Product Information
Analyse your data live with SAP Analytics Cloud on SAP BW on HANA & SAP BW/4HANA (Part 1) [Updated March 2023]
Blog series content (Part 1)
Part 5: will be available soon.
Part 6: not started!
Let’s start with Part 1
Agenda
- Introduction to the SAP Analytics Cloud live connectivity feature
- Connecting a SAP BW Query with SAP Analytics Cloud in live mode
- Linked Analysis
- How SAC deals with SAP BW Query variables & variants
- Dynamic Calculations on-the-fly in SAC
- Explorer mode with SAP BW queries
- Working with SAP BW hierarchies
- Fully flexible & dynamic: Working with dimension and measure input controls
- Time series forecasting based on your SAP BW query data
- R visualizations based on SAP BW live data
- Powerful plug & play feature: SAP Analytics Cloud connects easily to SAP BW Queries which contains 2 structrues
- Blend your SAP BW Queries live (or blend them with your local data)
Introduction to the SAP Analytics Cloud live connectivity feature
This is Part 1 of a few blogs, where I would like to share my personal SAC highlights with the SAC community. We will start with a few basics and then I will dig directly into one of the greatest features of SAC – the Live Access to SAP BW/4HANA and SAP BW on HANA: no data replication, no data duplication, no data extraction – just live access ?.
SAP Analytics Cloud is one simple cloud solution connecting your people, information, and ideas to enable fast and confident decision making.
Machine learning technology and embedded artificial intelligence help you to discover deep insights, simplify access to critical information, and empower informed decision making for all.
SAP Analytics Cloud provides many powerful capabilities which addresses several use cases in many departments. From the information workers to the top management, anyone can make use of the combined power of BI, Planning and Augmented Analytics.
It is shipped with many great features customers love. One of those features is the “live access” to SAP systems (e.g. SAP HANA, SAP BW/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA).
Besides the live access to SAP applications, SAP Analytics Cloud supports more possibilities to connect to your data from several data sources.
There are many blogs available regarding the live connection from SAP Analytics Cloud to e.g. SAP BW on HANA or SAP BW/4HANA. I would like to show you how this live access works by providing a few examples build with SAP Analytics Cloud.
Let’s focus on the live access to SAP BW in this blog post. As mentioned in the SAP Analytics Cloud help or other SAP Blog Posts, the internet browser connects directly with the SAP BW system behind the corporate firewall and no data is moved into the cloud.
One of the main reasons customers select SAP Analytics Cloud on SAP BW is the fact, that they can consume 1:1 the SAP BW queries with all their elements (e.g. structures, hierarchies, variables, variants, global key figures) including the underlying authorizations & roles. There is no need to change the SAP BW queries for special reporting purposes as we can leave them as is. This helps IT & Business Departments to consume all existing SAP BW content without changes – no data extraction, no data silos, just plug & play.
First of all you need to have a SAP BW query with all relevant key figures (measures) and characteristics (dimensions). After setting up the live connection from SAP Analytics Cloud to SAP BW, all SAP BW queries can be accessed “directly” and a “live model“can be created in SAP Analytics Cloud based on a specific SAP BW query. This model can be used to build stories with nice visualizations. To run the dashboard and to access the data you need of course the authorization for SAP BW (user and password plus underlying roles in BW). As already mentioned this works plug & play.
Connecting a SAP BW Query with SAP Analytics Cloud in live mode
The following video shows the mentioned stages when connecting live to a SAP BW Query with SAP Analytics Cloud.
Now let’s see some nice examples build with SAP Analytics Cloud on SAP BW/4HANA.
Linked Analysis
SAP Analytics Cloud allows to enable the “Linked Analysis” between different widgets used in your story. Linked analysis is one way you and your team can dynamically interact with your data. This feature enables you to create relationships between charts within a story so that when you filter or in drill down one chart, it causes actions to occur in one or more other related charts (more details here: https://www.sapanalytics.cloud/resources-linked-analysis/).
This works with live data sources as well. The following video shows how this works with a live model in SAP Analytics Cloud based on a SAP BW Query.
How SAC deals with SAP BW Query variables & variants
SAP BW queries can contain variables. Variables are parameters of a query which has been created during the query design process and are filled with values when you execute the query. They serve as placeholders for characteristic values, hierarchies, hierarchy nodes, texts and formula elements. They can be processed in various ways and SAP Analytics Cloud can deal with them. Plus we go a step further – as we support variants.
You can save a variant for a BW query (e.g. Analysis Office) after you have filled the variable popup with values according to your requirements. A query variant is a query for which variable values have already been selected. And SAP Analytics Cloud can deal with those variants. This means that when you next open and display your SAP Analytics Cloud story in the browser, you can call the variant for the query. The following video shows this process.
Dynamic Calculations on-the-fly in SAC
If you worked with SAP Analytics Cloud already, you know that end users can create their own calculations (e.g. calculated measures) in a story. But it is also possible to create dynamic calculations within a table based on a live model with data from SAP BW. The following video shows how easy this dynamic calculations can be created.
