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

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