Activating Business Function in SAP BW

SAP NetWeaver ABAP Stack based systems are using called Switch Framework concept to control what functionality is enabled in the system. Functionalities of the SAP system delivered as either Software Add-ons by the SAP itself or by its partners can be switch on and off by using the Switch Framework. More detailed information about the Switch Framework can be found here.

In this post, I briefly discuss what are a procedures to check if particular business function is in/active in the system. As well as how to activate the BI Content.

 

To check the status of particular business function:

1. t-code SFW5 find particular business function:

Double click on the entry and its status is displayed in next screen:

To see all others details like development packages that delivers to function drill into the entry located on Switch tab:

To install BI Business Content below is a procedure:

1. Turn on Business Function in t-code SFW5. In case of SAP HANA-optimized BW Content it is the function /IMO/BWCONTENT. Notice that /IMO/BW_CONTENT is obsolete now.

2. Install BI content itself with t-code RSORBCT

 

More information:

Switch Framework for BW

Technical Business Content

Technical Business Content

Technical BCT (tBCT) delivers as any other BCT BW objects that are easily deployable and runnable. There are many pre-delivered reports that can provide the data without much of changing it as well. But tBCT is different from common BCT because it contains technical objects. From this perspective we can say there are objects: used to monitor BW system itself or any other SAP system as well, helping to maintain BW authorization and BEx personalization, planning functions, and tracing reporting issues plus others.

In detail there are following components of Technical BCT:

BW Statistics BI Content – objects to evaluate performance of SAP BW system. There are two main areas of performance evaluation: OLAP processor and Warehouse Management (WM). See details here and here.

CCMS BI Content – comprises of BW objects for Computing Center Management System (CCMS) data in order to monitor and operate SAP systems. There can be thresholds sets for alert monitor and BW monitor, also we can monitor BW relevant SAP monitoring trees for processes like process chains, consistency checks etc. Basically it has the data from tcodes RZ20, RZ21, RSRV etc. See details here.

Central Performance History (CPH) BI Content – Because performance figures are not stored in the system for long period it enables storing of historical performance data of SAP systems to monitor architecture of the systems in landscape (their SLA) from long term point of view.

ABAP statistics BI Content – Enables reporting on statistics data from SAP’s Workload Monitor (tcode ST03). See details here.

Distributed Statistics Record (DSR) BI Content – reporting on Distributed Statistics Records (DSR) generated by non-ABAP components (e.g. AS Java, TREX). DSR are statistics records created for monitoring the SAP system performance of an SAP System and its components collected by associated CCMS agent.

BEx Personalization BI Content – objects used to fill variables with user specific values and to save user-specific start views for Web applications (Personalizing Variables in Web Applications.) and in BEx reports (Personalizing Variables). See details here.

BI Users and Authorizations BI Content – Objects used to generate Analysis Authorizations. Function available in tcode RSECADMIN. See details here.

BI Features Characteristics BI Content – 19 InfoCube objects (0M000100 - 0M111111) used to test the loading process for master data (MD) attributes and texts. By setting of settings for MD characteristics several aspects of the loading process can be tested. See details here.

BI Integrated Planning BI Content – parameters of BI-IP planning functions types stored in those BCT delivered characteristics and key figures. Also personalization of values for variable replacement works with these BCT objects.

Planning functions BI Content – SAP provides InfoObjects (characteristics and key figures) that the system requires as parameters for the standard planning function types (see Standard Planning Function Types). Personalization data for variable replacement (see Changing Variable Values in the Planning Modeler).

BI Trace Tool BI Content – BW objects needed as parameters in trace tool like: Test Results Archive (0RSTT_TESTLOG InfoArea for objects for describing the test results), Test Reporting( 0RSTT_TESTREP InfoArea for detailed description and analysis of the tests). Namespace for the objects starts with the character string 0RSTT*. See details here.

Exchange Rate Type BI Content – objects (like (0RTYPE)) that are supporting currency translation functionality. See details here.

BI Formula Builder BI Content – There was a DataStore Object used to store formula’s created in Formula Builder. But functionality was discontinued.

ABAP Statistics Data – BI Technical Content

There are few nice pieces of BW objects related to technical Business Content (BCT). The Technical BCT delivers predefined BW objects for analyzing statistical data about SAP systems.

Especially within the technical BCT there are components like: CCMS BI Content, Central Performance History (CPH) BI Content, Distributed Statistics Record (DSR) BI Content and ABAP statistics BI Content. N this post I will shortly discuss the later one.

What is ABAP statistics BI Content? In essence the ABAP statistics data are doing reporting on data from SAP’s Workload Monitor (tcode ST03). What reporting needs are covered within ABAP stats? First there are reports about user overview like daily/weekly/monthly overview providing of dialog steps in ABAP systems, broken down by various users. Second set of the reports are workload reports. So information on what was workload of the ABAP systems is shown on different date/time basis. What KPIs are covered? For example Number of Dialog Steps, CPU Time, Processing Time per Dialog Step, Database Time, Number of Sequential Reads, Total/Average Response Time any other other workload related KPI.

