Thursday, February 23, 2023

Client strategy for SAP BW

While SAP BW system is being installed, a decision needs to be done on a client strategy for the system itself. How to decide which client is to be used as BW Client? One important thing to mention is that SAP BW handles only one client in the particular system (see You can only work in client 001). This is contrary to SAP ERP systems where such the system can have multiple clients (see How to get rid of clients 001 and 066 ?). Sometimes the client strategy is referred by a term Client Distribution. Technically the BW client is stored in table RSADMINA and in column BWMANDT. There are following function modules to work with the BW’s client ID:

·        RS_MANDT_UNIQUE_GET Determine BW Client

·        RS_MANDT_UNIQUE_SET Define BW Client Permanently

As a rule of thumb it is recommended to have BW dedicated client in cases like:

·  If data is physically replicated from SAP application to Embedded BW, both the another SAP app and the Embedded BW runs on the same system

· Organization reasons (data separation due to different companies e.g. holding structure, etc.)

There are several aspects to be considered. One of the major one is depending on what type of BW systems it is. There can be following cases:

1 Standalone BW – a full blow BW system, running on dedicated server, has its own client as it is running on its own server separated from other SAP systems.

2 SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics using ABAP-based CDS and the Analytical Engine (automatically generated transient BEx providers). In case organization is using this scenario heavily for many use cases, it is better to create dedicated client for analytics.

3 SAP S/4HANA BPC Optimized using SAP BPC on PAK models. No separate BW client needed unless (similar to the case above) there will be a use cases combining external data with the S4/HANA data.

4 Embedded BW – BW included in SAP ERP systems since SAP NetWeaver 7.0, see more info here.

4.1 Embedded BW usage creating small customer-specific data models for reporting and planning (incl. BPC on PAK), including external data sources to stage data into the Embedded BW (other SAP system, e.g. other SAP ERP/CRM/etc., stand-alone BW or non-SAP legacy system) – no usage as Enterprise Data Warehouse.

4.2 Embedded BW usage to stage data from the same SAP S/4HANA system - separate client for Embedded BW is recommended. E.g. there are multiple S4/HANA clients (dev, testing, training, etc.) along one client dedicated to the Embedded BW.

More information:

Embedded SAP BW Definition and Positioning

You can only work in client 001

Embedded BW 1

Embedded BW 2

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