Stacked objects in SAP BW

There is one set of interesting terms in BW’s terminology. It is stacked scenario, stacked data load, stacked transformation, etc. All of those terms are having word stacked in common. The stacked means an arrangement of BW objects of the same object type one behind the other to form a stack. What are all of those in particular?

Stacked data flow – particular data flow that uses at least one InfoSource object between source and target BW objects: (source -> InfoSource -> target). Those means that there are two data transformation followed each other. One transformation is going from source objects to the InfoSource and other one from the InfoSource to target objects. Such a BW transformation is also sometimes called as stacked transformation.

Other case of the stacked data flow can be when Calculation Scenario (as SAP HANA runtime object) from the DTP uses another Calculation Scenario as data source.

Stacked scenario – data load scenario where stacked data flow(s) is/are used.

Simple data flow / simple scenario – connects two persistent BW objects with no InfoSource in between. Just one BW transformation is involved. Sometimes called non-stacked data flow.

Normally it is easy to spot the stacked data flow – there is the InfoSource. However when it comes to an DTP execution the DTP request ID naming convention starts with DTPR__* in case of non stacked transformation. In case of the stacked one the naming convention is replaced by TR_*.

 

More information:

Closed loops scenarios in BW