What are datasources of ABAP statistics BCT?

0CCMS_ASR_DATA - ABAP Statistics Aggregates and Single Records. Collects statistics data from the STAT statistics files on file system of the SAP instance. Important here is that data is aggregated.

0CCMS_WEBAS_STATREC_DATA - DataSource for ABAP Statistics (Alternative), predecessor of previous one. In contrary of previous one this is single record providing DS.

0CCMS_WEBAS_APPL_STATREC_DATA - DataSource for ABAP Application Statistics. Provides aggregated statistics data from the ASTAT statistics files on file system of the SAP host.

More information:

Business content (BCT) activation procedure – part I

Business content (BCT) activation procedure – part II

Online docu

979581 - Installing and configuring the CCMS BI Content

807072 - DataSources for ABAP data and distributed statistics data

Business content (BI Content aka BCT) activation procedure – part II

Long time ago I wrote a short blogpost about Business content (BI Content or BCT) activation procedure. However the post is just really brief. Therefore I establish on that post and will try to improve it within this post.

So what I have to do in order to activate BI Content?

First let’s check if BI Content is present in your SAP NetWeaver based system. This can be done while user is logged in the system e.g. via SAP GUI. In menu of the system choose System -> Status -> Component Information. Here observe if there is software component called BI_CONT. I this is not there then there is nothing to be activated. You need to ask your SAP Basis support about missing component. They have to install it via TA SAINT.

Once it is there you are good to go further. In case of BW system we use TA RSOR to see and further to activate the BCT. While we enter the RSOR we need to know which object we are going to install. If you follow either:

- Standard implementation of e.g. Best Practices or

- Implementation Guide of some SAP solution or

- Documentation of BW’s BCT like in case of Procurement’s Purchase Orders Confirmed as Requested report

just check what objects are supposed to be installed and search for them.

Imagine we go with 3^rd option and we want to activate e.g. report [ABC Analysis - Vendors 0D_NW_EPM_MP01_Q0001]. First we search for that object as per following object:

Once we transfer the object it is useful to set following settings:

Grouping -> Only Necessary Objects – by this only objects which are needed for report’s data flow will be included in activation.

Now we can bring more objects into the list of objects that will be displayed. This is useful in case we want to activate other e.g. reports:

Missing report RSIM_CHECK_REP_DATA in your BW system

Recently I was activating BI statistics into newly installed BW system.  While I was doing so I set couple of standard BW process chains to run. One of them called Check Report Data Availability [0TCTHC_CHECK_REP_DATA] which uses ABAP report RSIM_CHECK_REP_DATA in its ABAP process variants has failed.

I was looking why that happened. Output of failed chain was a red process and behind it an ABAP dump “Internal session terminated with a runtime error LOAD_PROGRAM_NOT_FOUND (see ST22)”.  The dump said “Program "RSIM_CHECK_REP_DATA" not found.”

At first sight it looks completely strange that standard SAP program is missing in BW system. But so it was the case. Report RSIM_CHECK_REP_DATA was not there. Reason being is very simple. SAP decided that for standalone BW systems as of 730 and higher releases this report is not needed. The report was/is present only in BusinessByDesign (ByD) systems. In SAP Note “1890206 - Process Chain 0TCTHC_CHECK_REP_DATA is failed” it is also said that references to above mentioned chain will be removed from standard delivery of the further BW releases.

CCMSBISUITE Reporting Suite

There is a new tool for BW performance monitoring available as of BI_CONT 703 Support Package 8 for NetWeaver 7.0 or with SAP_BW Support Package 4 for NetWeaver 7.10.

Source of data is Central Performance History (CPH) which is a part of SAP’s CCMS. Same tool is includes in Solution Manager’s under node "IT Performance Reports". Directly in BW system you can access it via transaction CCMSBISUITE.

Tool needs to be installed first by using transaction CCMSBISETUP in BW system. 

The Suite is currently having following reports:

·         overview on the availability of instances

·         CPU utilization,

·         database growth

·         user logons

·         Java key figures such as garbage collection and sessions

See following notes for details:

1065835 - Reporting Suite

1119686 - CCMS Reporting Suite scenario

979581 - Installing and configuring the CCMS BI Content

Business content (BI Content aka BCT) activation procedure

Here's short procedure depicting sequence how to proceed with BI Content activation:

1. On BI side: Activate all characteristics and key figures.

2. Activate all DSO objects and cubes.

3. Activate all 7.0 and 3.5 version of Infosources (w/o transfer rules).

4. On ECC side: Activate all DataSources needed for you data flow. Moreover remap all LIS.

5. Back on BI side: Replicate all DataSources as newly activated in ECC.

6. Assign DataSources and transfer rules for BW 3.5 version objects.

7. Activate all update rules and transformations. As a precondition, make sure the include rs_bct_update_df is active.

8. Activate multiproviders, infosets and queries.

9. All data-staging-objects like DTPs, InfoPackages and ProcessChains need to be created manually for 7.0 Objects.

For more details see note 921118.