Enterprise Data Warehousing
with SAP BW – An Overview
White Paper Version 2.0
August 18th, 2003
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.
ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSING WITH SAP BW – AN OVERVIEW V2.0
Table of Contents
ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSING WITH SAP BW – AN OVERVIEW ....................................... 1
1 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 SUPPORTED SOFTWARE VERSIONS ........................................................................................... 1
1.2 THIS WHITE PAPER .................................................................................................................. 1
2 AIMS OF THE WHITE PAPER ..................................................................................................... 1
3 MOTIVATION................................................................................................................................ 2
3.1 THE MARKET............................................................................................................................ 2
3.2 WHY DO YOU NEED A CORPORATE BW STRATEGY?................................................................. 3
4 ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSING WITH SAP BW.............................................................. 5
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 CENTRAL BW APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT ...................................................................... 38
7 DATA AND DATA MODEL INTEGRATION .............................................................................. 40
7.1 CHALLENGES POSED BY DATA INTEGRATION............................................................................ 40
7.2 DATA MODEL INTEGRATION..................................................................................................... 42
7.3 THE ROLE OF SAP MASTER DATA MANAGEMENTS (MDM) ...................................................... 43
8 SUMMARY.................................................................................................................................. 45
TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS ………………………………………………………………………………43
2003 SAP AG
AND SAP AMERICA, INC. CONTENT
BW Enterprise Data Warehousing – Overview V2.0
1 Introduction
1.1 Supported Software Versions
This document is relevant for BW Versions 3.x.
1.2 This White Paper
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.
2 Aims of the White Paper
This White Paper offers an overview of the implementation of SAP Business Information Warehouse
(SAP BW) from a corporate perspective.
It considers the following issues:
• Architectural aspects: data management, data models, topologies etc. on a conceptual level
• Integration aspects: supporting corporate strategy as far as the harmonization of master
data is concerned
• Solution development: the efficient, consistent development of BW-based applications.
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.
2003 SAP AG AND SAP AMERICA, INC. 1
ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSING WITH SAP BW – AN OVERVIEW 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:
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
Evolution of SAP BW
Strategic Corporate BW
Strategic Corporate BW
Implementations
Implementations
Isolated BW
Isolated BW
Implementations
Implementations
BW1
BW2
BW3
BWn
BW1
BW2
BWn
Global
BW
Others
‘Headquarter’
‘Headquarter’
Reporting
Reporting
Scenario
Scenario
‘Local’
BW
‘Local’
BW
‘Local’
BW
Global
BW
Architected
Architected
BW Landscape
BW Landscape
Scenario
Scenario
Enterprise
BW
BW Enterprise
BW Enterprise
Data
Data
Warehouse
Warehouse
Scenario
Scenario
Issues:
Synergy
Integration
Consistency
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.
2003 SAP AG
AND SAP AMERICA, INC. 2
ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSING WITH SAP BW – AN OVERVIEW V2.0
3.2 Why Do You Need A Corporate BW Strategy?
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:
SAP AG 2003, Enterprise Data Warehousing based on SAP BW, J. Haupt 4
SAP AG 2001 BW - The Open Business Intelligence Platform/ J. Haupt / 4
Redundancy and Data Mart (Solution) Focus
Real World
Information
Requirements
(grouped to Scopes)
U V W ....
Schema-Modeling
InfoCubes/
ODS-Objects
Extraction
Sources
Business Rules
Transformation
BW Application Project Team
Successful Data Warehousing means ‘Controlled Redundancy’ !
Successful Data Warehousing means ‘Controlled Redundancy’ !
Successful Data Warehousing means ‘Controlled Redundancy’ !
Impacts of non-existing
corporate BW guidelines:
• Redundant Data
• Redundant Extraction
• Redundant Transformation
• Redundant Business Rules
• Redundant Masterdata
•......
Illustration 2: Redundancy and Solution focus
2003 SAP AG
AND SAP AMERICA, INC. 3
评论0