Checking out SAP Lumira BW Query connectivity

Recent version of SAP Lumira offer connectivity to SAP BW through Infoproviders or Queries so I wanted to check this out.

BI reporting on Solution Manager data

Lately I’ve been looking at SAP BI reporting options to report (using custom queries) on data that is stored inside SAP Solution Manager.

What I’ve got right now is reporting on the statistical (ST03N based) data of managed SAP systems. Data is pulled into SAP Solution Manager through IT Performance Reporting (specific extractors are scheduled in for this) and as a second step, I’ve build custom queries using BEx Query Designer to get the output the way the customer wants to have it as they self-defined thresholds which don’t necessary match what SAP brings in as KPI’s in Earlywatch Alert Reporting for example.

In the above screenshot you see sample output in Excel (through Bex Query Analyzer). I’ve used SAP Learning Hub content to get knowledgeable on the basics of Bex tooling as you can read here. Then with the help of some friends, I managed to get a decent solution going in Excel so my dataset adjusts automatically in the accompanied graph (using OFFSET function in Excel to achieve that).

Leveraging SAP Lumira

To get my query visible in SAP Lumira, I published the query to a role using Bex Query Analyzer as you can see below:

Since this was more an experiment than anything else, I just picked one … if you want to use this properly, I would suggest you tie it to a customer specific role instead of picking a SAP standard one.

Next, I boot up SAP Lumira and click on acquire data. As the next step, I click on Connect to SAP Business Warehouse*
*Note that this feature is not available in the personal edition. It’s available during trial period (for non productive use) or in the full edition.

You should then get your SAPlogon system list through the dropdown box and you select your SAP Solution Manager system (or your BI system is you don’t use the embedded BI for Solution Manager) and click connect.

Next, I pick « Roles » from the dropdown to see the query I added to the SAP standard role folder.

The dataset creation took about two – three minutes time which is comparable to the performance I get in Bex Query Analyzer since data has to be fetched out of Solution Manager and the data is not yet cached.

Once loaded, SAP Lumira places the data in table format immediately based on the query properties so the only thing you need to do to get the respective graph is click a chart type under chart builder which is what I did here, I choose a line graph to display the number of HTTPS steps of last month of a given system.

Another small exercise I did was save the result of a Bex Workbook (leverages Bex Query Analyzer add-in in Excel) into XLSX format and using that as a source to feed into SAP Lumira. This way I can create an info graphic for example and I could combine multiple graphs. What I like about SAP Lumira is the ease of use and how little effort I had to do to get the graph in the way I wanted to have it. Getting the same result in the Bex Query Analyzer takes much more time.

The future looks bright

One restriction still here for SAP Lumira, you cannot yet combine multiple BW queries and compose an info graphic for example as only the visualize tab is available. This will become available though as its planned functionality for SAP Lumira. Once it does I’ll keep you posted as then I’ll be able to combine multiple visualizations to come to what looks like a service level report. Eagerly awaiting this new functionality to become available for SAP Lumira!