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Author's profile photo Saurav Chetry
Saurav Chetry
November 11, 2016 3 minute read

BW/4HANA: Certification Opportunities for Third Party Applications

SAP’s next generation data warehouse solution SAP BW/4HANA is now generally available since September 2016. It is a new product built entirely on the in-memory platform SAP HANA with a simple set of objects for your data warehousing requirements. It is available for use by anyone with data warehousing needs which can include data from SAP and non-SAP data sources.

As with SAP BW, third party applications can be integrated with SAP BW/4HANA via certain interfaces and we are happy to inform the availability of certification scenarios for such integrations with third party applications.

Certification Scenarios and Testing:

As of now certification opportunities are available for third party application integrations via the below supported interfaces/scenarios:

BW4-OBI :

ISVs/SAP partners with BI reporting client application access SAP BW/4HANA using OLAP BAPI interface (abbreviated as SAP BW/4HANA OBI) interface. Objective of certification is the validate the integration between SAP BW/4HANA and third party BI reporting tools using OLAP BAPI interface.

During testing, BI reporting tool will be connected to SAP BW/4HANA system and reports will be generated using BW/4HANA data.

BW4-ODB :

ISVs/SAP partners with BI reporting client application access SAP BW/4HANA using OLE DB for OLAP (abbreviated as SAP BW/4HANA ODBO) interface. SAP BW/4HANA ODBO interface is a compliant implementation of the OLE DB for OLAP standard defined by Microsoft in the “OLE DB for OLAP Programmer‘s Reference” as released by Microsoft in February 1998. Objective of certification is to validate the integration between SAP BW/4HANA and third party BI reporting tools using OLE DB for OLAP.During testing, BI reporting tool will be connected to SAP BW/4HANA system and reports will be generated using BW/4HANA data.

BW4-XMLA :

XML for Analysis is a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)-based XML API, designed specifically for standardizing the data access interaction between a BI client application and SAP BW/4HANA working over the Web. The design centers around an XML-based communication API, called XML for Analysis, which defines two generally accessible methods: Discover and Execute.

Discover is used to obtain information and metadata from a Web Service. This information can include a list available data sources and data about the provider.

Execute is used to execute Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) commands against a particular XML for Analysis.

ISVs/SAP partners with BI reporting client application access SAP BW/4HANA using XMLA. During testing, BI reporting tool will be connected to SAP BW/4HANA system and reports will be generated using BW/4HANA data.

BW4-SCH :

ISVs/SAP partners with scheduling solutions can access SAP BW/4HANA process chains to handle and manage them externally. During the testing, such scheduling solutions will be tested for the implementation of involved API calls for the execution of the required criteria for the certification.

System Access and Availability :

SAP RAC Service:
The recommended and usually the quickest way to gain access to an SAP BW/4HANA system suitable for integration testing is via the SAP Remote Access and Connectivity Service (SAP RAC), which provides access to shared and exclusive – use hosted test systems
Alternatively, ISVs and SAP partners can use their own SAP BW/4HANA systems for establishing their integrations with their solutions. There are also options to access the solution on HEC and AWS. Please refer the Deployment Options in SAP BW/4HANA FAQ document for more information.

Certification Process:

ISVs/SAP partners can enroll with SAP Integration and Certification Center for the suitable certification scenario. A dedicated SAP consultant is available to share with you the requirements for achieving the certification. Please refer “How to Enroll” for the next steps.

Certification Benefits:

The certificate is valid for three years and the certified company gets the go to market benefits like the right to publish the certification information and also the use of “SAP Certified Integration with SAP BW/4HANA” logo.

The solution also gets listed in the central SAP Application Developer Directory https://global.sap.com/community/ebook/2013_09_adpd/enEN/index.html

How to Enroll?

SAP ICC certification is an open program based on individual requests. Interested SAP partners or Independent Software Vendors can initiate the certification enrollment by sending an email to
icc-info@sap.com and the team will take care of the rest.

You can as well visit our website http://go.sap.com/partner/certify-my-solution.html and complete the certification request.

References:

Frequently Asked Questions on SAP BW/4HANA FAQ

Learning Resources:

Learn about SAP BW/4HANA on OpenSAP: SAP BW/4HANA in a Nutshell

Official Certification Info Page: SAP BW/4HANA Integration Certification by SAP ICC

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