SAP BW Introduction.

Editor's Notes

• #4: During all business activities, companies create data. In all departments of the company,employees at all levels use this data as a basis for making decisions. Eg HR, Sales, Purchasing, Inventory, Operational, Quality, Finance, Marketing. Business Intelligence(BI) prepares the large set of enterprise data. By analyzing the data using BItools, you can gain insights that support the decision-making process within your company.
• #6: Example of SCI BNT vessels.Liner departments – Agents which bring business to the companyHR department – Track Payroll , leaves Purchasing department – Keep track of inventories, materials, vendors, etc
• #8: Relevant business data from SAP systems and all data sources can be integrated, transformed, and consolidated in Sap BI. Consolidate: the consolidation of data from multiple sources into a centralized system.Data integration involves combining data residing in different sources and providing users with a unified view of these data.A data warehouse (DW or DWH) is a database used for reporting and data analysis. It is a central repository of data. Stores current & historic data.A Data Warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant and nonvolatile collection of data in order to support management decisions,“ Bill Inmon (1996).
• #9: In 1997, the first version of SAP product for reporting, analysis and data warehousing was launched and the product was termed as "Business Warehouse Information System".Current Version SAP BI 7.3 support package 8
• #11: ETL is not a one time process as new data is added to warehouse periodically . ETL is integral, ongoing, and recurring part of the warehouse. ETL Creates a logical and physical separation between the source system and data warehouse.
• #12: SAP Source Systems: Connects SAP systems to SAP NetWeaver BI through the BI Service API (S-API) DB connect (Database connect) used to extract data from the database management systems Ex (Danaos & Afsys in SCI)UD Connect (Universal data Connect) converts and transfers multidimensional data as flat data. This technology runs on the J2EE Engine and supports the J2EE Connector Architecture.File: SAP supports automatic import of files in CSV or ASCII format for flat files.Web Services: A Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) service is used to read XML data and to store it in a the BI server. In many cases, SAP Exchange Infrastructure (XI) is leveraged when loading XML-based data. Staging BAPIs (Staging Business Application Programming Interfaces)Staging BAPIs are open interfaces from which third party tools can extract data from older systems. The data transfer can be triggered by a request from the SAP NetWeaver BI system or by a third party tool.
• #14: Read about1) Standard data acquisitions2) Real time data acquisition using DAEMON3) Direct access using virtual infoproviders
• #16: DataSources for transferring data from SAP source systems are defined in the source system; the relevant information of the DataSources is copied to the BI system by replicationWhen you activate the DataSource, the system generates a PSA table in the entry layer of BI. You can then load data into the PSA.
• #17: Request data is stored in the transfer structure format in transparent, in BI. PSA also allows you to check and change the data before the update into data targets
• #19: Browsing the Dimension tablesAccess the Customer dimension table and select all records with City = “New York”Access the Material Dimension and select all records with material Group =“ ABC”Access the Time Dimension Table and select all records with Year =“2011”As a result of these browsing activities, there are a number of key values(Customer ID, Material ID , Time Code ID) from each dimension table is affectedAccessing the fact table – From all the key values evaluated, select all the records in the fact table that have these values in common in the fact table record key.Characteristic values are stored in dimension tables.