BW 3.x incompatibilities vs. BI 7.x

Grown up in BW 3.x world and struggling with BI 7.x project? Some features that you used to work in old BW doesn’t work in new version? Yes. BI got matured. Some features were forgotten, some were enhanced, some newly developed etc. In general version 7.x came with following major otherness against its predecessors; according note 955990 - BI in SAP NetWeaver 7.0: Incompatibilities with SAP BW 3.x:

- Changes in the Data Warehousing Workbench (TA RSA1, before known as the Admin Workbench TA RSA1OLD): InfoPackage groups, Persistant Staging Area (PSA) tree, reporting agent and so on are only supported in RSA1OLD. Forget about old RSA1OLD use new one RSA1. There can be still necessity to use told one e.g. you want to adjust some old 3.x emulated DataSource or access old PSA.

- Compounding consistency for MultiProviders: Note 920416. Use report RSCOMPCONS or RSCOMPCONS2 to find any MultiProvider that is inconsistent with regard to compounding.

- Identifying InfoObjects in MultiProviders: Note 1105187. If "Selection not allowed (technical CHASEL = 4)" is set for a characteristic of an involved provider, this is "not visible" in this involved provider (at least in its role as an InfoProvider) and therefore it is not available for the identification of the characteristics of the MultiProvider.
An assignment was possible in BW 3.x (even though it was not planned).

- Query runtime statistics: The old statistics tables (RSDDSTAT) were replaced by new tables and are no longer filled; see the relevant release note, like 934848 - Collective note: (FAQ) BI Administration Cockpit.

- Change run: The split parallel processes of the change run are always background business transaction category (BTC) processes in SAP NetWeaver 7.0. It is possible to restart change run or run several change runs. Note 915515.

- MOLAP: Microsoft Analysis Services (MS AS) is no longer supported - you can use BI accelerator as an alternative. Note 456931.

- Authorizations: A new concept for analysis authorizations is in BI 7.x, based only on authorizations as elementary objects. Old 3.x authorization concept (reporting authorizations) is replaced. Move from SAP authorization concept (like R/3 or ECC have) of authorization objects. New concept includes any authorization-relevant characteristics and treat single values, intervals and hierarchy authorizations the same. Navigation attributes can now also be flagged as authorization relevant in the attribute maintenance for characteristics and can be transferred into authorizations as characteristics. See Notes 923176 and 820183.

- Authorization check for MultiProvider: Note 927872.

- Analysis authorizations: You can no longer use customer exit variables to assign hierarchy authorizations in the new authorization concept. See Note 820183, section 3f.

- VirtualProvider with function module: If hierarchies are supported, master data IDs must also be supported. See the release notes.

- Compound objects in MultiProviders - corrected behavior with initial values: Note 1009987.

- The input help for DataStore objects can now use the setting 'Only values in InfoProvider', this can lead to performance problems: Note 984229.

- Constant with compound characteristics. Note 1035916.

- DB Connect: Note that there is a new Product Availability Matrix (PAM) for SAP NetWeaver 7.0 and certain platforms (for example Informix) are no longer supported. This also applies to the availability of the DB clients that are required for DB Connect. For more information, see the SAP Netweaver documentation. In certain cases, UD Connect may offer greater platform independence.

- You cannot selectively delete real-time InfoCubes in the planning mode due to a new caching architechture in SAP NetWeaver7.0. Note 1016181.

- Calculating before the aggregation with Content InfoProviders: Note 921325.

- Changes in the variable screen of the BEx Analyzer: see Notes 945653 and 924316.

- When you drilldown to 1CUDIM, the system displays original currency: see Note 962850.

- Most recent variables 0RS_RQTRA, 0RS_RQMRC and 0RS_RQALL converted to ACTUALDATA: Note 1007722.

- Changes to the behavior of formula variables with a replacement path before the aggregation. Note 1005772.

- The changed behavior of variables: The affects on the targeted filling of the OLAP cache: Note 1105139.

- The new BEx Analyzer only allows resulting sets up to 750,000 data cells due to changed memory processing (for additional functions and improved performance). Note 1040454.

- Table view in the query designer: Note 1002271.