DSO) and Sales Item Data (Transient provider).
• NOTE: We can model a Composite Provider either by using the T Code RSLIMO / RSLIMOBW or the Workspace Designer  

• We can use either UNION or JOIN operands in modeling of Composite Provider based on requirements which is an advantage over Multi Provider (only union) and Infoset (only join).
• Drag and Drop HANA-Optimized DSO from left panel to right panel and use binding type as “UNION”.
• Drag and Drop Transient provider from left panel to right panel and use binding type as “Inner JOIN”.
• NOTE: In composite provider, there has to be one provider with binding type as “UNION”.

6.3 Virtual Provider

• Next we create a virtual provider on HANA Analytic view.

• Select and click Virtual provider based on HANA Model.

• Mention the package name and view name.

• Next we click the Assign HANA Model Attributes button in upper right corner in order assign the attributes to Info Objects.  
• Select propose mapping checkbox and click continue  

• Select the required attributes and If not found then Click continue.

• For Manual mapping, right click the dimension and click provider specific-Info Objects properties.

• Similarly do the same for Key Dimensions.
• Note: Make sure measure attributes like COST, NETPRICE,NETVALUE have same data type with predefined Info Objects .

• Finally Virtual provider is created and we now check the data .

6.4 B Ex Query Designer

6.4.1  Transient Provider

• Next we create a B ex Query on Transient provider and report it using RSRT.

6.4.2 Composite Provider

• We also create a B ex Query on Composite provider and report it using RSRT.

6.4.3  Virtual Provider

• We also create a B ex Query on Virtual provider and report it using RSRT.

7  Reporting in Web Intelligence

We will now see basic steps of reporting on BEx query in Web Intelligence.

• We create an OLAP connection in a repository in Information Design Tool.

• Next we open a BI launch pad and then web intelligence .
• We select BEx Query as datasource and then the required OLAP connection and then required Query.

• We also selected the required objects and run the query.
• We can also preview the data using refresh in data preview tab.

• We also created column chart along with tabular display of data for composite provider Query.

• We also created column chart along with tabular display of data for Virtual provider Query.
• We can also save the report as a different file like pdf, excel.

8  Conclusion

The concept of the Transient Provider has the biggest appeal in the context of ad-hoc models with frequent changes and a limited durability. But we can’t transport a Transient Provider and so we have to publish the HANA model in each system where we want to use it.

For the more long term and stable requirements we instead propose the new Virtual Provider, based on HANA model.

So as a general recommendation we state, that we should keep the model in HANA as simple as possible and model the calculations instead in the BEx Query.