Difference between BODI and BW

dataservices sap-erp-bw
1

Can anybody explain what the difference are between BODI and BW?

jo1000 (BOB member since 2011-06-15)

2

BW is an entire DWH solution for the SAP market.
BODI is an ETL tool for all source and target systems/databases.

Werner Daehn :de: (BOB member since 2004-12-17)

3

Thanks for the reply. am I correct in thinking that DI can extract from any source system and populate any other system but you need a BI tool ( like BOE) to work with the data but if you use BW you have all the tools but you need a SAP ERP source?

sorry for the potentially vague questions but thanks for the explanation

jo1000 (BOB member since 2011-06-15)

4

Yes, that’s correct. You might want to add that BW uses DI sometime to load even more data in addition to the SAP data or do some heavy weight transformations. And quite often BOE is used on top of BW as it has more visualization options.

Werner Daehn :de: (BOB member since 2004-12-17)

5

So, if an organisation has SAP ERP, BW and BODI, which is the SAP-preferred architecture for datamart/cube creation around SAP data such as Sales, Costs etc?

Would it be BODI via the RapidMarts or BW? What are the main arguments for and against?

twofivepie :uk: (BOB member since 2008-10-16)

6

BW is the big solution, RapidMart the small one. If you have the big one, there is no need for the small one in my opinion.

Basically it is a build versus buy decision. If you want to do everything yourself but quickly, the RapidMart would suit you better, if you want a full fledged product with lots of Business Content BW would be the choice.

Werner Daehn :de: (BOB member since 2004-12-17)

7

Hi Werner,

What if you have an existing non SAP EDW solution in a BusinessObjects environment (ETL=BODI) and you add SAP as ERP source, and this constitutes 50% of the new EDW solution. Would you then:

  1. Use RapidMart to get the new source data and integrate it at stage level.

  2. Have 2 EDW solutions in the future, one then with BW and BI package on the top. Maybe also using bodi against bw ,or a separat DM, to meet the need for integration across.

  3. Keep the existing edw and do a new data capture with a mix of rapid mart, bi content (bw) and direct AI.

best regards

  • jem

jem (BOB member since 2011-08-18)

8

My goal would be to have one Data Warehouse. Which one, I don’t know.

So the first question would be, what value does using BW add. And at what costs. Maybe the result is, BW suits your needs much better and you migrate your existing DWH to BW. Using DS for loading and BO for the reporting?

Maybe the result is BW is too rigid and you are much better off given your excellent team resources building the required things yourself.

What I have seen quite often is that BW is used as a reporting solution for SAP data, but not what you and I would call a DWH.

Difficult.

Werner Daehn :de: (BOB member since 2004-12-17)

9

Thank’s Werner,

And yes, one data warehouse makes sense. And a few things to consider is whether you want to take the cost with BW competence also and integrate a large amount of heterogeneous data, files and databases, into BW …

br,

-jem

jem (BOB member since 2011-08-18)

10

Hi,

Is it possible for Data Services version 4.x to read directly from SAP Infocubes ?..called the SAP EDW layer. And if so, do you then define a cube as a datastore ?

Br,

-jem

jem (BOB member since 2011-08-18)

11

You use the OpenHub interface for that.

https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/Reading+SAP+BW

Werner Daehn :de: (BOB member since 2004-12-17)