SAP Business Technology Factory

Within some BW SAP Notes (e.g. 1125108) I noticed a term SAP Business Technology Factory. Mostly it was mentioned in case of advanced services provided by SAP in following areas:

• BI Authorization Migration Service, consists from:
• Migration planning (system analysis, concept adjustment, project planning)·          
• Migration of the old BW reporting authorizations to the new BW 7.0 analysis authorizations 
• Test and GoLive support of BW projects

This sounds quite interesting for customers. Usually I would assume that SAP has a reach of experience in these areas. Therefore could deliver such a services with high expertise.  I tried to find something more about SAP Business Technology Factory. It seems that it is organization within SAP aiming to help other arms of SAP like SAP Consulting. Apart of BW they have huge portfolio of services in other areas of business technology like:

•  Analysis of current systems and interfaces
•  Identification of system requirements
•  Presentation of results, including recommendations on new updates/upgrades
•  Quotation/project planning
•  User workshops

Furthermore there are following particular factories:

• Upgrade Factory
• Unicode Factory
• Testing Factory
• Output Factory
• Minimum Downtime Factory
• Enhancement Package Factory
• Modification Clearing Factory
• BW Authorization Migration Factory

What is for me the most interesting is that under the SAP Business Technology Factory brand they offers standardized update/upgrade services at a fixed price. However I’m not sure if this is not valid predominantly for Germany customers. Anyway seems to me great initiative rather focusing on delivering real results than time and material consulting. 

For more information see following:

www.sap.de/factory

www.sap.com/germany/services/consulting/factory/index.epx

www.sap.com/m1/erpupgrade/erp_index.htm

service.sap.com/factory

mailto:Factory@sap.com

miniSAP homepage

I wrote already several blog posts related to miniSAP or in other words test version of SAP software. Just to mention some of them:

·         miniSAP where to download it?

·         SAP NetWeaver 2004s ABAP miniSAP – installation, part 1

·         SAP NetWeaver 2004s ABAP miniSAP – installation, part 2 BW custumization

Some other terms used to refer to miniSAP are Sneak Preview, Test Drive, Preview Version, Trial Version, Technology TestDrive, Technology Preview.

After you installed it you get initial license valid for 30 days. You might wonder where to register your installation in order to get it running for longer period. That’s because normally you have just those 30 days in which your miniSAP installation will be running until license expires. There is an SAP site dedicated to license request and by this site you get a key which allows you 90 days more of enjoying miniSAP.

www.sap.com/minisap same as this:

sap.com/technology/minisap same as following page:

www.sap.com/platform/netweaver/minisap.epx

point to this site:

https://service.sap.com/sap/bc/bsp/spn/minisap/minisap.htm

where you make license request.

P.S. Please notice that main page for all SAP evaluation software is located @SDN:

www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/software-downloads

Maximum number of sessions in SAP GUI

User are from time to time wondering about how many simultaneous sessions in SAP GUI they can have. It was even surprising to me when I got this question when I did my SAP BW certification :-). There is also funny point that for some people to be efficient while working is enough to have 2-3 sessions as maximum. On other hand there are people who need at least 7-8 session to get some job to be done :-)

Anyway let clear this doubt out. Basically the number of session depends on version of SAP Application Server or let say SAP Basis is your SAP installation based on. It is like following in very old version of Basis like 4.6X the maximum number was 6, then in WAS versions 6.XX the max no is 10 and finally in AS 7.XX it is 16.

You might wonder that for example you running WAS 6.10 and you experienced situation it is was not possible to open 7 not even 10 session in parallel. Well, in that case you SAP administrator had limited this. There is system profile parameter by which the limitation is possible. The parameter is called rdisp/max_alt_modes.

A legacy of SAP TEchEd 2010 – Berlin

Again it is same as every year. I had no opportunity to attend this year TechEd – European part hold in Berlin last week (12-14^th of October 2010). However I tried to absorb information as it was available virtually at virtualsapteched.com site. Even I was able to see some of my friends on videos e.g. from Demo Jam. So what was so hot and excited about this year TechEd? There were few things..

1.    Introduction of SAP NetWeaver 7.3: As said in official statement SAP back in  defending of its platform as NetWeaver. Fuzzy and unclear care of NetWeaver by SAP which was followed by not recommending of NetWeaver to be used for customers by industry analysts; we see that NetWeaver is back at full of power.

