Karthik Vasudevan

October 11, 2014 4 minute read

BI Activities involved in SAP BI 7.4 upgrade – Part 1

BI Activities involved in SAP BI 7.4 upgrade – Part 1

Summary

The objective of the document is to give information on the activities performed during and after BI 7.4 upgrade.

System Information

Before Upgrade: SAP BI 7.0 SP 22 – SAPKW70022

After Upgrade: SAP BI 7.4 SP 7 – SAPKW74007

Introduction

The introduction about SAP BI 7.4 is absolutely not necessary here since we have lot of information already available all over SCN

Please don’t expect that I am going to give some information which is not available anywhere. The below details about the activities performed during and after the upgrade might be also available here and there.

I have tried to include our project experience during the upgrade which will be useful in overcoming the practical difficulties.

We have started our actual upgrade in mid of June and ended up in mid of September in four different BI systems. Secondary Development system, Development System, Quality System and Production. We still have a project testing system which is not yet upgraded.

It is always better to have one system to be excluded from the upgrade, so that we could use that for testing and comparing purpose (Just a personal thought since it was very useful for us to check the changes before and after upgrade)

BW Sizing Information required for Quick Sizer

Quick Sizer is a Web-based tool designed to make the sizing of the SAP solutions easier and faster. It has been developed by SAP in close cooperation with all platform partners and is free of cost. With Quick Sizer you can translate business requirements into technical requirements. Simply fill in the online questionnaire, an up-to-date survey that is based on business-oriented figures. The results you obtain can help you select an economically balanced system that matches your company’s business goals.

The information that we have provided gives an outline of whether we need to upgrade our hardware component as well before our application upgrade.

You could get all information about Quick Sizer in SCN market place using your login id, password. We will go into what we have done actually to get the required information

Basis Team is fully responsible for updating the information into the Quick Sizer tool. There are lot more information provided other than BW sizing. Here I will explain what we have done from BI side.

The information that is required from a BI system is divided into five different tables. Based on each table, the required information varies

Table 1: Throughput – User Groups of SEM-BPS

This table s related to Integrated Planning and BPC information. We should give the information like how many planners, how many real time infocubes and the volume of data etc.

Table 2: Throughput – Query & User Distribution

Here we should give information related to normal, business and super users. How many of them are using the reports, how many reports in total, how much time spent by them on an average.

Table 3: Throughput – Data Upload to BW Server

Here we need to give information about what is the volume of data expected on a daily basis which is actually based on the ECC transactions.

Table 4: Throughput – Definition of Infocubes

This is time consuming table. As from the name, you could have find out that we are going to give all the information about each and every infocube present in the system. This holds information including number of dimensions, number of key figures, average volume of data, records in initial load and many more

Table 5: Throughput – Definition of ODS Objects

This is also same as the above table, but DSO specific information. Number of text fields, numeric fields, average volume of data, records in initial load and so on.

Issues faced in Quick Sizer tool

The first three tables will not be of much issues. But the tables related to cube and DSO will give errors that the information provided is wrong or not sufficient.

See a sample error message

There are scenarios like we may have to manipulate the data for those two tables.

We might not be able to get some data accurately. For example Average length of character fields in DSO. There are almost 300 DSOs in our system. It is not feasible to get the char length of all fields and calculating the average. So initially we left that field blank for all entries. But the tool gave error only for few DSOs for which we have calculated the average length and uploaded it.

For some cubes, the total number of requests was more than 10000 and the quick sizer didn’t accept 5 digits initially. Later when all other issues were rectified, it accepted 5 digits as well.

In some cases, whatever values we give, it didn’t accept. Then we gave NA and it worked. So it sometimes works in trial and error basis.

PS: We didn’t spend much time to analyse the reason for these issues. Since it was not one or two errors and we were keen in resolving the issues as early as possible and proceed further.

Important Tables which we used to get information

We have not used all of the below tables, but most of them. But I have tried to list out all tables related to Infocube and DSO which will be useful in many scenarios. There are lot more other than these tables listed below.

RSDCUBE – Directory of Infocubes

RSDCUBET – Texts on Infocubes

RSDCUBEIOBJ – Objects per Infocube (where-used list)

RSDDIME – Directory of Dimensions

RSDDIMET – Texts on Dimensions

RSDDIMEIOBJ – InfoObjects for each Dimension (Where-Used List)

RSDCUBEMULTI – Infocubes involved in a Multicube

RSDICMULTIIOBJ – MultiProvider: Selection/Identification of InfoObjects

RSDICHAPRO – Characteristic Properties Specific to an Infocube

RSDIKYFPRO – Flag Properties Specific to an Infocube

RSDICVALIOBJ – InfoObjects of the Stock Validity Table for the Infocube

RSDODSO – Directory of all ODS Objects

RSDODSOT – Texts of all ODS Objects

RSDODSOIOBJ – InfoObjects of ODS Objects

RSDODSOATRNAV – Navigation Attributes for ODS Object

RSDODSOTABL – Directory of all ODS Object Tables

RSODSSETTINGS – Settings for an ODS

This activity seem to be very simple, but it takes many days to get all the required information from the production system. There are lot more activities coming in the next couple of documents.

Thanks for your time! Please feel free to add any comments.