50 Best SAP BW

Interview Questions
and Answers
SAP BW Interview questions, these questions would give you a broad picture to some
extent, the kind of questions asked who intend to prepare for the interview.

Introduction
SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) provides tools and functions that enable
organizations to achieve the optimization processes, enabling the company to react
quickly in line with the market needs. SAP BW provides you with high-performance
infrastructure that helps to interpret

data and identify target-oriented activities on the basis of analyzed data.

Here are the 50 Best SAP BW Interview

questions and answers.
Q1. What is the difference between the star schema
and the Extended star schema?
In the star schema, we have the fact tables and dimensions whereas in the extended
star schema we not only have a fact table but also text surrounded by each dimension
that is master data.

Uses generated numeric keys and aggregates in its own tables for faster access
Uses an external hierarchy
Supports multiple languages.
Contains master data common to all cubes
Supports slowly changing dimensions

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q2. How many dimensions are there in the cube?
There are max 16 dimensions, 3 are prede ned that is time, unit and request, 13 are
user-de ned dimensions. There should be a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 16
dimensions in a cube.

Q3. What is the transaction for the administrator

workbench?
Transaction RSA1. RSA11, RSA13 will also take you to a workbench or at the info cube
level.

Q4. What is ” Myself data mart”?

Feeding one info protocol with another info protocol. “Myself data mart” is feeding data
to itself. ALE is used to transfer data. It is created automatically.

Q5. What is an Aggregate?

Aggregates are mini cubes. We have a subset of cubes

It contains less amount of data.

Cube has 1 billion records. we can store less amount of data in the mini cube that works
faster to increase the performance

Q6. Can we restrict the key gures?

In Aggregate there are two ways to reduce the number of characters and not reduce
the key gures

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q7. What is the calculated key gure?
Calculated key gures are used to do complicated mathematical calculations,
percentage functions, when we are building the BEx reports, to calculate the quantity
and tax.

Q8. What is the enhancement user exit for BEx

reporting?
RSR00001

Q9. What is a characteristic variable?

You can have a dynamic input for the characteristic using characteristic variables if you
are developing a sales report for a given product then you will de ne the variable 0
material

Q10. What is a Condition?

If you want to lter any key gure or do a rank based analysis like top 10 customers
with more than 10 million sales, we use this feature.

Q11. What are the data types supported by

characters?
NUMC Numeric
CHAR (upto60) Character
DATS Date
TIMS Time

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q12. What are the types of attributes?
Display only these attributes are only for display and non-analysis
Navigational attributes these attributes behave like regular characteristic suppose
we have customer characteristics with country, navigational attribute you will be
able to analyse the data using customer and country.

Q13. What is meant by compounding?

Compounding is superior info object which must be combined to de ne an object.

Q14.What are the 10 decision points of Data

warehousing?
Identify the fact table
Identify the dimension table
De ne the attributes of the entities
Describe the granularity means how detailed you want the data to be
Specify the precalculated key gures
Identify slowly changing dimensions
Identify aggregates
How long is the data be kept
How often is the data extracted
From which system is the data to be extracted

Q15. What are the options available in the transfer

rule?
Transfer rules were used in an older version, now we use transformation

Assign an info object Assign a constant

ABAP routine

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q16. What is compression or collapse?
All regular request is saved to the F table.

When we compress the request ID, data is moved to E- table. E table is the compressed
table, this saves space.

If you are using noncumulative key gures in a cube, the cube should be compressed to
improve the performance.

Q17. To load the data from a le source, what is the

requirement in the BW system?
The Metadata must be available in BI in the form of a data source before the transfer.

Q18. In SAP BW is it possible to have multiple data

sources have only one info source?
Yes, It is possible to have multiple data sources having one info source.

Q19. How data is stored in PSA?

Data is stored in PSA Tables.

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q20. What is UD connect in SAP BW system? how
does it allow reporting in BI/BW system?
Universal data UD connect allows to access the relational and multidimensional data
source and transfer the data in the form of Flat data. When UD connect is used it
transfers multidimensional data into Flat format. UD uses JE connector to allow
reporting on SAP and NON SAP data Different BI Java connectors are available for
various drivers, protocols as resource adapters –

BI ODBO connector

BI JDBC connector

BI SAP Query connector

XMLA connector

Q21. What is the use of DB connection in SAP BW Data

acquisition?
DB connect is used to de ne other database connection in addition to default
connection and these connections are used to transfer data into BI/BW system from
tables or views

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

To connect an external database the prerequisites are

Tools
Source application knowledge
SQL Syntax in DATAbase
Database functions

Q22. While loading data from Flat les. when

separators are used inconsistently, How this will read
in BI load?
If separators are used inconsistently in a CSV le, the incorrect separator is read as a
character and both elds are merged into one eld and may be shortened as a result
the subsequent elds are no longer in the correct order.

