Friday, August 19, 2022

SAP Data Warehouse Cloud (DWC), SAP BW Bridge (BWB)

A next generation of data warehousing solution of SAP so called SAP Data Warehouse Cloud (DWC) is around for a sometime. Yes, the cloud is most important thing in its name. As transactional systems are being moved to the cloud, the analytics/data warehousing do so. Problem here is again (similar to ECC -> S/4 Cloud move) how to migrate SAP data warehouse solution to the cloud with a less pain. SAP comes to address this via SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAP BW Bridge (aka DWC Bridge). Solution was announced during TechEd 2021.

What it does in nutshell is that it enables functions of SAP BW but in the (public) cloud.

By the BW functions is meant, a classic BW functionalities as we know them from either classic BW on any DB, or BW4/HANA one. The functions or functionalities basically cover what SAP BW Data Manager is doing, e.g. data loads, data transformations, SQL interface, database utilities, etc. The Bridge enables data modes of classic on premise BW system to be imported into DWC. On premise SAP BW’s InfoProviders objects like (a)DSO, Composite Providers can be imported into the Bridge’s space in DWC. These spaces can be shared with other spaces. A new data models can be built on top of these objects while combining them with other data sources or e.g. master data views.

Technically the SAP DWC Bridge is based on an ABAP Platform. It is a full-blown SAP BW4/HANA system just its analytics functions are not present. This is why the reporting part stays with DWC itself. Therefore, the Bridge has two key components: data modeling and data acquisition.

Data modeling part is managed in two separate modeling environments:

1. SAP BW bridge objects are developed by Eclipse based BW Modeling Tools for SAP BW Bridge objects. The modeling tools are to be installed in SAP HANA Studio.

2. Data Builder (in DWC) – consists of a tools to support data acquiring and replicating from a different sources and as well to combine and prepare these objects for consumption. The Bridge objects are present in DWC as remote tables.

Second - the data acquisition part takes place in so called SAP BW Bridge Cockpit. The cockpit serves as a central point of administration of processes. Data loading processes are managed here, managing aDSOs, InfoObjects, etc. Similar to what BW/4HANA Cockpit does.

To simply put it; the Bridge is the migration tool. The DWC works differently comparing to traditional BW. Difference is that while the classic BW gathers all data and models into a single place, DWC does not only store data. The DWC acts as a consistent layer that virtualizes data and models stored at many organization’s systems thus it supports accessing and managing data for analytics. Man in middle between the DWC and classic BWs is the Bridge that facilitates the move to the cloud.

A minimum version of BW that you can “bridge” with the DWC with the BWB is SAP BW 7.30.


More information:

Online docu

Online docu BWB in DWC

Info page

3117800 - Information/Restrictions Note for SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAP BW Bridge

3141688 - Conversion from SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA to SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAP BW Bridge

Interdobs blog

SAP Support site software component: DWC-BWB

Thursday, August 4, 2022

Job BI_WRITE_PROT_TO_APPLLOG not running?

There is an important job in all BW systems that must always run. It is called a BI_WRITE_PROT_TO_APPLLOG or known as Background Job Log Writer. It serves to write temporarily saved logs (batch and enqueue runtime data) of lock manager for any batch processes that are running in BW system.

The job runs an ABAP program RSBATCH_WRITE_PROT_TO_APPLLOG. Logs are written into table RSBATCHDATA by the job. Periodicity of the job should be at least 1 hours if not more frequent. In case of most of the BW systems I worked with the periodicity is 10 minutes. If the BW system is being scheduled for a downtime, the job can be descheduled.

The job is very important to let the BW system functioning properly. BW developers may come across a below pop-up message RSM2 no 081, any time when t-code RSA1 is started:

Report RSBATCH_WRITE_PROT_TO_APPLLOG not planned. See long text.

This is valid for all BW 7.x systems including BW/4 systems. Whoever enters the RSA1 in case the jobs is not scheduled then the system schedules it by that user who entered the RSA1. That's why you can see your user that runs this job in t-codes like SM37.


The message informs that the job does not run means it is not scheduled. The ABAP program RSSM_PLAN_PROTWRITE_TO_APPLLOG can be used to set it up. The program runs FM of the same name (RSSM_PLAN_PROTWRITE_TO_APPLLOG) to do that. The BW system uses other FM RSBATCH_CHECK_START_LOGWRITER to check if the job is scheduled and that one can schedule it too.

In case the job is scheduled multiple times the BW system detects that too. This situation happens when a message RSM2 no 082 is displayed:

Report RSBATCH_WRITE_PROT_TO_APPLLOG planned &1 times. See long text.


More information:

wiki

1135045 - P18:Job BI_WRITE_PROT_TO_APPLLOG is scheduled several times

2495693 - POP-UP Information: Report RSBATCH_WRITE_PROT_TO_APPLLOG x is scheduled