2.    Innovation without disruption: Vishal Sikka used this term referring to turning existing SAP technology into new level while NetWeaver is not only integrating people, data, and processes but it does in real-time and without disruption. Meaning that current SAP landscapes can be either upgraded in that non disruptive way; can be moved into the could – complementing existing on-premise solutions; or can be used in “mobile style” using SAP/ Sybase Unwired Platform.

 

3.    3 focus areas: Mobility, In-memory analytics applications, cloud computing. The most interesting for is In-memory initiative. SAP calls this initiative as HANA - High-Performance Analytic Appliance. The aim is to turn more portions of data from its traditional storage like disk arrays into the operational memory of servers. Another point is that data here will be combined from different types (transactional and analytics) and from different sources. Data is suppose to be organized and accessed in columnar database style. Solution will be delivered in form of appliance as e.g. existing BW Accelerating is delivered. You can read what HANA is going to be all about in case of BW here.

I’m sure there were plenty of other important things to be seen, discussed etc. One day maybe I experience TechEd personally :)

How long BEx report in Excel can be?

Only 64k rows? I used to hear an requirement from my customers regarding BW report’s length very often.  There are several reasons why BW reports should not be that long but usually customers resist in it and simply they want to see all rows that report can produce. Therefore from this viewpoint a limitation in MS Excel 2003 (and its predecessors) of displaying in particular 65.536 rows is seen as obstacle. Once new MS Excel 2007 came to the market (in 2007) it was assumable that since this limit is overcame up to 1,048,576 rows it has impact on BW reporting as well. However if you see e.g. on SDN what people are saying regarding this limitation; there are still doubts how many rows can be displayed. Those can be eye witnessed e.g. here, here or here. At the time I’m was researching what’s the matter really is I came into the conclusion that only with BW 7.x limitation of 65k rows is overcome. Unfortunately I was wrong. To be really sure I did few test which I’m going to introduced further in this blog post.

I prepared scenario with one very simple BW report without any selection screen based on demo cube ZD_SALES. I filled this cube with approximately 100k of records. I placed this cube and whole its data flow into BW based on version 7.0. I used SAP GUI version 7.2 and MS Excel 2007 together with whole Office 2007 installed on my laptop. Test query was comprised with just 4 columns. To be really sure that there is no aggregation in place Document Number was always unique in my test data loaded into cube.

As a first trial; I relied on transaction RSRT and I ran my report in Query Display mode = List. In this mode on MS Excel formatting is in not place so we can assume that we get all of data out of cube in our report. As seen on screenshot we have also total lines displayed. Therefore all rows from cube are displayed.

Later I continued with BEx Analyzer as Add-In in MS Excel 2007. From the very top; report looked good. All the columns were displayed. I started to be eager that time  just to see all 100k in my Excel…

But surprise! The report suddenly stops at (and surprise again) 65.536^th row. :(

Even I’m running BEx Analyzer based on the newest SAP GUI 7.2, even I’m using BW 7.0 as backend even my MS Excel is version of 2010 I’m still not able to get more than 65k records.

What to do next? I tried to find some information on OSS. There are notes like 1411545 - BExAnalyzer: safety belt for large result sets and 1499986 - BExAnalyzer: safety belt default value does not work which suggest to set parameter called ANALYZER_LIMIT_DEF into table RSADMIN. However after setting it my report got me only 65k records.

Hmm, ok, again no luck. What about trying to google it up? Finally there is OSS’s wiki post bringing some light on this issue. It says that limitation of 65k is due to the functionality which is exporting the data from SAP systems in general. It is called XXL Export and it cares of generic export of any list data object into the MS Excel. Also is written here that this functionality is not planned to be changed. Ok, game seemed to be over for me that time. Moreover I found interesting discussion in this SDN forum post. User posted reply from SAP OSS related to this. It is stated the same as in wiki post: “The excel file can have maximum 65536 rows. You cannot select more than this amount of rows using excel.” SAP is explaining within this that there are practical reasons for this limit. They stressing out point that BEx is not a tool of mass data extraction etc.

Game over, this time for real. But what would be the other option how to get avoid this limitation. At the moment following options came to my mind:

1.    Usage of  web reporting for export of more than 65k rows. According the note: 1127156 - Safety belt: Result set is too large, in BW version 7.x it I possible to set parameters that would allow such a massive export of data.

2.    Functionality of OpenHubs. Data can be placed directly into the files (e.g. in CSV format) on application server. Be careful here OpenHubs are specially licensed and by using it there are additional fees.

