Reporting against SAP BI / BW

system · September 8, 2010, 8:10am

I may soon be entering the world of reporting against SAP BI / BW, and have been looking for documentation that gives an overview of the options for getting at the data for end user reporting.

I’m struggling to find something anything up to date that is not either a detailed instruction manual or just Marketing blurb. SAP changing their product names every few months does not help either.

Can anyone point me in the right direction.

Thanks…

anorak (BOB member since 2002-09-13)

system · September 8, 2010, 9:25am

Hi,

Check the various SAP BusinessObjects BI Solution Architecture - System Landscapes here:

That can give you an overview. I hope

Marek Chladny (BOB member since 2003-11-27)

system · September 9, 2010, 6:44pm

Hi Anorak,

I found these documents to be very informative:

and

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/b0320722-741c-2c10-afab-93b5c0fc7e96?QuickLink=events&overridelayout=true

-Mike

mikefraser (BOB member since 2008-05-12)

system · September 13, 2010, 8:50am

Marek / Mike,

Thanks for this. I have now filled my head with a load of SAP BW related information, most of which I understand However, there are a few specific points which confuse me:

The recommendation is to base Universes on underlying BEX queries rather than InfoCubes etc., as there is more flexibility. This I understand, but surely there is a substantial performance overhead in basing a Universe on a BEX query rather than a materialised table?
Several of the documents state that the simpler a Webi query is, the faster the data will be returned. This obviously makes sense when youre talking about a query based upon a materialised table, but if its based upon an underlying BEX query, I would have thought that the Webi query design would have had little impact. i.e. Your Webi query might only include 3 Objects, and the BEX query returns 100 Objects, so isnt the complex BEX query run in full every time?
My understanding is that an OLAP Universe can only include a single BEX query. If this is true, then, in my view, theyre not really Universes at all. i.e. they are not designed to answer a myriad of unknown ad hoc questions, but are specifically designed to support a suite of known reports / questions. An OLAP Universe is not comparable to one based upon a database.
How difficult is MDX to learn? Am I right to assume that I could get up to speed with it very quickly?

All comments gratefully received; my understanding of SAP BW may well be substantially flawed!

anorak (BOB member since 2002-09-13)

system · November 11, 2010, 9:21am

anorak:

Marek / Mike,

Thanks for this. I have now filled my head with a load of SAP BW related information, most of which I understand However, there are a few specific points which confuse me:

The recommendation is to base Universes on underlying BEX queries rather than InfoCubes etc., as there is more flexibility. This I understand, but surely there is a substantial performance overhead in basing a Universe on a BEX query rather than a materialised table?

Several of the documents state that the simpler a Webi query is, the faster the data will be returned. This obviously makes sense when youre talking about a query based upon a materialised table, but if its based upon an underlying BEX query, I would have thought that the Webi query design would have had little impact. i.e. Your Webi query might only include 3 Objects, and the BEX query returns 100 Objects, so isnt the complex BEX query run in full every time?

My understanding is that an OLAP Universe can only include a single BEX query. If this is true, then, in my view, theyre not really Universes at all. i.e. they are not designed to answer a myriad of unknown ad hoc questions, but are specifically designed to support a suite of known reports / questions. An OLAP Universe is not comparable to one based upon a database.

How difficult is MDX to learn? Am I right to assume that I could get up to speed with it very quickly?

All comments gratefully received; my understanding of SAP BW may well be substantially flawed!

Has anyone got any answers to my questions?

anorak (BOB member since 2002-09-13)

MarkP · November 11, 2010, 10:28am

anorak:

Marek / Mike,

Thanks for this. I have now filled my head with a load of SAP BW related information, most of which I understand However, there are a few specific points which confuse me:

The recommendation is to base Universes on underlying BEX queries rather than InfoCubes etc., as there is more flexibility. This I understand, but surely there is a substantial performance overhead in basing a Universe on a BEX query rather than a materialised table?

Several of the documents state that the simpler a Webi query is, the faster the data will be returned. This obviously makes sense when youre talking about a query based upon a materialised table, but if its based upon an underlying BEX query, I would have thought that the Webi query design would have had little impact. i.e. Your Webi query might only include 3 Objects, and the BEX query returns 100 Objects, so isnt the complex BEX query run in full every time?

My understanding is that an OLAP Universe can only include a single BEX query. If this is true, then, in my view, theyre not really Universes at all. i.e. they are not designed to answer a myriad of unknown ad hoc questions, but are specifically designed to support a suite of known reports / questions. An OLAP Universe is not comparable to one based upon a database.

