BI2012 Berg Jumpstart in Memory v11

© 2012 Wellesley Information Services. All rights reserved.

Comprehensive Guidelines to Speed Data Analysis Using the Analytical Engines from SAPDr. Bjarne BergCOMERIT

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In This Session …

• Get strategic advice for leveraging data warehousing and analytical engines from SAP to increase the speed and efficiency of data processing and analysis including: SAP NetWeaver® BW Accelerator SAP BusinessObjects Explorer SAP HANA SAP BusinessObjects Analysis

• Explore ways to deploy OLAP tools within SAP BusinessObjects Analysis — via Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, or the Web interface — and get criteria to map each approach to your analytical requirements

• Demo the key differences between the Microsoft and OLAP editions of SAP BusinessObjects Analysis

• You will come away with a deep understanding of what these solutions can do and when to use them

What We’ll Cover …

• Introduction• SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator Overview• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Overview• SAP HANA Capabilities and Impact to Organizations• SAP BusinessObjects Analysis Capabilities• Other Performance Considerations• A Roadmap for getting to Next Generation BI• Wrap-up

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Why In-Memory Processing?

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Focus

Improvement20121990

216 Addressable

Memory

2614x52.27MB/$

0.02MB/$

Memory

6083x304.17MIPS/$

0.05MIPS/$

CPU

Technology

620MBPS

5MBPS

Disk

Data Transfer

124x

1000 x100Gbps

100Mbps

Network Speed

264 248x

Source: 1990 numbers SAP AG, 2012 numbers, Dr. Berg

Disk speed is growing slower than all other hardware components, while the need for speed is increasing.

Source: BI Survey of 534 BI professionals, InformationWeek, 2010



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In Memory Processing — General Highlights — BWA

SAP BW

InfoCubes

DSOs

1. Indexing and compression stored on a file system

2. Indexes copied into RAM on blades

BI Analytical Engine

3. Queries are routed to BWA by the Analytical engine

BWA = SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator

• It is hard to build a fast dashboard with many queries and panels without SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator This provides in-memory processing of queries

that is 10-100 faster

It Is All About Performance, Performance, Performance

• What we simply do is place the data in-memory and retrieve itmuch faster There is also some limited OLAP functionality that can be built

into SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator 7.3, but most data processing still occurs in the BI Analytical engine

You can also place non-SAP data in-memory, using SAP BusinessObjects Data Services 7

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How Does SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator Work in Reality?

• In SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator 7.2 you can handle more of the analytics processing, such as “top-5 products sales,” which was previously done in the BI analytical engine

• SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator is accessed by queries and also by any jobs that use the application programming interface (SAPRSDRI_INFOPROV_READ) or the data read transaction (LISTCUBE), when aggregate flag is selected or any of the OLAP interfaces to third-party tools

• SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator 7.0 performs aggregation and data selection for the query, all other processing is done by the BI analytical engine (i.e., as the “OLAP processor”)

• Therefore, not all query processing will be dramatically faster

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Compression and TREX

The TREX engine is NOT the same as the traditional implementation of the search engine

BWA comes with its own TREX engine that collects the data

During the index build, the data is also compressed using advancedmathematical methods

The result is therefore a muchsmaller sized index than the originalInfoCube

SAP BI Accelerator (BIA) was renamed to SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator in 2009

Berg: I moved this note from slide 13 to here, since this is the first slide that shows the older term SAP BI Accelerator. BERG: OK

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3 Steps of InfoCube Index Creation

• First master data is processed (Y, S, and X) tables.

• Second, the fact tables are grouped and indexed. This occurs by merging the E and F tables into one F table prior to indexing it. This is done automatically and does not change the basic cube.

• Third, the dimension tables are indexed. This include all D tables (potentially 16).

• The process starts with a database lock on each table. The next step is a data transfer to a temporary BWA file and transferring the data to BWA. The final step is to write the indexes to memory and activate it for queries.

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The Rule of 50% and Impacts

• Buying hardware is not as easy as you may think …

First you need to make space for temporary index files. The recommended size is about 50%.

Second you need to have one fail-over blade in case of hardware issues.

Example-1: Your sizing program says you need 48Gb of memory You need 48GB + 48Gb for temp indexes and 48Gb failover = 144Gb

(66.66% overhead)

Example-2: Your sizing program says you need 192 Gb of memory You need 192GB + 192Gb for temp indexes and 48 Gb failover = 432Gb (44% overhead)

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Performance is Near-Linear: Benchmarks

SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator’s strength resides in its near-linear scalability

Performance is measured in terms of:

1. BW Accelerator index creation time

2. Multi-user throughput per hour

3. Average report response time

4. Average number of records touched by each report

SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator reads data from InfoCubes. DSOs and

InfoObjects are still read from base/physical tables (even when the

InfoObject is indexed as part of master data).

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BI Analytical Engine’s Query Executing Priorities

Query ExecutionWithout SAP NetWeaver

BW Accelerator

Query ExecutionWith SAP NetWeaver

BW Accelerator

Information Broadcasting /Precalculation

Query Cache

Aggregates

InfoProvider

Information Broadcasting /Precalculation

Query Cache

SAP BW Accelerator

Aggregates can be replaced with SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator, while the memory cache is still useful.

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Query Performance Improvements — Real Example of 70 Queries

The slowest queries that spent most of their time on the database side benefitted the most

Overall 36 of 70 queries were at least twice as fast. Before BWA, the average query execution took 58.8 seconds; after BWA the average query took 17.9 seconds (295% faster overall).

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5

10

15

20

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10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260

Query execution time after BI-A

The major improvement is to make query execution more predictable and overall faster

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1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260

Query execution time before BI-A

Seconds

Nu

mb

er

of

Qu

eri

es

Nu

mb

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of

Qu

eri

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Seconds

Query Performance Improvements OVERALL

HINT: BWA will not be used if a query

has a key figure set to NO1, NO2, or NOP

(no aggregation)

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Workbook Performance Improvements with BWA

Workbooks require embedding of JavaScripts; can contain multiple queries; and may have macros, lookups, and internal logic

It is therefore hard to estimate the real performance benefits of implementingSAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator

In this real example of 20 slow workbooks, theaverage performance improvement for workbooks was 363% faster

Performance Information — BWA Indexes Build Times

Creating new indexes (refreshes) can be time consuming. The build time depends on:

a) The size of the records (length)b) The number of recordsc) The number of SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator processors d) The network transfer speed

In this example, 23 InfoCubes with over 232 million records were indexed in 90.56 minutes

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On average, 2.56 million records per minute were indexed!