3.    Coding of custom ABAP report which runs BW query and gets all its output and saves it in the flat files.

I completely realize that those options are not based on BEx Query Analyzer nor even in MS Excel but I cannot see any other option at the moment.

Features of SAP BW 7.3

Thinking about upgrade to 7.3? Assessing it? Searching for pros/cons? Need reasoning to management? Let me briefly summarize all the exciting new features of new SAP BW 7.3:

·         Scalable data models with built-in Semantic Partitioned Object (SPO)

·         Optimized load performance for DataStore Objects and Master Data

·         Enhanced built-in analytical capabilities for SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator

·         BWA-based reporting on Data Store Objects (via Hybridprovider)

·         Query as an InfoProvider enabled for mass data handling

·         Optimized integration of SAP BusinessObjects BI Tools Xcelsius, WebI

·         Tighter integration with SAP BusinessObjects Data Services

·         Tighter Integration with SAP BusinessObjects Metadata Management

·         Combining real-time transactional data with historical data via HybridProvider

·         Smarter data flow modeling with remarkably reduced manual effort

·         Hierarchies integrated into SAP NetWeaver BW 7.x data flow

·         Flexible modeling environment for analytical indices

·         ABAP based Planning Modeler w/o requiring a Java stack

·         Faster system set-up with a wizard-based system configuration

·         Enhanced monitoring capabilities with new content for SAP NetWeaver BW

·         Administration Cockpit and integration in SAP Solution Manager

·         Data Transfer Process supports data extraction from MultiProviders

·         Enhanced Usability of BW Administration Cockpit through Xcelsius Integration of monitors

·         Mass Change function for authorizations

Beta version of SAP BW 7.3 was available for selected partners around July 2010. Ramp Up program is suppose to start in middle of October 2010. 

Check out official SAP information on SDN.

Collection of materials related to SAP BW 7.3

My plan is regularly adding materials which are related to new version of BW: 7.3 at this blog post. This goes along my blog related to BW history posted here.


Documentation:
help.sap.com 1
help.sap.com 2



Documents:

What’s new with SAP NetWeaver BW 7.30 and BW Accelerator 7.20
SAP NW BW 7.3 Overview & Roadmap SAP BW Product Management April 2011
What’s new with SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 Product Management March 2011

SDN Blogs:

BW 7.3 beta is available

BW 7.3: Define Delta in BW and no more Init-InfoPackages

BW 7.3: Simple modeling of simple data flows
Creation of New Data flow trough Wizard tool in SAP BW 7.3
BW 7.3: Input ready formulas in BW Integrated Planning
BW 7.3: Simple supervision of process chains 
BW 7.3: The New Planning Modeler  
BW 7.3: Transport support in BW landscapes
BW 7.3 dataflow modeller: What do I need to know?  
BW 7.3 hierarchy framework
BW 7.3: Data Validations and Performance Improvements for Planning Applications 
BW 7.3: Semantically Partitioned Objects (SPOs) built from BAdI – Consistent, Rule Based Modeling of Logical Partitions 
BW 7.3: Troubleshooting Real-Time Data Acquisition
BW 7.30: Data Flow Copy Wizard
Dataflow Copy Tool: How to use Dataflow Copy tool to speed up the development activity
Enhanced data flows in BI 7.3
BW 7.30: Graphical Data Flow Modeling
upgrade in less than 3 hours
Performance Improvements for DataStore Objects 
My favourite BW 7.3 and BI 4.0 blogs
SAP BW Developers SDN Blog series accompanying the BW 7.3 Ramp-Up phase
Basic features of BW 7.3 compared to BW 7.0 
What's New in the SAP BW Near-Line Storage Solution
Modeling integration between SAP Business Objects Data Services and BW | Part 1 of 2 – Connect Source System
Performance Improvements in Master-Data related scenarios and DTP Processing 
Modeling integration between SAP Business Objects Data Services and BW | Part 2 of 2 - Create DataSource  
New MDX test environment
Remodeling in SAP BI 7.00 
HANA and BW 7.30 - Part 1
HANA and BW 7.30 - Part 2
Remodeling on DSO
Restricting the value help in the variables screen of a query
Need a magician to connect JAVA to BW 7.30 after the installation … ?  
BW 7.3 news from BI at Amsterdam 
'Force Delta' in BW Dataflows
User Interface for Hybrid Providers
Hybrid Provider in a Nutshell
Précis about the HybridProvider
Simple supervision of process chains 
Data Flow Migration tool: Migrating 3.x flows to 7.3 flows and also the recovery to 3.X flow
Exporting Hierarchy using Open Hub Destination into Flat file from BW 7.3
Hierarchy Framework – a real-life example
Hierarchy loading becomes easier with the help of new framework
Easy queries on SAP NetWeaver BW
Different ways to delete Master data 

