Different product lines of SAP BW

In some cases there is a confusion about versions of SAP BW which were introduced during all the years (1^st version appeared up around 1998). Let me briefly sort this out. This blog post is not that comprehensive but tries to put a naming conversion of the major releases of the BW straight.

 

1. SAP Business Warehouse Classic (classic BW) aka SAP NetWeaver based Business Warehouse (component SAP_BW), runs on any DB, see details:

SAP Business Warehouse 3.5 part of SAP NetWeaver 04

SAP Business Warehouse 7.0 part of SAP NetWeaver 2004s (NW’04s) aka NetWeaver 7.0

SAP Business Warehouse 7.3

SAP Business Warehouse 7.4

SAP Business Warehouse 7.5

These versions of the BW are sometimes referred as SAP NetWeaver all versions aka BW 7.x

 

2. SAP Business Warehouse powered by SAP HANA aka BW on HANA (component SAP_BW), runs on SAP HANA DB only, see details here

 

3. SAP BW4/HANA (component DW4CORE), see details here or here, BW4/HANA was based on BW 7.5 but redeveloped, many components were removed, and it is not based on NetWeaver stack anymore.

 

If there is a term classis BW used, what is meant by that is the BW based on SAP NetWeaver stack. Means all the versions starting with 3.5 up to BW on HANA including. However difference between 7.x and BW on HANA is that 7.x supports any database but the BW on HANA runs on HANA DB only.

 

More information:

Short history of SAP BW

SAP BW/4HANA (B4H) versions