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Most Customers Have Found BWA Admin to Be Minimal

The Admin work is done through a single interface

The admin interface is available under the transaction code RSDDBWAMON/RSDDBIAMON

Health checks for SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator are available under the transaction code RSRV

Most companies plan for a maximum of 2-5 days of SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator training. You need a

maximum of 1-2 administrators (1 for backup).

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RSDDBIAMON — BWA Administrator Tools

• Restart BIA server: Restarts all the BWA servers and services

• Restart BIA Index Server: Restarts the index server

• Reorganize BIA Landscape: If the BWA server landscape is unevenly distributed, redistributes the loaded indexes on BWA servers

• Rebuild BIA Indexes: If a check discovers inconsistencies in the indexes, delete and rebuild the BWA indexes.

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Selective Usage of SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator

You can turn off the SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator usage for certain roles. This reduces the stress on the hardware for non-essential users.

You can also turn off the BWA uses forindividual users in transaction code SU01

You can see if anyone is using the BWA indexes in the table “RSDDSTATBIAUSE” and some details are also

available in ‘RSRT’ after patch 16.

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RSDDBIAMON — BWA Administrator Tools and Control

• Connectivity checks Checks if BW is still connected

physically to the BW system

• System Check Checks if the blades and file

system is operating normally

• Load Monitoring Keeps track of performance of the

load process (read, writes, compression, and time spent)

You can turn off the BWA index query availability for InfoCubes through the transaction “RSDDBIAMON2.”

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The BWA interface allows you to compare the data in SAP NetWeaver BW vs. the indexes. This means that you can easily check if they are outdated (service pack 12 required)

Other tools include the ability to run queries to see if the numbers in the two databases match.

Health-Checks and Reconciliation

You can check your installation using the function module

“TREX_CHECK_BIA_INSTALLATION” or using the transaction code

RSDDBIAMON.

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The Analysis and Repair options include proposals and time estimation tools that you may use

The interface can propose delta-indexes for periodic updates

You can estimate the runtime of indexing the fact table of an InfoCube before you place it into a process chain or a manual job

You can estimate the memory needed before adding new records into memory

Proposals and Estimations

You can use the ABAP program ‘’ZZ_SET_QUERY_NOHPA_FLAG to

turn off BWA access for single queries in the RSRREPDIR table

(SAP Note: 1161525 for BWA 7.0)

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The simple way to fix most issues is to delete all indexes and rebuild them during a weekend

Think of this as the ultimate “reset” button. You can also rebuild master data indexes

The SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator “Reset Button”

In TREXADMIN you can see the number of records in the BWA indexed Infocube.

1. Select the RFC Server, Execute. 2. Click on tab “Index Admin.” 3. For each InfoCube select BIA as

the Index ID. The records are equal to the # of documents.

4. Estimations of this, based on statistics, are also available in:

•RSDDV - BIA Indexes •SE16 - RSDDTREXDIR

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Increasing Index Creation Performance

1. To increase index creation performance, you can change the global parameters in SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator

2. Pay particular attention to the number of parallel processes available (max 10 per available physical processors)

3. Make sure the memory buffers are set large enough to accommodate large InfoCubes

4. Review consistency check recommendations in SAP Notes 1052941 and 1161967

You can check global parameters in RSRV and you can change global parameters in RSBATCH and RSDDBIAMON.

Planning a 6-Week BWA Implementation

• An SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator project can be completed in six weeks

• However, due to hardware lead-times (normally 4-6 weeks), most projects should plan a 12-week duration

• The time waiting on hardware should be used on performance tuning of existing queries and dashboards

• We will now look at the major tasks of implementing an SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator solution

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SAP has integrated key sizing parameters for SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator in the new Quick Sizer. You can give it a try at: http://service.sap.com/quicksizer (requires login credentials for the SAP Service Marketplace)

Sizing Is Critical, but Good Tools Are Available

Customers with existing BI systems and data loaded can get good sizing and compression estimates by running the SAP program available in SAP Note 917803.

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Training for SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator

SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator training is included in the SAP courses:

BW-310, BW-360, and in the online course BW361

In the past, SAP has also offered a two-day workshop called “BI Upgrade & Accelerator” (WNASAP BW Accelerator)

Reference Title Audience

BW-310 Intro to SAP BI All

BW-305 BI Reporting and Analysis Query developers

BW-350 BI Data Acquisition ETL developers

BW-360 BW Performance & Admin System admin

BW-361 BW Accelerator System admin

BW-365 BW Authorizations System admin

SAP-330 BW Modeling BI developers

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Testing

• Make sure you identify real benefits and benchmark with pre- and post-performance after SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator is implemented

• This requires that all critical performance data is captured before SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator is installed

• You should document the post performance and build times as early as possible so that you know what the performance of complex dashboards will be and how the indexing will fit into existing process chains

You can see what InfoCubes are indexed by going to RSDDV and clicking the button “BIA Indexes.”

The New SAP NetWeaver BW 7.2 Features — Modeling in BWA

In BWA 7.2 you can complete many of the joins and aggregation that was previously conducted in the BI analytic engine, and was therefore hard to performance tune

It also reduces the data being transferred to the app server and therefore is much faster as well

Image source: SAP AG, 2011, SDN

The New SAP NetWeaver BW 7.2 Features — Faster Performance

The major benefit of BWA 7.2 is that you can move more of the calculation over to the accelerator and materialize the result in-memory. This improves the reads, and calculations in the OLAP/ BI analytic engine on the BW side are substantially reduced.

