SAP’s Brian Wood and Natascha Marenfield gave this ASUG webcast last month.
Figure 1: Source: SAP
Business Content is part of the BW offering. It gives value immediately and “shortens time to value”.
It can be customized in one way or another
However it has grown the application suite over years – data models like ECC/Finance/Controlling – those data models aren’t harmonized.
SAP wants to builds models that are harmonized across applications
They want to provide a baseline for your development
Going forward with HANA to have the ability to add real-time or near real-time data to analysis within BW
It provides a framework for real-time and historical data analysis
It includes best practices for mixed scenarios – BW InfoProviders & custom HANA views
Parts of business suite are not transparent – implements semantics of suite and provides transparency
Business content is at help.sap.com web site
Smart Data Access allows you to see data in another system without loading to BW – use within BW on HANA
Figure 2: Source: SAP
Figure 2 shows the goal of new business content: to provide a baseline for benefits for both business users and IT
Business users get a baseline that allows for flexible and real-time analytics as well as traditional historical reporting
It provides a higher level of detail in HANA
It has the ability to create complex new key figures
Predictive library, text analysis library, business function libraries are not in a typical relational database management system
It combines departmental data with enterprise data as well
BW workspaces give business users ability to upload their data and join that with enterprise data
It provides patterns for sustainable architecture – LSA updated for BW on HANA
HANA analysis processes in BW that allow you to leverage predictive library
Figure 3: Source: SAP
What are main considerations for design? New business content optimized – follows LSA++ for BW on HANA
New content provides a higher level of detail like line items
It contains some mixed scenarios with both HANA and BW capabilities – customers get an idea of how use technology for their content area
It provides some optimized transformations and push down to HANA engine
It offers more flexibility in data acquisition and reporting
They want to use consolidated InfoObjects – been around in business content for a while. The older content areas haven‘t included
They took those InfoObjects in that model for harmonizing master data
Only visible if you turn on a special business function – own namespace – /IMO/
Figure 4: Source: SAP
Figure 4 shows patterns for mixed scenarios and how to take advantage of HANA database underneath
Customer has BW on HANA and also uses HANA to do real time reporting of key figures loaded to HANA via SLT – the BW can give him the benefit of real time reporting data
An example is a line item point of sale system to analyze shopping basket during campaigns
Figure 5: Source: SAP
Figure 5 shows the architecture for consumption of HANA, using a virtual provider – let HANA analytical view – use it in a query and use it in a query
Security is handled by BW
SAP said it passes data through BW world in a transparent way
Figure 6: Source: SAP
For “last and past” the idea is that customer uploads historical data in BW system in the finance area and wants data real-time. They built idea of customer loads data in HANA for real-time – via extractor of data in BW side
Figure 7: Source: SAP
Multi provider to union data with Inventory Cube or DSO
Figure 8: Source: SAP
Figure 8 shows “Power of HANA for flexible calculation of complex key figures“
Figure 9: Source: SAP
You have your data on BW on HANA in different DSO’s for example
From DSO you can generate an analytics view from the schema side
Data stays in BW schema
Additional data model is generated from definition of DSO
Output is consumed via a Virtual Provider
Figure 10: Source: SAP
Started with a sales and distribution with old SD area, focusing on core business processes
This is delivered BI content 737 SP4 and 747 SP4
In 757, take advantage of new features that BW 740 – like composite provider
Figure 11: Source: SAP
In the last SP SAP added parts of AP, Finance, AR, and two areas in Controlling
To be continued..
Related:
Add these ASUG BW / HANA sessions to your Annual Conference Agenda
If you are an ASUG member, consider registering for the following upcoming webcasts:
- May 7: Understanding SAP’s Best Practice for Data Modeling in SAP BW powered by HANA Using the Layered Scalable Architecture + Framework
- May 13: Master Class for Optimizing SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse on SAP HANA
- May 14: How to Get to SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA
- June 30: Molson Coors – New Approach to Data Warehousing with SAP BW 7.4 Powered by SAP HANA