Q23. What is the use of navigational attributes?

Navigational attributes is used to drill down in the report.

Q24. Explain how is the data ow in BW

Data ow in BW is from transactional system to analytical system. Data source on the
transactional system is to be copied to BW and attached to info source and update
respectively.

Q25. What is the partition of Infocube?

It is a method of dividing table for report optimization. SAP uses fact le partitioning to
improve performance. Table partitioning helps to run the report faster as data is stored
in relevant partition.

Q26. What is the use of Rollup?

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

This is used to load new Data Package into the Infocube Aggregates. If we do not
perform a rollup then new info cube data will not be available while reporting on the
aggregate.

Q27. What do you understand by Start and Update

routine?
The start routine is run for each Data package after the data has been written to the
PSA and before the transfer rules have been executed. It allows complex computations
for a key gure. It has no return value its purpose is to execute preliminary calculations
and to store them in Global data structure. The entire data package in the transfer
structure format is used as a parameter for the routine.

Update routines

They are de ned at the de ned object level.It is like the start routine, It is independent
of the data source, we can use this to de ne Global data.

Q28. Explain the difference between ODS, Infocube

and Multi provider?
ODS
They provide granular data, allow overwrite and data is in transparent tables, ideal for
drill-down and RRI.

Infocube
This is used for star schema, we can only append data, ideal for primary reporting.

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Multi-provider
It contains physical data and allow to access data from different info providers

Q29. To perform a union operation on info provider

which info provider is used?
Multi-provider is used to perform a union operation on info provider.

Q30.In SAP BW, what are the main areas?

Data warehouse
Analyzing and planning
Reporting
Broadcast publishing
Performance
security

Q31. When you de ne aggregates, what are the

available options?
H Hierarchy

F Fixed value

Blank ..None

These are the options available.

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

 50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q32. Can you convert an Infopackage group into a

Process Chain?
Yes, you can double click on the info package group, then click on process chain
Maintenance and type in the name and description.

Q33. Is it possible to convert standard info cube to real

time info cube?
To convert a standard Info cube to real-time info cube there are two options

Convert with loss of transactional data

Conversion with retention of transaction data.

Q34. Can you make an Info object as an Info provider?

Yes, when you want to report on characteristics or master data, you can make them as
an Info provider.

Q35.How do you create a Real-time Info cube in the

administrator workbench?
A real-time info cube can be created using the real-time indicator check box.

Q36. What are the non-cumulative key gures?

These are key gures that are not summarized unlike sales, example is headcount and
inventory amount. They are always shown in relation to a point in time, here we have a
reference with time.

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

 50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q37. What is an Infoset?

An Info set is an info provider giving data by joining data from different ODS and master
data.

Info sets can also be used to combine transactional data with master data. Combine the
cubes and master data. Info sets can combine data from your cube and attributes from
master data.

We Can use it for advanced improvement performance of reports

Q38. What performance improvement can we do for

reporting?

If the cube has large amount of data build aggregates on it,then we can create less
amount of data which can perform better.
OLAP cache, clear the Olap Cache
Pre calculated web templates can be adopted for easy calculations
Use small amount or result data as a starting point of any queries and do the drill
down
‘Avoid reporting on ODs for reporting use info set
If use exclusion in reporting(> <), The indices are not used.So avoid using exclusion
but use inclusion to improve performance
Use the read mode ‘H’ read when navigating and expanding hierarchy
Use compressions on Infocube since the E table is optimized for queries.
Create additional indexes
Run Database statistics often
Use secondary indexes on ODS active table.
Use RSRT transaction to look at the explain plan statement
If you are running a query on Info provider with non cumulative key gure then
suppress summary line items( totals)

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q39. What are the BEx options for characteristics like
F4 help for query de nition and execution?
This de nes how the data is displayed in the query de nition screen or when the
query is executed.Options are from the data displayed from masterdata,from
master data table from dimension data let us assume you have 100 products in
total in your material master,10 products available on cube and in BEx you display
a query for 2 products the following options will display different data .
Selective data will only display 2 products
Dimension data will display 10 products
From master data will display 100 products

Q40. What is the difference between amount

/quantity and number type key gures?
Amount /Quantity is always combined with units, for example, sales will be linked to
currency and inventory will be linked to quantity in units. In your design, if you don’t
need units then you should use number or integer for better performannce.