The following calculations are now included: SUM MIN MAX CNT (count all detailed values) CN0 (Count all values not zero or null) AVG (average)AV0 (Average for all values not zero or null)


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Prerequisites for SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator 7.2

• For SAP BusinessObjects Explorer BWA needs to be upgraded to BWA 7.20 BW should be upgraded to minimum SAP NetWeaver BW 7.0.1

EHP 1; SPS 5 (Source SAP AG BWA 7.2 Installation guide, and SAP Notes 1392524 and

1148111)• SAP Technology RIG Recommendations

If the system is on SAP NetWeaver BW 7.0 or 7.0 EHP1, then use SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator 7.0

If the system is on SAP NetWeaver BW 7.0 EHP1 SPS 5 or higher AND you are using SAP BusinessObjects Explorer (accelerated version), then use BWA 7.20

If the system is on SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3, then use BWA 7.20 (Source Marc Bernard, SAP AG, 2011)

The SAP NetWeaver BW 7.2 Limitations and Query Settings

• There are still some limitations. For example you cannot use the exception aggregation for single key figures in SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator if it uses: Virtual key figures Conversion before aggregation Formula calculation before aggregation Non-cumulative key figures Key figures with elimination of internal business volume

You also get more detailed control on each query as to how it reads the BWA. Think of it as similar to Query read modes (more details at SDN: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/70950003-f7ef-2d10-b1bc-ee483800b25c?QuickLink=index&overridelayout=true

The New SAP NetWeaver BW 7.2 Performance Example

• Queries with large OLAP processes, such as average and counts, benefit the most from the new BWA 7.2 system

• SAP has published the following performance example:

90-95% FASTER!!

Source: Sapphire, SAP AG, 2011,



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Why the Rapid Adaptation of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer?

One of the driving forces for SAP BusinessObjects Explorer has been the rapid implementation of blade solutions

running on-top of SAP NetWeaver BW. To date, according to SAP, over 1,000 of these systems has been installed.

Year

Number of BWA

Systems2006 842007 3762008 5582009 9092010 10532011 1200+2012 ?

Source: Ty Miller, Technology Solution management, SAP AG.

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SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Overview

• You can connect in several ways to data sets

Source: SAP, Aug, 2011

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer does not require SAP NetWeaver® BW. You can accelerate all data sources.

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer does not require SAP NetWeaver® BW. You can accelerate all data sources.

1. External data may be indexed by the SAP BusinessObjects Data Services and stored on dedicated SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator blades

2. SAP NetWeaver BW data may be indexed on SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator blades for fast in- memory processing (also through SAP HANA)

3. External data may also be accessed as “non-accelerated” via SQL/MSU universes

4. Excel spreadsheets may also be accessed

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer — Big Picture

Web Application Server (BOBJEnterprise Web App.)

BO Explorer Servers

BO Enterprise Servers

SAP Business Objects Explorer Client

SAP Business Objects Explorer Web Application

Explorer Servers Explorer Servers Explorer Servers Explorer Servers

Report Server(WIRS)

Central Mgmt. System (CMS)

Enterprise Repository

Master Service

Indexing Service

Exploration Service

Search Service

Database usinga Universe

BWAAccelerator

SAP BW7.x

BWA DriverCentral Mgmt. System (CMS)

Lucene Driver

Lucene Indexes

BWA = SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator

Creating Indexes from External Data

SAP BW

InfoCubes

DSOs





Business Object Data Services

Files

Databases

Index DesignerExternal data

• Using the Accelerator Index Designer in SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, you can also index data from external data files and databases

• It is important to note that the SAP BusinessObjects indexes are on dedicated blades

• For SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator you should always have one “spare” blade for failover If a blade fails, the system can

reload the indexes from the SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator file system (i.e., GPFS)

• For the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer blade, you can use only one blade

DataIntegrator

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SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Overview

• Accelerated (BWA) or non-accelerated solutions

Explorer with no blades

Explorer Accelerated version

Interface Universe Direct Access to BWA

Security Columns Only (XI) Columns/Rows (SAP BW Authorization)

Scheduled Indexing Mechanism

Copies Data from data source and

creates index on XI

Makes BWA index available to Explorer blade edition

Speed of result set retrieval for data (>1m

rows)Slow Fast

Aggregation XI Explorer blade editionBWA

Access Control to Data XI Admin sets user access to Universes

SAP BW Administrator sets users access to BW Accelerator indexes

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SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Non-BW Data

• Using the SAP BusinessObjects Data Services tool, you can access non-SAP data and model it in the BWA Cube Designer tool

SAP BW

InfoCubes

DSOs





Business Object Data Services

Files

Databases

Index DesignerExternal data

Version 4.0

Version 3.2 and 4.0

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Improved Features

• Many customers looked at earlier releases of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and noted several limitations

• Many of these limitations are now remedied. These include: The possibility to import your own Excel files Create your own calculations at the user level You can group related dimensions for simplicity of analysis Security in improved and row-level data security can be

implemented You can personalize the view by filtering information Users may navigate hierarchies instead of

“flat” data

PS! Currently the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer solution is licensed based on number of blades and the number of named users.

PS! Currently the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer solution is licensed based on number of blades and the number of named users.

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Indexing from Queries

• You can use BEx queries to create complex indexes that are stored simply as a flat table in the index (de-normalized). First you must enable the query for SAP BusinessObjects Explorer indexing using the program: RSR_QPROV_CHECK.

This checks if the query can be used for indexing

Query display settings are not supported and deltas are not available.

PS! The read mode for the query is executed as “read everything.”

Query display settings are not supported and deltas are not available.

PS! The read mode for the query is executed as “read everything.”

Query limitations for Explorer indexing Technical name cannot be over 20

characters Query cannot have two structures Query cannot use local aggregation or

calculations before aggregation Integrated planning queries and queries

with input variables cannot be used Queries with temporal hierarchy joins

cannot be used

The Many SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Access Methods

• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is normally accessed through a browser• However, you can always download the results from a search into Excel

and perform analysis from there• You can save the result set as an image and load it on portal sites,

handhelds, or send as email• Finally, you can access the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer directly from

a handheld device that supports basic Web browser functions

Source: Dan Kearnan, SAP AG (2010)

Ad Hoc Search

• The core idea of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is that users can search the BI data like they would using Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other search engines

• Users should not have to know how the data is structured, what query to execute, or how to display the data

• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer takes a “first stab” at presenting the data in a usable format From there, users may navigate and change the display

• The users may save their settings and the display at any time

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Ad Hoc Search Example

1. First we searched on“sales” and found threepossible choices

2. We selected “sales Information” and searched after the term "Texas”

This shows the sales amount by state as a table, the gross margin as a graph and as a table

Any display can be exported to Excel, saved as an image,

emailed, or bookmarked



A Step-by-Step Demo: Searching

Step 1. We load the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Web interface into a browser

Step 2. We Search for “sales”

Step 3. We get the searchresults and a list of “information spaces”

The search result list is sorted based on an internal “relevancy” score.The search result list is sorted based on an internal “relevancy” score.47

A Step-by-Step Demo: The Initial View

Step 4. The system looks at the data and formats it based on implied hierarchies (i.e., time, geography, customer) as well as measures. Users may navigate and change measures, graphs, and tables.