BW 7.3: Process Chain and the art of Wizardry

Pattern-based Partitioning using the SPO BAdI
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: BAdI Managed Maintenance 
Part 3: Partitioning Patterns
Part 4: Use Cases


New DSO activation logic: 
Performance Improvements for DataStore Objects
BW Fine Tuning on Netweaver BW 730 - Part 1
BW Fine Tuning on Netweaver BW 730 - Part 2

LSA Data Flow Templates Series:
I. Introduction 
II. Basics for Data Flow Templates
III. Layering data & logic
IV. Flow extensions - Corporate Memory (CM) & Harmonization InfoSOurce
V. Tactical Scalability - Flow split usingsemantic partitioning
VI. Scalability – Flow split and infosources
VII. Scalability – infosourecs & single ERP source
VIII. Scalability – Entire data flow split
IX. Scalability – Data flow split using a pass thru Datastore object
X. Scalability & Data domains – Strategic semantic partitioning of entire BW (SPLIT)
XI. Scalability & Data domains – Strategic semantic partitioning of entire BW (COLLECT)
XII. Scalability & Data domain – Business transformation layer



Upgrade to 7.3:
A BW 7.3 Upgrade this Summer?
The diary of a BW 7.3 Ramp-Up project (Part 1)
The diary of a BW 7.3 Ramp-Up project (Part 2)
The diary of a BW 7.3 Ramp-Up project (Part 3)
The diary of a BW 7.3 Ramp-Up project (Part 4)
The diary of a BW 7.3 Ramp-Up project (Part 5)

Upgrading to NetWeaver BW 7.3 - our story - Part 1, a brief history of mankind
Upgrading to NetWeaver BW 7.3: Our story part 2 - the long hard road 
Upgrading to NetWeaver BW 7.3 - Our story part 3, getting through cutover 
Upgrading to NetWeaver BW 7.3 - Our story part 4, how Project Santa became Project Valentine
Upgrading to BW7.3 the unconventional way

Othet blogs:

New transaction codes in BW 73

-    Update 25/01/2012 –
See Features of SAP BW 7.3

Finally there is a list of RSADMIN table parameters

Have you ever wondered why there is no some collective SAP Note describing all the parameters available in system for RSADMIN table? For me it would be logical to have such a note. In some of SDN forum’s it is mentioned that was such a note but over the years it became internal and therefore not accessible for SAP’s customers and event no for partners. If you imagine that according google there are 364 pages on the internet referencing to this note it would be very appreciated by SAP community that this note would be is available again. Might be that after lobbing of BW folks in SDN forums people at SAP decided to release it back to customers. That happen precisely on 20^th of August 2010 when version 25^th of this note suddenly appeared on OSS. 

Ladies and gents here it comes:

912367 - Composite Note: RSADMIN Parameter

P.S.: Many thank to Colum Cronin to announce that at this SDN forum thread.

- Update 20/02/2016 -

Adding one more SAP Note related to parameters of RSADMIN table this time there are parameters related to BEx like Business Explorer Tools BEx Precalculation Server

1878949 - Collective Note: RSADMIN parameters

- Update 20/MAR/2022 –

For BW4/HANA based systems see SAP Note 2769125 (Composite Note: RSADMIN Parameter for SAP BW/4HANA) to get an overview on valid RSADMIN params.

Related posts:

Parameters of RSADMINC table

Parameters of RSADMINA table

How to work with RSADMINA, RSADMINC and RSADMINS tables

How to work with RSADMIN table

BW4 - Parameters of RSADMIN table

How to properly design process chains

There are sometimes doubts regarding how to set up processes within the process chains. Process chain is structural and logical grouping of processes , jobs or steps involved within loading of data into BW. Proper design of chain has effects on its performance and consequently on performance of whole BW system. Therefore kind of best practice I can recommend following sequence for designing process chains:

a.    Delete Index

b.    Data Transfer Process / Execute InfoPackage – optimally in parallel

c.    Generate Index

d.    Construct Database Statistics

e.    Compress cube

f.     Delete PSA (aged data requests)

g.    Delete Change Log (aged data requests)

Here’s quite obsolete picture from SAP presentation material depicting loading process in BW 3.0.