Q41. What is the use of the time distribution option in

the update rule?
This option is used to update data according to time for example if the source contains
calendar week and the target contains calendar day. The data get split into each
calendar day

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q42. What are the types of Key gure?
Amount

Quantity

Numeric

Integer

Date and time, amount, quantity should be followed with the unit.

Q43. How would you optimize dimensions?

Use as many dimensions as possible for performance improvement for example assume
that you have 100 products and 200 customers

Option 1: make one dimension for both, the size of the dimension will be 20000
(100×200)

Option 2: Make individual dimension one for the product(100 rows) and one for
customers (200 rows )the total number of rows in both dimensions will be 300

Obviously, option 2 is better

We are segregating the number of characteristic in two dimensions it would be better

to do the process.

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q44. What is a Line item or degenerate dimension?

If the size of the cube is the same as the size of the fact table you de ne that
dimension as a line item dimension for example if the characteristic in one dimension
are 100 and 100 key gure in Fact table that particular dimension is called Line item
dimension.

Only one characteristic is allowed per line dimension

Q45. What is marker in Non cumulative cubes?

Non-cumulative cubes which do not have a reference to time, Non-cumulative cubes

are stored using a marker for the current period. A marker is nothing but a pointer
referring to a time period for example an inventory cube marker may refer to the
inventory levels as of yesterday.

Q46. What is the use of a colon ‘:’ as an authorisation

value?

It enables queries that do not contain an authorization relevant object that have
been checked into the info cube
It allows the summary data to be displayed if the user does not have access to
detailed data.

Q47. What is the InfoObject catalog?

Info objects are created in Info object catalog. It is possible that an Info object can be
assigned to a different info catalog.

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q48. What all data source you have used to acquire
data inSAP BW system?
SAP Systems (SAP Applications /SAPECC)
Relational database (Oracle,SQLserver,etc)
Flat le (Excel,Notepad)
Multidimensional Source systems
(Universe using UDI connector)

Web services that transfer the data to BI by means of push.

Q49. What is the maximum number of key gures

and characteristics?
The maximum number of key gure is 233 and characteristics are 248.

Q50. How will you debug errors with SAP GUI?

To debug errors inSAP GUI you have to follow the path as mentioned

Run Bexanalyzer
Business Explorer menu item
Installation check
This will take you to an Excel sheet where clicking on the start button it will verify the
GUI installation and if you nd an error x it or reinstall it.

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

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exposed to only those at the higher levels with valid credentials, and the critical data
about an organization is always protected. Data Warehousing Workbench is the central
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50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Conclusion
SAP BW is a perfect start for your career as SAP has a huge market share in BI/BW. So
the people with skills in this area are always in high demand. SAP BW is a data
warehousing tool and you can create reports over the data for reporting purpose. You
can aggregate the data from different systems and show it in a single report. These
reports help decision-makers in organizations in taking major decisions.

SAP BW Consultant’s demand is very high on job portals.

Hope these 50 Best SAP BW Interview questions and answers help you for grabbing the
opportunity!

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

FAQs
Q1. Tell me something about yourself?

Rationale: This answer sets the tone for the interview, they want to know how you
react to uncomfortable questions. It’s open-ended and reveals what matters to you

Prepare properly for the interview, politely answer, exchange pleasantries,describe

about your work ef ciency,highest quali cation.

Q2 . Why should I hire you?

As a fresher I am a quick learner, till now I only have detailed theoretical knowledge,
This opportunity will certainly convert implementing them practically. Given the
opportunity, I will do my best.
If you are experienced explain to them your achievements and awards received and
projects with the client.

50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers

Q3. How do you feel working on weekends?

To increase your productivity you need to be ef cient. I will try to nish my work on
weekdays when I am mentally fresh.

Q4.What are the prerequisites before you go for an interview?

Keep an extra set of Resume hard copy

Have a folder with all things kept neatly
Prepare well before the interview for any company, know about their vision and
mission.
Be comfortable in your Formal attire.
Keep a good body language
Be presentable
Be relevant

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50 Best SAP BW Interview Questions and Answers