A Step-by-Step Demo: Searching in a Result Set and Measures

Step 5. Again, we are interested in sales around Texas, and can search the initial result set

Step 6. By changing the Measure from “margin” to“sales revenue” all graphsand tables change

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A Step-by-Step Demo: Changing Charts and Drill Down

Step 7. We can change the chart by selecting from the left menu options

Step 8. While the firstdisplay was based on the“best guess,” we can nowdrill down to the different product lines

The best graphingoptions, based on ourdata, is highlighted by a star:

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A Step-by-Step Demo: More Graphing Options

Step 9. There are many graphingoptions and some are more useful than others

“Proportional” view is best when you are looking for size relations. i.e., what are the largest contributors to sales?

Try several graphing options before deciding on “your” view.Try several graphing options before deciding on “your” view.

Most of the time, the reccomended graphs works best for the data set, but not always

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A Step-by-Step Demo: Explore More — Filtering

Step 10. By clicking on “Explore more” you are promted to filter on the characteristic you selected

Filtering data makes the images more meaningful. It is harder to analyze 50 states and scroll through the data.


Since we clicked “Explore more” in the state box, we can now select only the states we are interested in

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Ad Hoc Search Example

1. First we searched on“sales” and found threepossible choices

2. We selected “sales Information” and searched after the term "Texas”

This shows the sales amount by state as a table, the gross margin as a graph and as a table





A Step-by-Step Demo: Searching

Step 1. We load the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Web interface into a browser

Step 2. We Search for “sales”

Step 3. We get the searchresults and a list of “information spaces”

The search result list is sorted based on an internal “relevancy” score.The search result list is sorted based on an internal “relevancy” score.54

A Step-by-Step Demo: The Initial View

Step 4. The system looks at the data and formats it based on implied hierarchies (i.e., time, geography, customer) as well as measures. Users may navigate and change measures, graphs, and tables

A Step-by-Step Demo: Searching in a Result Set and Measures

Step 5. Again, we are interested in sales around Texas, and can search the initial result set

Step 6. By changing the Measure from “margin” to“sales revenue” all graphsand tables change

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A Step-by-Step Demo: Changing Charts and Drill Down

Step 7. We can change the chart by selecting from the left menu options

Step 8. While the firstdisplay was based on the“best guess,” we can nowdrill down to the different product lines

The best graphingoptions, based on ourdata, is highlighted by a star:

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A Step-by-Step Demo: Explore More — Filtering

Step 10. By clicking on “Explore more” you are promted to filter on the characteristic you selected



Since we clicked “Explore more” in the state box, we can now select only the states we are interested in

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A Step-by-Step Demo: Filter Results

We now see the (product) lines are sold in only three states

Always see if any items have been removed in a filter before you look at the data, i.e., 15,061,789 is not the sales

revenue for the firm, only the revenue for three states.

Always see if any items have been removed in a filter before you look at the data, i.e., 15,061,789 is not the sales

revenue for the firm, only the revenue for three states.

Filter values are displayed

here:

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A Step-by-Step Demo: The Visualization Panel

Step 11. You can also zoom in on the data by only showing the visualization panel

In the Visualization Panel, you can view all the fields and measures as a complete table

Notice: The table only contains data from the three states we filtered on

A Step-by-Step Demo: Top 10 Analysis

Step 12. In the visualization panel, we can perform top 10 analysis by a single click. All other values are summarized in an “other” category and graphed

The ability to quickly group and summarize data is a great feature. This is normally done in the BI analytical engine of

SAP NetWeaver® BW, and can be very slow.

The ability to quickly group and summarize data is a great feature. This is normally done in the BI analytical engine of

SAP NetWeaver® BW, and can be very slow. 61

A Step-by-Step Demo: Other Display Options

Step 13. You can view the data in relative size by using a comparison graph

Line graphs are usually preferred if you have 3-20 data points

Areas on the graphs can be highlighted by clicking on one or more data points

A Step-by-Step Demo: Sorting and New Calculations

Step 14. Any data panel can be sorted in many ways

Measures used on any graph can be calculated “on-the-fly.”Measures used on any graph can be calculated “on-the-fly.”

Step 15. We can also add our own measures

In our example we are adding the measure “Margin Per Unit” as total margin divided by “quantity sold”

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A Step-by-Step Demo: Mini-OLAP Example

Step 16. In this mini-OLAP example we are: Looking at some key cities in a few states (filter) Only looking at data for 2003 and only for “Sweats and T-Shirts” (filters) Examining the profit margin per unit sold (customized calculation)

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is not an OLAP tool, but can support basic drill-down features, and thereby complex

unstructured analysis.

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is not an OLAP tool, but can support basic drill-down features, and thereby complex

unstructured analysis. 64

A Step-by-Step Demo: Downloading a Data Set

Step 17. Any result set displayed in SAP BusinessObjects Explorer may be saved to a PC as a comma-delimited file

You can select to save the data set filtered by the navigations or only the data from the visualization panel

Data saved this way can be opened in Excel or imported directly into Access and other databases.

Data saved this way can be opened in Excel or imported directly into Access and other databases.

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A Step-by-Step Demo: Configuring Measures

Step 18. Measures in the data set can also be configured to be “filter columns” for user navigation

Other options include Max Min Sum Average

This is how you determine how data will be accessed and how measures will be displayed.

This is how you determine how data will be accessed and how measures will be displayed.

