Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Enterprise Data Warehousing With Sap BW - Overview
Enterprise Data Warehousing With Sap BW - Overview
Enterprise Data Warehousing With Sap BW - Overview
juergen.haupt@sap.com
SAP (SAP AG and SAP America, Inc.) assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in these materials. These materials are provided as is without a warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. SAP shall not be liable for damages of any kind including without limitation direct, special, indirect, or consequential damages that may result from the use of these materials. SAP does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information, text, graphics, links or other items contained within these materials. SAP has no control over the information that you may access through the use of hot links contained in these materials and does not endorse your use of third party web pages nor provide any warranty whatsoever relating to third party web pages.
V2.0
Table of Contents
ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSING WITH SAP BW AN OVERVIEW ....................................... 1 1 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 1.2 2 3 SUPPORTED SOFTWARE VERSIONS ........................................................................................... 1 THIS WHITE PAPER .................................................................................................................. 1
AIMS OF THE WHITE PAPER ..................................................................................................... 1 MOTIVATION ................................................................................................................................ 2 3.1 3.2 THE MARKET ............................................................................................................................ 2 WHY DO YOU NEED A CORPORATE BW STRATEGY?................................................................. 3
4 5
ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSING WITH SAP BW.............................................................. 5 BW ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE........................................................................................... 6 5.1 ASPECTS OF A DATA WAREHOUSE ARCHITECTURE .................................................................... 6 5.2 DATA STORE ARCHITECTURE - BW DATA LAYER ..................................................................... 10 5.2.1 BW Architected Data Mart Layer .................................................................................. 11 5.2.2 BW Data Warehouse Layer .......................................................................................... 14 5.2.3 BW Extraction and Staging........................................................................................... 19 5.2.4 BW Support for Operational / Real Time Reporting ..................................................... 20 5.3 DATA ARCHITECTURE - BW DATA MODEL ............................................................................... 24 5.3.1 Operative Data Models and Data Warehouse Data Model .......................................... 24 5.3.2 The BW Data Model ..................................................................................................... 25 5.4 TOPOLOGIES BW LANDSCAPES ........................................................................................... 29 5.4.1 Consistency in a distributed BW Landscape ................................................................ 30 5.4.2 BW Landscapes und Technical Parameters ................................................................ 31 5.4.3 Inside-Out Landscape Architecture - BW as Central Enterprise Data Warehouse...... 32 5.4.4 Outside-In Landscape Architecture - Decentralized BW Data Warehouses................ 34
6 7
CENTRAL BW APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT ...................................................................... 38 DATA AND DATA MODEL INTEGRATION .............................................................................. 40 7.1 7.2 7.3 CHALLENGES POSED BY DATA INTEGRATION............................................................................ 40 DATA MODEL INTEGRATION ..................................................................................................... 42 THE ROLE OF SAP MASTER DATA MANAGEMENTS (MDM) ...................................................... 43
SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................. 45
TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS 43
CONTENT
V2.0
1 Introduction
1.1 Supported Software Versions
1.2
The subject of this document is very complex. Therefore, we do not claim to cover all the various aspects of this topic, or to offer an exhaustive description of the areas discussed. To see updated versions of this document, visit the SAP Service Marketplace regularly.
Enterprises differ in terms of their organization and their business. This implies that there can be no standard solution for a corporate BW implementation strategy. However there are basic truths that always have to be considered, and patterns that arise within specific business types. Above all, this White Paper will describe fundamental aspects of a corporate-wide BW implementation. This White Paper is no substitute for a business-specific consultation on BW architecture. This White Paper focuses on the general principles involved in a strategic corporate BW implementation and not on exceptions to this. It follows the 80-20 rule. The White Paper avoids details wherever possible, so as not to lose sight of the overall context. Knowledge about BW is useful to read this White Paper but no prerequisite for it.
V2.0
3 Motivation
3.1 The Market
At the time of writing, there are more than 6000 BW installations within the market. The fundamental advantages of BW have led more and more customers to center their corporate data warehousing strategy around BW. Customers frequently stress the end-to-end conception of the BW in this context. In comparison to fragmented technologies, the integrated metadata concept, from data integration right through to analysis, leads to lower total costs for the project overall. The BW has moved away from isolated instances to incorporate an architecturally-based view. In this way, the BW has come to set new standards of quality in terms of its positioning within an enterprise. The following graphic shows various rudiments of this strategy:
Evolution of SAP BW
Isolated BW Implementations
BW1 BW2
BW1
Global BW
BWn
Others
BW2
Local
BW BW BW
BW3
Local
Global BW
SAP AG 2003, Enterprise Data Warehousing based on SAP BW, J. Haupt 3 SAP AG 2001 BW - The Open Business Intelligence Platform/ J. Haupt / 3
Local
Enterprise BW
Spoke BW Spoke BW
Illustration 1: Evolution of the SAP BW This leads to one main motivation for this paper. It aims to support the evolution-process of BW offering an overview of the essential criteria for corporate architected BW implementations for customers and consultants. On the other hand, there is still a large number of customers who do not have a corporate data warehouse strategy and who have implemented BW in a more isolated and restricted way. Thus, another motive is the hope of making people aware of the prospects and benefits of a business-wide, architecturally-based BW implementation.
V2.0
3.2
There are many training guides, enhanced documentations, ASAP Accelerators and How to Guides available that offer support to BW users. These documents all focus on offering support with concrete challenges that arise during a project. This is obviously important and necessary. However there are also short-comings as projects are always part of an incremental BW implementation: From project to project, project goals are modeled and realized in BW. These goals are typically reporting- and analysis-driven, and the overall success of the project is then often measured by decision-makers in terms of how far these reporting and analysis demands are met. As such, the focus is at solution level or using a data warehouse term the focus is at data mart level. Less attention is accorded to decisive factors for the mid- and long-term success of an investment in BW: Redundancy has to be controlled in all areas! Business-wide guidelines rarely exist regarding: The persistent BW data stores and their design The BW Data Warehouse data model and its management The BW landscape (the role of BW instances and which conditions are valid for new instances). Aspects of data integration are often neglected too, and applications in various organization units that feature a BW are developed asynchronously and redundantly. Altogether, from an overall business perspective, you are left with a costly and less efficient procedure that delivers neither consistent, reliable, nor integrated information. The following graphic clarifies the solution-focus issues: