SAP Building and Running a Data Warehouse BI

The structure and running of a data warehouse in general, and an enterprise data warehouse in particular, is highly complex and cannot be tackled without the support of adequate tools. Business Intelligence in SAP NetWeaver offers an integrated solution that represents the entire data warehouse process from extraction, to the data warehouse architecture, to analysis and reporting.

Data Warehousing as an Element of Business Intelligence in SAP NetWeaver Provides:

● Data staging:

○ Extraction, transformation, loading (ETL) of data: All data sources can be accessed by means of extraction in the background (via JDBC, file, XMLA, ODBO, ..). Extractors are delivered for SAP applications or can be generated. The standard applications of other providers can be accessed by integrating the ETL tools of non-SAP providers.

○ Real-time data warehousing: Event-near availability of data in the operational data store can be realized using real-time data acquisition technology.

○ Remote data access: Data can be accessed without being saved in the BI system using VirtualProviders (see below).

● Modeling a layer architecture: InfoCubes support the modeling of star schemas (with one large fact table in the center and several surrounding dimension tables) in the architected data mart layer. VirtualProviders allow you to access source data directly. InfoCubes can be combined in virtual star schemas (MultiProvider) using Shared or Conformed Dimensions (master data tables).

The persistent staging area, data warehouse layer and operational data store are built from flat stores, the DataStore objects.

InfoObjects (characteristics and key figures) form the basis of the InfoCube or DataStore object description. You ensure vertical consistency by using the same InfoObjects in the various layers and thus avoid the interface problems that can arise if you use heterogeneous tools to build the layers.

● Transformation: Transformation rules serve to clean up and consolidate data.

● Modeling the data flow: Data transfer processes serve to transfer the data to the different stores. You use process chains to schedule the data processing and observe it using a monitor.

● Staging data for analysis: You can define queries based on any InfoProvider using the Business Explorer. BEx queries form the basis of the applications that are available to users in the portal or based on Microsoft Excel.