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HINT: Connectivity, Network, and Non-Logical Calculations

• You sometimes can get the following message from the system:

• This normally means that the connectively to the system is either too slow, or broken. This is an issue that is more common for very slow connections such as older Wi-Fi networks

• You can also get this error message if the result set you requested is not available (i.e., non-logical calculations)

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator 7.2 Features

• In earlier releases of SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator you could not index DSOs; with version 7.2 this is now available

• Also, prior to SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator 7.2, the solution was only used for rapid in-memory data fetches BI analytical engine processes such as data sorts, calculated key figures (CKF),

restrictive key figures (RKF), top-5 conditioning, etc., were still costly overheads to the query execution

• We now have a new “calculation engine” and a new “aggregation engine” inside

This means that the benefits of in-memory processing is no longer confined to data fetches and queries can be made to run even faster

You can now performance tune some BI analytic engine functions with SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator,

not only data reads. PS! SAP HANA can also support SAP

BusinessObjects Explorer

You can now performance tune some BI analytic engine functions with SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator,

not only data reads. PS! SAP HANA can also support SAP

BusinessObjects Explorer

SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator 7.2

Calculation Engine

Aggregation EngineIndex

69Source: SAP AG, Nov. 2011

Budgeting for SAP BusinessObjects Explorer with BWA

• You have to plan for: SAP BusinessObjects Explorer licenses (per blade as well as per

number of users) Hardware costs (approx. $14K-$22K per chassis + $5-10K per blade

and a rack, if you do not have a spare place for the chassis. Add in two network cards and a file system.) Good planning numbers for production environment (only):

Small HW costs ~ $40K to $60K Medium HW costs ~ $60K to $250K Large HW costs ~ $250K to $500K+

Add consulting fees for 2-3 people for 7-10 weeks. The actual time needed depends on how much of the infrastructure you already have in-place and how you plan on rolling out the solution)

Remember to plan for three years of vendor support costs. 70

Source: SAP AG , Nov. 2011

Required and Optional Components

• Installing SAP BusinessObjects Explorer can be confusing. Some components are required, while others are optional.

SAP BusinessObjects Data Services if you use external data Index designer plug-in if you use external

accelerated data SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator 7.20 if you use

accelerated data – revision 5

• You can find detailed requirements at: Accelerated version: https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/docs/DOC-120755 Non-accelerated version: https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/docs/DOC-120756

SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator, SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 3.2 can run only on SUSE Linux 64-bit OS for blade

servers (requirements (PAM) for 4.0 should be taken from service.sap.com)

SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator, SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 3.2 can run only on SUSE Linux 64-bit OS for blade

servers (requirements (PAM) for 4.0 should be taken from service.sap.com)

SAP-Certified blade vendors: IBM, SUN, Dell, Cisco, Teradata, Fujitsu, HP

SAP-Certified blade vendors: IBM, SUN, Dell, Cisco, Teradata, Fujitsu, HP

Some Limitations — Authorizations and MultiProviders

When you create the index, the conversions, hierarchies, texts, and authorization indexes are made. However, if the Analysis Authorizations are on the MultiProviders, they cannot be used in the index

You can fix this by placing the Analysis Authorizations on the basic cubes instead

When creating snapshots, you can only filter on a single

characteristic and MPSI is not available for BW “reporting”

(see other limitations in SAP Note: 1332392)

When creating snapshots, you can only filter on a single

characteristic and MPSI is not available for BW “reporting”

(see other limitations in SAP Note: 1332392)

When you create an index on a MultiProvider, a part provider can be used. This creates a single index for BWA and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, but part providers can only be consumed by SAP BusinessObjects Explorer (not BW) [SAP Note: 1593642]

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Index snapshots can be taken of a MultiProviders (MPSI), however, this can take a long time to create if the data volume is large. Delta capabilities can be done in a different rollup step (RSDDTPS_INDEX_MPRO)

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Some Ideas — Authorizations

• If you use Authorization based on hierarchy nodes (0TCTAUTHH) , it is not used by SAP BusinessObjects Explorer. Also, if you have based your authorization on custom user exit coding, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer cannot leverage this either.

Hint: Create an active directory group and add all users to this group. Since SAP BusinessObjects

Explorer does not use SAP security, you can use the AD group for

single-sign-on.

Hint: Create an active directory group and add all users to this group. Since SAP BusinessObjects

Explorer does not use SAP security, you can use the AD group for

single-sign-on.

• To setup the security in RSDDTPS_AUTH, try the following:

Source logic from: M. Umarwadia and M. Walsh, SAP TechEd 2011

Some Features of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 4.0

• You can also use universes created by the Information Design Tool (IDT) and access these in SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

74

Spreadsheets can be added in the Information Spaces and you can use SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to access this (in a non-accelerated manner)/

Spreadsheets can be added in the Information Spaces and you can use SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to access this (in a non-accelerated manner)/

Other Features of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 4.0 — Templates

• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 4.0 now provides templates for customers to personalize their own displays

75

This feature assists users in having their own visualization and preferences stored in templates that can bypass any

“default” displays/views by the system.

This feature assists users in having their own visualization and preferences stored in templates that can bypass any

“default” displays/views by the system.

Other Features of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 4.0 — Servers and CMC

You can manage all servers in one location within the Central Management Console (CMC)

76

Your BI applications and tools, including SAP

BusinessObjects Explorer, can now be accessed

through the BI Launchpad.

Your BI applications and tools, including SAP

BusinessObjects Explorer, can now be accessed

through the BI Launchpad.

An Implementation Milestone Plan Example

Since some vendors build the hardware as made-to-order, it is important to get the purchase order placed as soon as

possible.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12Project start up BW implementation review and ranking of InfoCubes/DSOs for indexingReview physical hardware infrastructure and network access Size the BWA using program in note: 917803Plan for fail-over, disaster recovery and backupHW vendor selection (& approvals if required)Contact vendor and place Purchase orderCollect benchmarks for current performance and targetsExecute performance tuning of queries, install SAP BO XI and BO-ESecurity designExamine process chains and create new if needed Install hardware BWA and connectivityTest connectivity and perform readiness assessmentTraining for 2 system adminsCreate first indexes and test functionalityMake enhancements and change scope as needed (i.e. more infoproviders)Create all planned indexes and test process chains (time to build indexes)Execute system test with User Acceptance team (end users)Design and implement updated process chainsCollect benchmarks for current performance and targetsDocument results and close project

BO Explorer Milestone Plan Weeks

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Register and Take a Free Test Drive with SAP HANA

• You can register for a free test drive at: https://bi.ondemand.com/session/new

You can also upload your own data and try the tool to see if it is something for your organization. There is even quick guides, videos, and wizards to get you started.

You can also upload your own data and try the tool to see if it is something for your organization. There is even quick guides, videos, and wizards to get you started.