Explorer mode with SAP BW queries
Another great feature is the possibility to use the Explorer mode. You can grant access to the Explorer feature to users with view-only access. You can customize the information viewers can dig into without requiring editing privileges to your story. The following video shows how this look like if you want to open the Explorer from a widget which is located in your SAP Analytics Cloud story.
Working with SAP BW hierarchies
Nearly all businesses use hierarchies to classify their products, services, and even their organization. SAP BW users love to work with the hierarchies they know from SAP BW. And exactly here SAP Analytics Cloud brings value to those end users as it is possible to select and activate any hierarchy which belongs to a specific characteristic (dimension). Even if a BW hierarchy is activated in a BW query, SAP Analytics Cloud will simply show & use it within a table. The following video simply shows an easy example using a time hierarchy during story creation. In charts you can drill up and down and in tables you can open and close the hierarchy nodes. It’s simple!
Fully flexible & dynamic: Working with dimension and measure input controls
Use dimension and measure input controls for full end user flexibility in SAP Analytics Cloud. See in the following video how easy it is to exchange dimensions and measures coming from a SAP Analytics Cloud live model based on a SAP BW query.
Time series forecasting based on your SAP BW query data
Time series forecasting allows you make confident decisions on time series data by predicting future values based on the historical values. Time series data is data that contains a value over time, for instance revenue by month or call volume by week. In SAP Analytics Cloud you can easily create a Time Series Forecasting based on your live SAP BW data! The following video shows an easy example how this look like.
R visualizations based on SAP BW live data
You may have seen the R visualization icon in your SAP Analytics Cloud story and wondered what it does, or how it works. For those who don’t know, R is a programming language that is used for data analysis, and it can be integrated with SAP Analytics Cloud to tell richer and more robust stories (for more details please read the following article https://www.sapanalytics.cloud/resources-using-r-visualizations/). And you know what – this works also live with your SAP BW data. Besides Custom Widgets for the Analytics Designer, the R visualizations opens the door for many great visualizations in your SAP Analytics Cloud stories. The following video shows gauge s created with the Plotly library where the R script is linked to a SAP Analytics Cloud live model.
Data Analyzer – Slice & Dice, Pivoting on any SAP BW Query
The Data Analyzer provides Ad Hoc Query Analysis for BW Queries with SAP Analytics Cloud (for more details please read the following blog: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/09/04/data-analyzer-ad-hoc-query-analysis-for-bw-queries-with-sap-analytics-cloud/ ). The Data Analyzer is basically a ready-to-run option, which allows your end users to analyze BW queries on the fly. Please check the SAP Analytics Cloud roadmap if you are interested what’s planned in the future with the Data Analyzer. The following video shows how the Data Analyzer is opened via a hyperlink.
Powerful plug & play feature: SAP Analytics Cloud connects easily to SAP BW Queries which contains 2 structrues
Structures are objects that you define in the BW Query design environment. A structure forms the basic framework of the axes in a table (rows or columns). It consists of structural components. We differentiate between key figure structures and characteristic structures. Structural components of key figure structures are always based on the key figure selections (basic key figures, restricted key figures, and calculated key figures). Characteristic structural components cannot contain key figure selections. The setup of the structure determines the sequence and number of key figures or characteristic values in the columns and rows of the query. You can navigate through the structures in the executed query and set filters for them. If you are using two structures (for example, a key figure structure in the columns and a characteristic structure in the rows), a table with fixed cell definitions is created.
And exactly here SAP Analytics Cloud shows its powerful capabilities, as its able to read and work with BW Queries using two structures easily. This shows how tight our integration between SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP BW works and in the following video you can see how easy it works. The video shows a BW query with a key figure structure in the columns and a characteristic structure in the rows. In addition the members of the characteristic structure are ordered in a folder/hierarchy structure which can be easily created via drag & drop during the query design. Let’s see how this works in the following video.
Blend your SAP BW Queries live (or blend them with your local data)
SAP Analytics Cloud allows data blending (for details please check the following blog: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/11/05/sap-analytics-cloud-blending-information-part-1/) . In the next video you will see two tables in a SAP Analytics Cloud story. Each of the tables has a live data model based on a SAP BW query. The first query has “no” budget data, while the second query has “only” budget data. In SAC you can blend those two models directly in the story. Let’s see how this works.
These were only a few examples and there are of course many more possibilities with SAP Analytics Cloud on SAP BW on HANA or SAP BW/4HANA. To learn more, please have a look into our strong roadmap and check our SAP Analytics Cloud product page under https://www.sapanalytics.cloud/ for more information’s & details.
As mentioned in the introduction, I plan a few SAC blogs. This one was the first.
Part 5: will be available soon.
Part 6: not started!
Cheers
Adem Baykal
Which release was used for the videos?
Hi Iñigo Montoya
these recordings are bang up to date and published in Jan 2020 - i can see the timestamp in one of the demos.
