Red Bull's Migration of a BW to a BW-on-HANA System
In his TECHED / SAPPHIRE NOW keynote, Vishal had invited Red Bull to show the first BW-on-HANA system running at a customer site. While one can argue that this effort has been realized with some of the best experts that are available it has not been rocket science and is an excellent showcase of how things can work out if properly planned and implemented. This blog documents the process. Nov. 23, 2011
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5
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6881
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3590 (Stats updated nightly)
How BW-on-HANA Combines With Native HANA
There is a lot of wild guessing on how to combine the native HANA tools and assets - like HANA modeler or SLT* - within a BW-based environment. Initially, one might assume a conflict between a completey managed table schema - as imposed by BW - and an arbitray table schema - as created by SLT, Data Services or any other tool. In this blog, I will indicate how such schemas can happily coexist and consequently complement each other in a BW-on-HANA environment. Nov. 1, 2011
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5
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2017
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6839 (Stats updated nightly)
Using Excel on HANA
From the very beginning, HANA has been shipped with an OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) driver that allows ODBO enabled clients to connect and analyze analytic views in the HANA repository. Those analytic views are cubes that have been modeled with the HANA modeler (which is part of HANA studio).This blog provides some background and points to a nice demo video that has been created by our partners from Simba. Oct. 18, 2011
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9
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8464 (Stats updated nightly)
HANA and BW 7.30 - Part 2
Over the past few months, I've presented on this topic to many customers and colleagues. As there seems to be such a high demand, I've decided to convert the underlying slide presentation into two blogs, with the first focusing on the motivation, scenarios and use cases while the second looks at the combination of HANA and BW from a technical angle. Before I continue with the second blog please note that the usual disclaimer applies. Jun. 24, 2011
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7
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1044
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9092 (Stats updated nightly)
HANA and BW 7.30 - Part 1
Over the past few months, I've presented on this topic to many customers and colleagues in and outside Walldorf. As there seems to be such a high demand, I've decided to convert the underlying slide presentation into two blogs, with the first focusing on the motivation, scenarios and use cases while the second looks at the combination of HANA and BW from a technical angle. Before I start with the first blog please note that the usual disclaimer applies. Everything here has been announced at some SAP event. So I'm focusing on bringing pieces into context rather than revealing something that has not been known before. Jun. 23, 2011
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9
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1299
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8275 (Stats updated nightly)
Infocubes and Data Store Objects ... and HANA
In recent weeks, I've frequently heard or read comments like "cubes will no longer be relevant in HANA" or "flat structures like data store objects (DSOs) will be sufficient". There is no binary (=simple) answer to this, like a clear YES or NO. This blog intends to shed some light into those assumptions. You are encouraged to challenge
my thoughts or to add your point of view. May. 15, 2011
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17
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7381
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3412 (Stats updated nightly)
Is Data like Timber?
For quite some time, I'm playing with this idea of comparing data with some raw material (like timber) and information with some product made from that raw material (like furniture). This helps to suggest (a) that data and information are related but not the same thing and (b) that there is processing inbetween similar to converting wood to furniture. With this blog, I like to throw this comparison out into the public, also to hopefully trigger a good discussion that either identifies weaknesses of this comparison or develops the idea even further. Apr. 8, 2011
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10
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14678
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1277 (Stats updated nightly)
Comment on "Is SAP deliberately locking out competitors with BI4?"
This is a comment that I've posted in the context of John Appleby's blog on Bluefin's website asking the question
"Is SAP deliberately locking out competitors with BI4?". It describes the thoughts and reasoning behind the interoperability between BW and the Business Objects tools via SQL, MDX and BICS. Mar. 9, 2011
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2
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14020
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1411 (Stats updated nightly)
SAP BW 7.3 upgrade in less than 3 hours
This is simply the result of small Twitter search query on a successful upgrade to SAP BW 7.3 at Bluefin. See below for the related log of tweets. Dec. 28, 2010
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7
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7593
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3335 (Stats updated nightly)
The BW - HANA Relationship
With the announcement of HANA, some customers, analysts and others have raised the question on how HANA relates to BW with a few of them even adding their own, home made answer in the sense that they speculate that HANA would succeed BW. In this blog, I like to throw in some food for thought on this. Oct. 15, 2010
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35
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128
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21720 (Stats updated nightly)
SAP BW 7.3 beta is available
Last week, SAP
BW 7.3 has been released in a beta version. This is just the upbeat
for the launch of the next big version of BW which is planned for later
this year. This will provide major new features to the existing, more
than 20000 active BW installations which make it one of the most widely
adopted SAP products. I like to take this opportunity to highlight a
few focus areas that shape this new version and that lay out the future
direction. Jul. 28, 2010
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10
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659
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10974 (Stats updated nightly)
Performance Study: Web Intelligence on top of SAP BW
This is a kind of sequel to the blogs
I've posted earlier this year. A long-term SAP customer provided
real-world example that shows the performance improvements that have
been achieved through the joint efforts of the WebI, ODA and BW
development teams. Nov. 11, 2009
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7
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5337
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4195 (Stats updated nightly)
Comparing SAP BW and an Oracle DW
This blog looks at the situation of a customer who migrated his hand-crafted Oracle data warehouse to SAP BW. It is a tangible, real-world case that contradicts many of the alleged pros and cons of the differing approaches to data warehousing. Beside TCO, the new SQL interface on SAP BW allows even for a surprising 1:1 comparison regarding query performance. Apr. 14, 2009
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4
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3115
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5559 (Stats updated nightly)
Faster Universe-Based Access To BW via MDX
Business Objects's semantic layer can expose cubes as OLAP universes to client tools like WebIntelligence (or WebI for short). This applies to OLAP servers like Microsoft's Analysis Services or Hyperion's Essbase but also to SAP BW. There is a component called OLAP Data Access (ODA) that retrieves data via MDX - a query language for multi-dimensional data sources. In the case of BW, the ODA component connects to BW's OLAP BAPI. This connection has now been optimized and streamlined in order to improve the interoperability. This blog gives some insight in what has been done and what the effects are. It complements the blog on the two options to access BW data via universes. Mar. 16, 2009
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11
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363
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14231 (Stats updated nightly)
SQL Access to BW via Data Federator
In another
blog, a number of improvements have been discussed
regarding universe-based access to BW infoproviders. One major new
option is that it is now possible to access BW infoproviders via SQL.
