Cross-Database Comparison (CDC) results in Dashboard Builder

Do you want to visualize your Cross-Database Comparison (CDC) results in dashboards? In this blog, I will show you how to include CDC results in dashboards in the Dashboard Builder in Solution Manager 7.2. The functionality is available with Solution Manager 7.2 SP05 and was downported with some limitations to SP03 and SP04 in SAP notes 2474498 and 2341333.

Starting the Dashboard Builder Configuration

To start the Dashboard Builder Configuration and set up your own dashboards, you can use the Configuration Dashboard Builder tile in the Business Process Monitoring group of the Solution Manager Launchpad (transaction SM_WORKCENTER) in Solution Manager 7.2:

Including CDC results in dashboards

In the Dashboard Builder, you can include tiles with CDC results in any dashboard. Use the buttons New Dashboard or Copy Dashboard in the Dashboard Builder Configuration to create a new dashboard. Use the button Create Custom Tile to create a new tile with CDC results in a dashboard:

For CDC results, use data source type Business Process Monitoring. This data source type can be used for Business Process Monitoring KPIs as well as for CDC results:

There is a search help for the data source name. For CDC results you can filter on comparisons and/or comparison groups and search for the name of the comparison or comparison group that shall be displayed:

After pressing OK, there is a dialog to select rows and columns and to filter the displayed data. I will show you some configuration examples illustrating the available functionality in more detail.

Example comparison

For the following examples, let us use a comparison with country and city marked as context fields in the data model (in source system 2 only city):

The current comparison result shows inconsistencies of all inconsistency types Objects Exist Only in Source 1, Objects Exist Only in Source 2 and Objects Exist with Differences:

Example 1: Inconsistency type distribution

As a first example I want to show you a pie chart with the distribution of inconsistences in our example comparison on the different inconsistency types:

For this example, I created a custom tile with data source type Business Process Monitoring and chose Pie chart as visualization. I used the search help for the data source name, marked the example comparison and pressed OK.

In the next step the context fields of the comparison, Date and Date/Time are shown as available fields. The Key Figures field which includes the different inconsistency types is preselected as column.

Note that there can be context fields from both data sources, in this example the COUNTRY context field is only available for source 1, but there is a CITY context field in both data sources:

For this first example I just moved the Key Figures field from Columns to Rows:

Filtering

Furthermore, I added a filter to show only inconsistency types Objects Exist Only in Source 1, Objects Exist Only in Source 2 and Objects Exist with Differences. To add this filter, I used the context menu (right mouse button) for the Key Figures field and selected Filters and Select Filter Values. I then entered the filter values and pressed OK:

After saving, the pie chart with the inconsistency type distribution was displayed.

Example 2: Context field distribution

The next example shows a stacked bar chart with the distribution of inconsistencies on context fields COUNTRY and CITY also including the inconsistency type distribution:

In the configuration, I chose Stacked Bar chart as visualization, the two context fields from source 1 as rows and Key Figures as column. I again filtered on the three inconsistency types:

After saving, the stacked bar chart with the context field and inconsistency type distribution was displayed.

Example 3: History of inconsistencies

The next example shows the history of inconsistencies per inconsistency type for the example comparison:

In the configuration, I chose Line chart as visualization, Date as Row and Key Figures as Column. This time I did not set a filter for specific inconsistency types, but set a filter to include a certain date range only. It would also be possible to switch from the filter with absolute dates to a filter with a rolling time window:

After saving, the line chart with the history of inconsistencies per inconsistency type was displayed.

Rename inconsistency types

Maybe you noticed that the inconsistency types in this example have different names. This is because I overwrote the inconsistency types with the Rename Inconsistency Types functionality in the CDC result. The renamed inconsistency types are also reflected in the dashboard:

Example 4: History of inconsistencies for a comparison group

Until now all examples showed results of single comparisons, but in Dashboard Builder it is also possible to visualize the results of CDC comparison groups. Therefore, my next example shows the result of a CDC distribution group with two comparisons, one of them our already known example comparison:

Please note that the available inconsistency types are different for comparison groups.

The configuration for this example is the same as for the history of inconsistencies for a single comparison, but when using the search help for the data source name, I selected a comparison group instead of a comparison. This time I filtered on comparison groups only and searched for group names including DASH:

In principle, the functionality for comparison groups is the same as for single comparisons, but the distribution by context fields is not available for comparison groups.

Further information

I hope you got an impression of how to use the Dashboard Builder for CDC results.

For further information about CDC, please refer to the Data Consistency Management Wiki: https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/Data+Consistency+Management.

To get a high-level overview about the Dashboard Builder, you can browse this blog: https://blogs.sap.com/2017/02/28/sap-solution-manager-7.2-dashboard-builder/

To learn more about some Dashboard Builder features from a configuration view, you can read this blog: https://blogs.sap.com/2017/05/16/sap-solution-manager-7.2-dashboard-builder-configuration/