How difficult is MDX to learn? Am I right to assume that I could get up to speed with it very quickly?

All comments gratefully received; my understanding of SAP BW may well be substantially flawed!

Hello.

Just starting down this route myself.

A few pointers for you:
Always include a measure/key figure in your query.

MDX isn’t complicated - its basic constructs are similar to SQL once you understand the principals of what you’re doing. Don’t forget that the big plus is that you’re not using PL/SQL, just select statements so loops and the like don’t need to be relearned.

We have a SAP BW contractor in who is developing the infocubes - they seem to be able to address more information requirements than Bex queries, cutting down the number of universes. We reckon we’ll be able to get about 100 reports out of six such cubes.

I’ll let you know more as I figure it out.

system · November 12, 2010, 2:46pm

Mark P:

anorak:

Marek / Mike,

Thanks for this. I have now filled my head with a load of SAP BW related information, most of which I understand However, there are a few specific points which confuse me:

The recommendation is to base Universes on underlying BEX queries rather than InfoCubes etc., as there is more flexibility. This I understand, but surely there is a substantial performance overhead in basing a Universe on a BEX query rather than a materialised table?

Several of the documents state that the simpler a Webi query is, the faster the data will be returned. This obviously makes sense when youre talking about a query based upon a materialised table, but if its based upon an underlying BEX query, I would have thought that the Webi query design would have had little impact. i.e. Your Webi query might only include 3 Objects, and the BEX query returns 100 Objects, so isnt the complex BEX query run in full every time?

My understanding is that an OLAP Universe can only include a single BEX query. If this is true, then, in my view, theyre not really Universes at all. i.e. they are not designed to answer a myriad of unknown ad hoc questions, but are specifically designed to support a suite of known reports / questions. An OLAP Universe is not comparable to one based upon a database.

How difficult is MDX to learn? Am I right to assume that I could get up to speed with it very quickly?

All comments gratefully received; my understanding of SAP BW may well be substantially flawed!

Hello.

Just starting down this route myself.

A few pointers for you:
Always include a measure/key figure in your query.

MDX isn’t complicated - its basic constructs are similar to SQL once you understand the principals of what you’re doing. Don’t forget that the big plus is that you’re not using PL/SQL, just select statements so loops and the like don’t need to be relearned.

We have a SAP BW contractor in who is developing the infocubes - they seem to be able to address more information requirements than Bex queries, cutting down the number of universes. We reckon we’ll be able to get about 100 reports out of six such cubes.

I’ll let you know more as I figure it out.

Mark,

Thanks for this. I’m more at a planning / ‘thinking about it’ stage, rather than actually developing anything at present. However, I’m interested to read that your SAP BW contractor is developing Universes against Infocubes rather than BEX queries, which is totally contradictory to all of the advice in the SAP documentation! (although I don’t fully understand why they advocate the latter approach)

anorak (BOB member since 2002-09-13)

MarkP · November 15, 2010, 12:39pm

I’ll be developing the universes and reports, it was the SAP contractor who is doing the cube builds. I’m taking a steer from him on this; he seems to know what he’s doing with SAP BW and I’m new to it, so happy to follow his lead while experimenting a little myself.

There are other bits of SAP advice that we’ve figured out as unhelpful, such as setting measures to be delegated. Can’t see users accepting having to refresh a report every time they want to change something!

system · August 9, 2011, 3:23pm

Hi,

I was about to open a new post on SAP BI / BW and came across. I recently started working with SAP BW and designing universe. This is quite interesting though I missing the context and alias . Being a Business Objects developer working with BO for years and years, this is different experience for me to work with BEX queries.

Trying to explore more on SAP BI / BW and make myself more comfort with the complete suite of SAP BI / BW . However, I am blank at the moment and not know where to start.

It would be great help if anyone has an idea on the learning path for SAP BI / BW and appreciated the help.

Regards,
Siva.M

looksmee (BOB member since 2006-02-08)

system · August 10, 2011, 7:57pm

Hi Siva, what version of BusinessObjects are you going to be using?

substring (BOB member since 2004-01-16)

system · August 17, 2011, 8:41am

Hi S,

We using XI 3.1 SP3 and SAP BI 7.0

Regards,
Siva.M

looksmee (BOB member since 2006-02-08)

system · August 17, 2011, 12:51pm

First of all, you will need to install the SAP Integration Kit in order to access BW data. Since I missed out SP3 because of my job change, I don’t know if it is fixed in SP3, but I know the previous versions have issues.

substring (BOB member since 2004-01-16)