Technically, this has been achieved via Business Objects's Data
Federator (DF) that includes SQL engine running on top of
federated
data sources - one of those can be a BW 7.01 system. This blog provides
some
more insights into that approach. Mar. 6, 2009
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13
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246
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16501 (Stats updated nightly)
Better Performance For Universe-Based Access To BW
This blog introduces two new pieces of development shipping with BW 7.01 SPS3 that significantly improve the performance when using Business Objects WebIntelligence on top of NW BW. Mar. 6, 2009
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9
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145
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20643 (Stats updated nightly)
Native Excel 2007 On Top Of Netweaver BI 7.0
Using Excel in the context of BW is nothing new: (1) there is BEx Analyzer and (2) there is the native pivot tables inside Excel that connect via OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) to BW. While (1) has mostly been the option of choice, option (2) has tended to be sidelined. The latter is significantly changed with Excel 2007 and NW BI 7.0. Jan. 29, 2008
Comments:
37
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56
Page Views:
30426 (Stats updated nightly)
Understanding Query Performance in NW BI and BIA
Query performance has always been a hot topic but with the advent of
the BI
accelerator (BIA) it has become scalding hot. Customers,
consultants and
colleagues report performance improvements well beyond factor 100 but
also of factors like 4.7 and even 1. People are sometimes puzzled by
such numbers: why is it so different? This blog attempts to make you
understand what's going on behind the scenes. Jan. 24, 2007
Comments:
15
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1027
Page Views:
9161 (Stats updated nightly)
NetWeaver BI (a.k.a. BW) and Advanced DB Functionality (Part 3)
Part 3: In this final part of the weblog serie, I will
discuss the possible use of grouping sets and loaders in the context of
NW BI. As in the case of materialized views (see part 2), both
constitute attractive features that could be beneficial for NW BI in
theory.
However, performance benefits are either not existent or so minimal
that it is currently not worthwhile to seriously consider them. But
let's look at some more details. Dec. 10, 2005
Comments:
0
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7465
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3375 (Stats updated nightly)
NetWeaver BI (a.k.a. BW) and Advanced DB Functionality (Part 2)
Competitors, analysts and customers frequently
confront SAP with a
statement that NW BI (a.k.a. BW) could provide better performance if it
simply employed some of the performance-enhancing features that have
been added to the mainstream RDBMS software over the last few release
cycles. They often point to materialized views (or summary tables), new
index types (e.g. bitmaps or domain vectors), aggregation operators
(like grouping sets, rollup), loaders, etc. In this 2nd part
of a serie of 3 weblogs I'd
like to briefly discuss the frequently raised questions whether
materialized view (I'll use this popular term; this does not mean that
what I say refers to Oracle only; it also applies to DB2's automatic
summary tables or SQL-server's view indexes) would not be a good
alternative or substitute to NW BI aggregates. Nov. 15, 2005
Comments:
0
Rank:
5300
Page Views:
4210 (Stats updated nightly)
NetWeaver BI (a.k.a. BW) and Advanced DB Functionality (Part 1)
Part 1: Competitors, analysts and customers frequently
confront SAP with a
statement that NW BI (a.k.a. BW) could provide better performance if it
simply employed some of the performance-enhancing features that have
been added to the mainstream RDBMS software over the last few release
cycles. They often point to materialized views (or summary tables), new
index types (e.g. bitmaps or domain vectors), aggregation operators
(like grouping sets, rollup), loaders, etc. In a serie of 3 weblogs I'd
like to briefly tackle the argument cited above and proof it to be
wrong. Nov. 2, 2005
Comments:
6
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2663
Page Views:
5996 (Stats updated nightly)
Comparing the BI Accelerator (f.k.a. HPA) to Traditional RDBMS Technology
In this weblog, I'd like to quickly touch a question that
many might have in mind when looking at the new BI accelerator technology:
why the heck is this so much faster in comparison to
traditional RDBMS products? Can't the latter be similarly
fast if there is sufficient main memory, parallelism and maybe even column-oriented and compressed
structures like bitmap indexes? Oct. 17, 2005
Comments:
5
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5042
Page Views:
4326 (Stats updated nightly)
Pushing BI To A New Frontier
At the recent TechEds in San Diego and Munich, a new High Performance Business Intelligence capability was demonstrated that allowed interactive slicing and dicing with response times in seconds on an infocube with one billion rows. This new engine (to be shipped with the next release of the SAP NetWeaver platform) combines BI and advanced search engine technologies, such as sophisticated compression, vertical and horizontal data partitioning and parallel in-memory processing. Oct. 21, 2004
Comments:
0
Rank:
10222
Page Views:
2448 (Stats updated nightly)