78



79

SAP HANA — In Memory Options

• SAP HANA is sold as an in-memory appliance. This means that both Software and Hardware are included from the vendors

• Currently you can buy SAP HANA solutions from Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard

• SAP HANA currently indexes the data from a variety of sources, including ERP and BW and store the result on a dedicated server

• The future of SAP HANA is to replace the databases of ERP and BW and run these on the in-memory platform

Source SAP AG,2011

SAP HANA has the potential to radically change the way

databases operate and make systems dramatically faster.

SAP HANA has the potential to radically change the way

databases operate and make systems dramatically faster.

Tools and Access Methods• You can connect to SAP HANA with a direct access method, or you can use universe-based access

• For example, SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for MS, OLAP edition, and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer can all establish a direct link to SAP HANA

• Other BI client products can leverage the universe-based approach

• You need special licenses to use SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 on top of SAP HANA and JDBC configuration may be required

Administrators use: SAP HANA studio, Information designer, data service designer, DB clients, and Excel 2010.End users methods: SAP HANA database clients, BI clients, and Excel 2010.

Administrators use: SAP HANA studio, Information designer, data service designer, DB clients, and Excel 2010.End users methods: SAP HANA database clients, BI clients, and Excel 2010.

SAP HANA — Sources and Target Interfaces

ERP

Database

HANA Appliance

In

Memory

Computing

Engine

Sybase

Replication

Server

SAP BW 3rd Party

Semantic Layer

SAP BusinessObjects 4.0

Dashboards

Crystal

WebIntelligence

Analysis - Office

Crystal

Explorer

Sybase Unwired

Others

3rd Party Applications

Custom Web Development

3rd Party Applications

MS-Excel (certified)

SQL (JDBC / ODBC)

DBSQL

BICS

SQL (JDBC / ODBC)

MDX (ODBO)BusinessObjects Data Services

Real-time

A great benefit is the real-time loading of SAP HANA from ERP. This can provide

real-time analytics to end-users.

A great benefit is the real-time loading of SAP HANA from ERP. This can provide

real-time analytics to end-users.

SAP HANA Product Strategy

• While we can index SAP NetWeaver BW data today via SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, the next generation of SAP HANA is intended to make it possible to run SAP NetWeaver BW on top of HANA

A big decision for companies in the future will be to decide how much real time, operational reporting from ERP should stay in SAP HANA/ERP and what sort of analytical data should be stored in a SAP HANA-enabled BW

systems.

A big decision for companies in the future will be to decide how much real time, operational reporting from ERP should stay in SAP HANA/ERP and what sort of analytical data should be stored in a SAP HANA-enabled BW

systems.

Source: Uddhav Gupta- SAP Solution Management, DataWarehousingPlatform, TechEd, 2011

SAP HANA — Loading the Application and Performance

You can load the application based on the logs in the source system, ETL-based (Extract Transform and Load) loads, and SAP trigger-based replication

Tool Purpose

BusinessObjects Data Services 4.0 – ETL-based replicationSybase replication server & Load Controller – Log-based replicationSAP Landscape Transformation (LT) – Trigger-based replication

Log based replication is possible on IBM DB 2 LUW/UDB and planned for MSFT SQL Server Enterprise Edition, Oracle Enterprise Edition, and Sybase ASE (as of Dec. 2011) .

Log based replication is possible on IBM DB 2 LUW/UDB and planned for MSFT SQL Server Enterprise Edition, Oracle Enterprise Edition, and Sybase ASE (as of Dec. 2011) .

Max Min AverageBank 1 : 6.3 521.6 258.8 369.5HANA POC (SAP) 1 : 5.2 484.3 301.4 350.3

Query speed improvementsCompression (data)

Project

Some Reported SAP HANA Performance Achivements

Persistence Layer

Looking Inside SAP HANA — In-Memory Computing Engine (IMCE)

Disk Storage

Data

VolumesPage Mgmt.

BusinessObjects Data Services

Log

Volumes

Logger

AAAA

Metadata

Manager

Authorization

Manager

Transaction

Manager

Relational Engine

-Row Store-Column Store

Load

Controller

SQL Script

Calculation

Engine

Replication Server

SQL Parser

MDX

Session Manager

Inside the Computing Engine of SAP HANA we have many different components that manage the access and storage of the data. This include MDX and SQL

access, as well as Load Controller (LC) and the Replication Server.

Inside the Computing Engine of SAP HANA we have many different components that manage the access and storage of the data. This include MDX and SQL

access, as well as Load Controller (LC) and the Replication Server.

Enterprise Data Warehouse – SAP BW

SAP HANA — Virtual Marts and Applications• Virtual data marts and new applications were built that run on SAP

NetWeaver BW, which is again enabled by SAP HANA in-memory processing

ERP

Database

HANA (in-the works)

Virtual

Data

Marts

Applications

Databases

Virtual

Data

Marts

Virtual

Data

Marts

Virtual

Data

Marts

BI Solutions

Files

This provides much tighter integration with the source system (less data latency) and much faster query response time for high-volume analysis

This provides much tighter integration with the source system (less data latency) and much faster query response time for high-volume analysis

Applications developed by SAP “near-term”1. Profitability analysis 2. Dynamic cash management3. Strategic workforce planning4. Smart meter analytics (power companies)

Applications developed by SAP “mid-term”5. Planning & consolidation6. Customer revenue performance mgmt7. Predictive segmentation & targeting8. Trade promotion management9. Merchandise & assortment planning10.Sales & operations planning (SOP)11.Demand signal repository

SAP HANA Information Composer

• In the Web-based Information Composer users can upload their data into the SAP HANA database and create their own Information Views

• In the Information Views, users can combine objects inside SAP HANA, create their own calculations, and access their results in SAP BusinessObjects tools

• The three types of Information Views: Attribute View – Details Analytic View – Analysis Calculation View – Query built on attribute views, DB tables,

and analytic views

The SAP HANA Information Composer is intended for power users and authors, while the SAP HANA Information Modeler tool is intended for the technical IT person.

The SAP HANA Information Composer is intended for power users and authors, while the SAP HANA Information Modeler tool is intended for the technical IT person.

SAP HANA Studio — Information Modeler• Information

Modeler is easy to work in.

• However, it requires some data modeling skills

• SQL skills are also important when creating models and packages

Once Packages are developed, they can be accessed by the end user interfaces. Once Packages are developed, they can be accessed by the end user interfaces.