As such, Adem's SAC tenant would be either be running the 2019 Q4 QRC release - which is the same baseline the vast majority of our customers operate (FYI - QRC4 release is equivalent to biweekly wave 2019.21.)
Or if it's on a biweekly release cadence then it would be either Wave 2019.24 or 2020.01 depending on which update group he is part of (FYI - Wave1 is reaching fastrack customers this coming weekend, at current state of planning )
Kind regards
H
Thanks for the answer, Henry
I am currently using 2019.21.8 (2019 Q4) and some of these options are either not available or not working well. So I guess we will have to wait till 2020 Q1 reaches our test tenant.
Hi Iñigo Montoya Which feature was it that caught your eye?
I'm sure you know this already, but SAC-to-BW-Live feature support has a tight dependency on the backend BW version. How up to date is your BW system?
For example, BW 7.5 SP16 was an important milestone for that codeline i.e. if you want the best interoperability with SAC for this type of BW connection.
You may not be in a position to upgrade the SPS, so as an alternative, the recommended 'housekeeping ' would be to run the BW Notes Analyzer in your system to see what notes could be implemented for the latest backend fixes, opimisations & enhancements.
"Note 2541557 - Support further SAP Analytics Cloud BW features below NW BW 7.50 SP16, BW/4 2.0 SP4 or S/4 1909" - It has an ABAP program in attachment which needs to be run to help flag potential corrections.
Do let us know .
Kind regards
H
Hi Iñigo Montoya
Please check as recommend from Henry if all SAP Notes has been applied in the SAP Note Analyzer on SAP BW side.
Which SAP BW version on which SP are you running?
Best regards
Adem
Hi Henry and Adem,
Thanks for the quick answers.
We are running BW 7.5 on HANA SP16 and Q4.2019, and with all the notes applied according to the Note Analyzer. Indeed, BW Live Connectivity before SP16 was much harder.
An important remark: we have all the notes included in the XML file recommended for wave 21, not for further waves. Otherwise, as I am sure you know, some inconsistencies may appear.
So I understand that some nice features (like right-click options or the three dots menu...) are coming in the first quarter release in 2020. Looking forward to testing them!
Regards
Inigo
thanks for your feedback and interest on this topic, it's much appreciated.
Hi Henry,
Correct. I have used a biweekly tenant on Wave 2020.02.
The underlying SAP BW/4HANA is on 2.0 SP2 with all SAP notes applied in the Note Analyzer.
The initial demos has been set up in December.
Anyhow we have also the same demos on a Q4.2019 tenant with underlying BW on HANA 7.5 SP16 also up to date with all SAP notes in the Note Analyzer on BW side.
Best regards,
Adem
Many thanks for this super blog Adem and your responsiveness to this thread. All the best. Regards, H
May be a dumb question, but how did you curve the line on the Gross Revenue per Calendar Month chart?
Thanks,
Matt
Hi Matt,
In the designer you can select "Line" in the "Data Point Selection" part.
There is a "Smooth Lines" option:
Best,
Adem
A short note from my side and maybe some of the readers has noticed it. I have added "Part 1" to the title so stay tuned. "Part 2" is in preparation and I think SAC fans will love it ?
Hello Adem
Thanks for the Blog, very good.
Do you know is there also a Blog like:
"Analyse your data live with SAP Analytics Cloud on SAP BO Universe"?
Thanks for Feedback
Beat
Hello Beat,
Let me check this with my team.
Best regards
Adem
Hello Adem Baykal
Great blog thank you! Is it possible to use Timestamps as dimension in a Time Series chart with Live BW? So far I have not had any luck in using a Timestamp as a dimension for this. Is this not possible? How else are you suppose to show data at a low granularity over time? It is not ideal to use a normal line chart.
Thanks in advance.
BR Frederik
Hello Adam,
Great blog and thank you very much for it. It is very clear,much Appreciated. As I am new in to SAC area This is the first blog I have gone through on SAC and felt how good it is.Waiting for more on it
. Thank you.
Regards,
Sudheer
Thank you Sudheer for your nice feedback 🙂
Stay tuned there is more to come. Please have a look here if you are new to SAC: https://www.sapanalytics.cloud/learning/
Cheers
Adem
Thank you Adem
Hi Sudheer
Also follow our community and expert pages:
Thank you john??
Nice blog, Thank you Adem.
Cheers,
Madhu
Thanks, Adem, great blog.
On a side note, is there no sound in the YouTube Clips? Or is my Laptop playing pranks?
Hi Andreas,
there is no sound in the videos ? These videos only demonstrate how the features works. No talk track needed.
I have embedded this videos in my PPTs as well.
Best,
Adem
I do agree with everything you say here Adem, that is why I find it so strange that almost all the demos, webinars, presentations given by SAP on SAC is using imported data and emphasizes features not availble on BW queries. I would strongly recommend you switch your effort in communication to this concept, even though you can not show smart insight and such on BW queries yet. This is what is really interessting. The import scenario is not interessting, at least not to me or my company.