Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Grouping of InfoObjects in InfoProviders


This post to is to remember one nice functionality available in RSA1. It is related to InfoProviders and grouping of key figures. It comes very handy in case of huge InfoProviders with hundreds of KPIs.

In case of InfoCube/MultiProvider/VirtualProvider/HybridProvider objects - only for Key figures, characteristrics are grupped already through dimensions:


Here how does it look like:

 In case of DSO objects – available for grouing of Data Fields:

 



InfoObject specific properties: HANA attribute name


Soon after upgrade to BW 7.3 you might realize that there is one more field available on InfoProvider specific properties for InfoObject pop-up. The purpose of this field is to assign the InfoObjects to the attributes in the SAP HANA model. This is needed in use case of BW’s VirtualProviders based on a SAP HANA Models. Basically by this we can use HANA model in BW system. 

Field is accessible in TA RSA1 -> Modeling section -> right click on particular InfoObject:

 
Here’s reference to DDIC:


Current missing BEx funcitonalities in SAP BusinessObjects Analysis edition for Microsoft Office

I was posting recently about replacement for BEx Analyzer and BEx Query Designer. In case of BEx Analyzer replacement tool more like to be is Analysis for MS Office (AO). In case of BEx Query Designer there is a new tool called SBOP Design Studio

As both tools are not that far from BEx functionalists support here I’d like to focus on AO. If your organization is heavy BEx user and you plan to deploy AO in near future I suggest to check what are BEx features currently not supported. Below I list sources where to look:

1. SAP BusinessObjects BI4 Suite - Supported BEx Query Elements: A document prepared by Ingo Hilgefort SAP’s guru on SAP  BW and BusinessObjects integration. The document  only talks about AO but all BusinessObjects portfolio: AO for MS Office, AO for OLAP, Crystal reports for Enterprise, Web Intelligence, Dashboards, Explore, Design Studio.


3. search OSS Notes: within following components per particular BusinessObjects tool:
BI-RA-AD       SAP BusinessObjects DesignStudio
BI-RA-AO       Analysis, edition for MS Office
BI-RA-AWB    Analysis, edition for OLAP (Web)
BI-RA-BICS    BI consumer services
BI-RA-CR       SAP Crystal Reports, Business Views Manager
BI-RA-CRV     SAP Crystal Reports Viewer
BI-RA-DKI      Desktop Intelligence
BI-RA-DVP     Data Visualization package
BI-RA-EBI      Edge BI (Business Intelligence)
BI-RA-EXP     Polestar, Explorer
BI-RA-IA        SAP Crystal Interactive Analysis, desktop edition
BI-RA-VOY     Voyager
BI-RA-WBI     Web Intelligence
BI-RA-XL       Dashboards and Presentation Design

Full list of BusinessObjects’s OSS components is here.
Other blog post on AO topic:
replacement for BEx Analyzer
replacement for BEx Query Designer

Sunday, February 24, 2013

SAP Business Warehouse 7.4

After almost 2 years and few months passed after BW 7.3 was released new version 7.4 is coming. Finally SAP people had some time to spend also on some other of their offerings except HANA :-) Unfortunately so far 7.4 is not providing any new functionality outside of regards to HANA. According BW roadmap available here focus also in future will be on HANA scenarios e.g. with connection to Business Suite on HANA. 

Following official information resources are available on BW 7.4:

Positioning of SAP NW BW powered by SAP HANA and SAP HANA Analytics Foundation


-      09/05/2013 Update –

There is a one limitation being in all BW’s version for long time. It is with regards to maximum length of characteristic value. It has a limit of 60 characters. Well it had the limit. As of BW release 7.4 SPS2 this limit is over. Up to 250 characters are now possible. Technically this is implemented by extending domain RSCHAVL which was changed from data type CHAR 60 to SSTRING (255 characters in length). Similarly text for characteristic can have in BW 7.4 up to 1333 characters. This is done by replacing structure RSTXTSML with RSTXTSMXL.

This is for first sight positive news however it has some negative glance. Such a long data type is threated by ABAP as so called "deep" type. Some of ABAP language statements cannot deal with such a long types. Therefore it might happen that some of custom code will defunct ending with runtime error.

You can use ABAP Test Cockpit (Transaction ATC). ATC is successor of CheckMan tool.
This info is taken from SAP Note 1823174 - BW7.40 Changes and customer-specific programs.


-      23/10/2013 Update –
SAP published a roadmap for NetWeaver BW 7.4 on SAP HANA. You can find it here. It covers Upcoming planned release / Future innovations of BW 7.4

BW 7.4 is replaced by SAP Business Warehouse 7.5 

SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.0 - replacement of BEx Query Designer and Web Application Designer


I just went through hand-on session on SAP BOBJ Design Studio 1.0 as shared on last year TechEd. Let me do short wrap up of think that captured from the session and which are interesting me a lot about SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio. Product was formerly known as “SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for application design” or “project ZEN”. With regards to client version SAP BusinessObjects Analysis as replacement for BEx Analyzer I posted information here.

-      Tool is has Eclipse based Design Time
-      Connectivity to Data source: BICS
-      Data source supports: BEx queries, infocubes, HANA view, more to come
-      UI technology based on HTML5 – apps run on all mobile devices
-      Specific iPad support, Android support to follow
-      Uses script language: BI Action Language (BIAL) based on JavaScript
-      Template support: for desktop and iPad apps
-      Integrated with BO 4.0
-      Design Time modes: local mode – apps are being saved in local machine; integrated mode - Connected to BI Platform

Installation comes as a two products:
-      Designer (frontend) tool - to build apps and connect to data sources, only for MS WIN platform
-      Backend tool - Add-On for BI Platform 4.0, to enable publishing of SAP BOBJ Design Studio apps
-      prerequisite for installation BI 4.0 SP5
-      where to download it from? /swdc -> Browse our Download Catalog -> Analytics Solutions -> SBOP DESIGN STUDIO -> SBOP DESIGN STUDIO 1.0

Product roadmap (as of Nov 2012):



Documentation:
-      SCN community homepage: SBOP Design Studio
-      SMP notes component: BI-RA-AD

Next release: version 1.2 Nov 2013

The most expected functionality of this tool in my eyes would be migration tool for BEx queries, WAD and even planning (BW-IP) applications. It was said in session that SAP plans to work on it. If this won’t be aavailable any time soon customer will stay stucked with BEx queries for long time.