SAP HANA Studio Information Modeler — Displaying Data

The Information Modeling tool in SAP HANA also allows the developer to access the information and provide some basic graphing, pre-delivered templates, and navigation options

There is even a “distinct value” tab, that provides a data profile of the

various columns

This is not intented as an end-user interface (use SAP BusinessObjects BI tools

instead), but it can add significant value to the designers and developers.

This is not intented as an end-user interface (use SAP BusinessObjects BI tools

instead), but it can add significant value to the designers and developers.

Thanks to: Naresh Ganatra, Nov. 2011


Row- vs. Column-Based Indexing

• An index based on rows would require a substantial amount of data to be read. This is good when we are looking for “complete records” and want all this data

• It is not a very efficient way of accessing BI data when we are looking for only a few of the attributes, or key figures, in the records

While SAP HANA supports row-based indexing and you can leverage this for certain occasions, most

indexes for SAP BI and analysis would probably be better served by column-based indexes

While SAP HANA supports row-based indexing and you can leverage this for certain occasions, most

indexes for SAP BI and analysis would probably be better served by column-based indexes

Row ID Name State Class Birth date Income1 Jane Hansen NC Gold 8/7/1959 71,927$ 2 Olav Petersen TX Silver 2/24/1963 35,633$ 3 Peter Johnsen FL Platinum 1/1/1959 144,077$ 4 Thomas Berg TX Gold 2/13/1981 85,087$ 5 John Beatty FL Platinum 12/26/1958 123,456$ 6 Jim O'Brian NC Silver 6/11/1977 76,506$ 7 Jeff Pinolli NY Platinum 5/9/1971 73,503$ 8 Carol VanZyck NY Platinum 3/13/1969 68,987$ 9 Fredrick Davidson FL Gold 9/8/1980 100,600$ 10 Tone Leffler CA Platinum 2/10/1955 105,943$ 11 Carol Hansen CA Silver 9/9/1980 112,096$ 12 Jim Petersen NY Gold 2/23/1974 41,080$ 13 Jeff Johnsen CA Platinum 3/10/1978 118,481$ 14 Peter Berg FL Platinum 12/14/1981 50,900$ 15 Thomas Beatty IN Silver 10/25/1954 78,304$ 16 John O'Brian IN Gold 11/27/1970 38,809$ 17 Olav Pinolli CA Gold 10/1/1955 157,105$ 18 Jane VanZyck FL Platinum 6/27/1960 151,067$ 19 Tone Davidson NC Silver 11/19/1958 63,169$ 20 Fredrick Leffler SC Gold 12/21/1973 65,628$

Row Store Column StoreOne of the relational engines to store data in row format.

Improves read functionality significantly, also improves write functionality

Pure in-memory store Highly compressed dataIn memory object store (in future) for live cache functionality

No real files, virtual files

Transactions Version Memory is the heart of row store

Optimizer and Executer – Handles queries and execution plan

Row store architecture Delta data for fast writeWrite operation mainly go into "Transactional Version Memory"

Asynchronous delta merge

INSERT also writes to persisted segment Consistent view ManagerMoves visible version from memory to persisted segment

Main store compressed and read optimized – Data is read from Main Store

Clears outdated record versions from Transactional Version memory

Delta Store – Write optimized – for write operations.

Row Store tables have a primary indexAsynchronous merge move the data from delta store to main store

Row ID maps to primary keyCompression by create dictionary and applying further compression methods

Secondary indexes can be created

Even during the merge operation, the columnar table will still be available for read and write operations. To fulfil this, a second delta and main storage are used internally

Row ID contains the segment and the page for the record

Merge operation can also be triggered manually with an SQL command

Indexes in row store only exist in memoryIndex definition stored with table meta

Source: SAP AG, Dec. 2011

Row- vs. Column-Based Indexing (cont.)

• As we can see, there are only 7 unique states and 3 unique customer classes in the data. This allows SAP HANA to compress this data set significantly

• By including the Row ID in the column-based index in SAP HANA, the “ownership” of the values in the index can still be mapped back to the record

Column-based indexes on fields with repeated values often leads to better compression ratios and thereby lower size of the indexes (as

we can see, there are few values repeated in the rows).

Column-based indexes on fields with repeated values often leads to better compression ratios and thereby lower size of the indexes (as

we can see, there are few values repeated in the rows).

Row ID Name State Class Birth date Income1 Jane Hansen NC Gold 8/7/1959 71,927$ 2 Olav Petersen TX Silver 2/24/1963 35,633$ 3 Peter Johnsen FL Platinum 1/1/1959 144,077$ 4 Thomas Berg TX Gold 2/13/1981 85,087$ 5 John Beatty FL Platinum 12/26/1958 123,456$ 6 Jim O'Brian NC Silver 6/11/1977 76,506$ 7 Jeff Pinolli NY Platinum 5/9/1971 73,503$ 8 Carol VanZyck NY Platinum 3/13/1969 68,987$ 9 Fredrick Davidson FL Gold 9/8/1980 100,600$ 10 Tone Leffler CA Platinum 2/10/1955 105,943$ 11 Carol Hansen CA Silver 9/9/1980 112,096$ 12 Jim Petersen NY Gold 2/23/1974 41,080$ 13 Jeff Johnsen CA Platinum 3/10/1978 118,481$ 14 Peter Berg FL Platinum 12/14/1981 50,900$ 15 Thomas Beatty IN Silver 10/25/1954 78,304$ 16 John O'Brian IN Gold 11/27/1970 38,809$ 17 Olav Pinolli CA Gold 10/1/1955 157,105$ 18 Jane VanZyck FL Platinum 6/27/1960 151,067$ 19 Tone Davidson NC Silver 11/19/1958 63,169$ 20 Fredrick Leffler SC Gold 12/21/1973 65,628$

SAP HANA — Vendors and Appliance Options

• The vendors that provide SAP HANA solutions include Cisco, Dell, IBM, Intel, HP, and Fujitsu as of Jan 2012

• SAP HANA generally consists of: The database and database clients HANA studio (P2 repository) Load controller and Sybase replication server The host agent and LM structure files Op. Sys. configuration, SAPCAR & SAP JVM The update manager for SAP HANA

Fujitsu

HP DL 580 G7 Dell R910

IBM System x3950 X5

Cisco UCS C460 M2

SAP HANA — Sizing the Application

• While sizing should be done for each customer individually to get accurate numbers, SAP has provided a t-shirt sizing model for customers who want to get some high-level sizing guidelines

Source: Christiane Stagge, SAP AG, Dec. 2011

To do accurate sizing you should contact your service partner and the hardware vendor you are working with and plan to spend some time getting the numbers right. In general, it is preferable to oversize the

system and thereby save time on potential future add-ons.