Grey rating for Earlywatch Alert report

Sometimes it is common situation that you receive the latest Earlywatch Alert (EWA) report from SAP and some of checks included have grey ratings. Usually there are suppose to be just three types of ratings:

Green – no major problems with systems observed, hurray :-)

Yellow – improvements to the system were detected

Red – severe problems were detected, you should take corrective actions immediately

Then what is going on while grey traffic lights are delivered? Simply this means that automated system that was generated this EWA report had no enough data to analyze the system. E.g. situation occurred in your system that it wasn’t recognized, connection into system was down, system as itself was down etc. There is an SAP Note discussing such situations here:

Note 762696 - Grey rating for Earlywatch Alert

Where to see code for Business Content SAP exit variable?

SAP exit variable are type of BEx variables processed during BEx Query runtime by replacement path predefined in SAP exit. SAP exit is like customer exit it is just delivered by standard SAP BW Business Content. Comparison to customer exit is right since there is also ABAP code which is in particular performing the replacement of variable value.

This might seems to be tricky for first look: Where to see ABAP code for BEx variables a type of SAP exit? Actually again comparing to user exits variable it is stored in ABAP repository but in include just in function modules:

In our case for variable 0P_SYSID there is the function module called RSVAREXIT_0P_SYSID where all the variable logic is coded:

update - 27-09-2012-

Older business content variables (e.g. 0CWD) are coded in FM RREX_VARIABLE_EXIT. 

Difference between DB and BW statistics

Terms like database (DB) and BW statistics are often referred in SAP documentation, Notes or even in SDN forums. We always hear that it is important to maintain statistics in order to achieve good performance of SAP systems. Especially in BW area performance topic is very important. Here it is often discussed that we must keep the DB statistics all the time for SAP BW. Then we hear that BW statistics mull be keep up to date as well. You can get easily confused with mixing a meaning of those two terms.

So basically what DB statistics is all about? Underlying database systems are using sophisticated algorithms to determine “a path” how to execute SQL statements. In detail a path is comprised of type of DB access (index access, full table scan, join types, memory requirements, table stats, index stat, column stat, histogram, partitioning, parallelism, clustering, etc.) how particular SQL statement is performed. In order to determine it DB engine is evaluating DB statistics which is basically about evaluation of how many I/O DB operations would take to perform DB statement with different DB access. The DB access with the fewest I/O DB operations is then executed to fulfill SQL statement. DB statistics is depended on type of used DB platform. E.g. in ORACLE there is a component of DB engine called Cost-Based SQL optimizer (CBO). Therefore sometime we call this type of statistics as an Optimizer statistics. This tool is in charge of SQL statement execution governing. This component is evaluating DB statistics. On other DB platform such a component is commonly called Query optimizer.

Now the questions would be how can we build DB stat? DB statistics can be build from BW perspectives within process chains via process called “Construct Database Statistics”. From basis point of view most common is to use BRTOOLs to build this statistics in case of ORACLE DB. Another option is to use transaction DB20 or report RSANAORA.

For more information about DB statistics see SAP Note 588668 - FAQ: Database statistics.

What about other term - BW statistics? It is a part of technical Business Content which helps to evaluate performance of SAP BW system. There are two main areas of performance evaluation: OLAP processor and Warehouse Management (WM).

Within OLAP processor gives an information how BW reporting is performing. A way how statistics data is collected If is like following. Every navigational step within the reporting that requests data from the database is saved in transparent table in BW backend (tables RSDDSTATHEADER, RSDDSTATINFO, RSDDSTATEVDATA). This includes characteristics, navigation attributes and hierarchies were involved. Here an event concept is used. Event is uniquely identifying each step in the process. From DB tables statistics data are loaded into BW statistics InfoCubes via technical process chains.

In case of WM statistics or Data Load statistics it is determining performance of loading, transforming the data and all the others staging operations. In principle system is gathering the data about process chains, DTPs and InfoPackages. Here e.g. time of execution is stored along other data load statistics data. Table where data is written is RSDDSTATWHM. WM statistics is customized via transaction RSDDSTAT.

BW statistics is a part of BI Administration Cockpit. See 934848 - Collective note: (FAQ) BI Administration Cockpit, for BW 3.x see: 309955 - BW statistics - Questions, answers and errors.

Notice that BW statistics was redesigned in BW version 7.x and it does use different tables comparing to BW 3.x.

More information:

588668 - FAQ: Database statistics

555030 - Deactivating BW-initiated DB statistics

1013912 - FAQ: Oracle BW performance