To do accurate sizing you should contact your service partner and the hardware vendor you are working with and plan to spend some time getting the numbers right. In general, it is preferable to oversize the

system and thereby save time on potential future add-ons.

SAP HANA — Test Drive

• You can see demos and do a test drive at: https://www.experiencesaphana.com

This site contains a lot of great information and you can also try the Information Composer and see recorded demos.

This site contains a lot of great information and you can also try the Information Composer and see recorded demos.

SAP HANA — Training and Certification Available

Source SAP AG, Jan 2012

As of Jan 2012, SAP has three e-learning courses and two

instructor led courses available.

You can also take the certification for SAP HANA

certified application associate. This has 80 exam questions.

As of Jan 2012, SAP has three e-learning courses and two

instructor led courses available.

You can also take the certification for SAP HANA

certified application associate. This has 80 exam questions.



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The SAP BusinessObjects Analysis OLAP Tools (Web and MS Office)

• We are now looking specifically at the OLAP tool previously known as ‘Voyager’ and ‘Pioneer’

• The tool is now called simply “Analysis”

*Voyager is now SAP BusinessObjects Analysis.

Source SAP AG,2011

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SAP BusinessObjects Analysis — Excel Interface

The SAP BusinessObjects Analysis tool exists in an MS Office edition and a Web edition

The MS Office edition supports both Excel and PowerPoint

Source SAP AG,2011

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SAP BusinessObjects Analysis — PowerPoint Interface

The tool has a query panel and can embed “live” BI analysis in the Microsoft Office applications Excel and PowerPoint.

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis — Some Office Requirements

100

• The panel allows for filtering, slice and dice, and navigation

• BEx query views and queries can be used (both BW 3.5 and 7.0), but your BW system has to be on version 7.x

• You need Microsoft Office 2003 or higher to be able to use SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, MS Office edition (min)You need 2007 version (minimum)

to use the PowerPoint functionality, but no GUI is required

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SAP BusinessObjects Analysis — Web Version

• The OLAP (Web edition) is great for analysts that wants to interact with the data and also add their own calculations, formatting, charts, and filtering

• The output from this analysis can be shared with others within a department or logical grouping of employees who need to see the information

This is not a basic reporting tool, but an analysis tool.

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis OLAP — Navigating the Basics

You can have up to four analysis items open on the same page

This is not a basic reporting tool, but an analysis tool with a very high degree of flexibility to create your

own analysis workspace.

You can have many analysis sheets open at the same time (3 is default)

You can use the task toolbar to toggle between Data

Properties

Outline

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis — Navigation

• The tool bars are consistently used in the whole Web application

• Through tabs and simple selection screens the users can easily access, select, and navigate the data

• Users can also add their own formulas and calculations in the Web interface and store the definitions

Most power users will find this intuitive and easy to learn…

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis

No Java is required on SAP NetWeaver BW.

Lean vs. Complete Deployment

• Typically SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, MS Office edition is installed in the SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise BI 4 environment By doing so, users do not need a SAP GUI and can share

workbooks, PowerPoints, and connection

• Smaller lean installations can skip the SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise environment and access SAP NetWeaver BW directly, but every users must have a SAP GUI installed on each machine and connections must be made for each client machine

The Components of BI 4.x Platform

The complete components of the BI landscape consist of a variety of software:

• Source systems• BI 4.x system• Portal system• Client software

- Microsoft Office - Web Browser - Other

Access to SAP BW Data — The BEx Query Designer

The core idea is to: “write once and publish many ways.” While you can access InfoProviders directly (no query), this

bypasses the BI analytic engine and most of the support from this component such as RKF, CKF, hierarchies, etc.

The BEx Query Designer is the starting point for almost all reporting in the SAP landscape.

This concept assures that data is the same in different reporting environments and that objects are reusable.

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The BEx Query Designer — Getting up to Speed

BEx queries are a fundamental access method for BI and SAP BusinessObjects. Understanding the query designer is a critical skillset.

Learning to use the BEx Query Designer is simple

Most developers should take the BW 305 course at SAP before starting their BI project



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SAP BusinessObjects Analysis vs. Other SAP Tools

• All SAP tools have strength and weaknesses. This is a subjective summary of each of the major tools

End User

Power User

Execu-tives

End User

Power User Author

IT Developer Graphing Navigation

External data

External web

services Simplicity OLAPAd-Hoc

querying

Web Application Designer

- - - - - -

Dashboard Designer (Xcelsius)

- - - -

Visual Composer - -

Interactive Analysis ad-hoc (WebI)

- - -

Analysis Edition for OLAP (web)

- -

Analysis MS edition

- -

Crystal Reports - - -

BO Explorer - - - - -

- Limited Support Some Support Good Support

Capabilities

ToolLong-term

Strategy

DevelopmentTarget User



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Resources

• SAP HANA Test-run https://www.experiencesaphana.com/welcome

• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Product Web site http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/large/

business-intelligence/data-exploration/accelerated/index.epx

• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Collaboration Workspace https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/community/sap/

sapbusinessobjectsexplorer

• SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator main page on SAP SDN http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/bwa

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7 Key Points to Take Home

• In-memory processing is the future and it is already at your doorstep

• You should have this on your long-time budget• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is a great tool for unstructured,

ad hoc analysis• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is a specialized tool, it does not

replace the other SAP BusinessObjects tools There is a place for OLAP, ad hoc, and formatted reports

• SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator is still here for SAP NetWeaver BW data (primarily)

• Installing and operating these platforms are not difficult, but require specialized skills

• Accelerated dashboards and BI analytics is a must-have for the next 18-36 months!

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Your Turn!

How to contact me:Dr. Berg

[email protected]

Disclaimer

SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, SAP NetWeaver®, Duet™®, PartnerEdge, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Wellesley Information Services is neither owned nor controlled by SAP.

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