The Future of SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence in the Light of the NetWeaver BI & Business Objects Roadmap

The Future of SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence in the Light of the NetWeaver BI & Business Objects Roadmap

What is SAP’s strategic direction for Enterprise, Formatted Reporting?
1. SAP's direction for enterprise, formatted reporting is Crystal Reports (CR), the de-facto industry standard for enterprise reporting. Crystal Reports is included as part of the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite, a premium offering. Crystal Reports is already integrated with SAP BW and SAP ERP today using advanced connectivity methods to access virtually all SAP data objects needed for enterprise reporting. BEx Report Designer will remain in the NetWeaver BW portfolio for lightweight reporting on NetWeaver BW data but beyond Release 7.0 EhP1, no further enhancements of the Report Designer are planned.To help SAP customers who have already invested in the BEx Report Designer transition to the full version of Crystal Reports,, SAP will provide a ‘base' version of Crystal Reports entitled ‘Crystal Reports for NetWeaver BW. 2. The base version will be restricted to SAP NetWeaver BW queries and views and limited in term of productive reports
3. Crystal Report for SAP NetWeaver BW will be available as part of the NetWeaver license to all NetWeaver customers will planned availability in 1H 2010. .

What is SAP’s strategic direction for OLAP Analysis?
1. SAP is developing a new Olap analysis tool for advanced analysis capabilities on SAP NW BW. The codename for this is Pioneer. Pioneer will combine Voyager's intuitive user interface with the powerful OLAP capabilities of the BEx Analyzer OLAP tools.
2. It will be available as a web client as well as an Excel client with tight integration between the two.
3. Pioneer will be a new state-of-the art OLAP client based on Ajax (Web 2.0) technology using advanced connectivity as the universal access layer for SAP & Non-SAP multidimensional data
4. Pioneer's combination of high end analysis capabilities, with ease-of-use and elegant visualization control & personalization features will reduce the need for specialized design-time tools and enable end users to make simple design & UI changes directly during data analysis.
5. Pioneer will be included as part of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence suite with planned availability in 1H 2010.
6. BEx Analyzer and BEx Web Analyzer will remain as the base offering for NetWeaver BW offering, and will continue to be shipped with NetWeaver. However, feature extensions for BEx Analyzer & BEx Web Analyzer will be limited.

What is SAP’s strategic direction for Dashboards?
Xcelsius will continue to be the tool of choice for the creation of standalone dashboards and as the visual content creation tool for the desktop or portal page. For the creation of Composite dashboards that combine multiple BI content types, Xcelsius should be used in conjunction with SAP BusinessObjects Dashboard Builder - for non-SAP Netweaver customers or customers that have deployed the InfoView portal - ; or with SAP Composition Environment (Web Page Composer, Visual Composer) for those customers that have deployed the NetWeaver platform.
Some of the enhancements planned for Xcelsius future releases include:- Enhancements to encompass functionality from BEx Web Application Designer, in particular data binding functionality with SAP NW BW. - Integration with Pioneer. It will be possible to build Xcelsius dashboards seamlessly on Pioneer analyses. - Improved data access to directly use BEx queries and query views with BI Consumer services just like the NetWeaver BW BEx tools do in NW BW 7.0.
Xcelsius is available now as a premium offering and is part of the SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite. Beyond NW release 7.0 EhP1 only very limited enhancements to BEx Web Application Designer are planned. BEx WAD will remain in the NW offering as a base solution. SAP and Busines Object will provide a service-based offering to move from SAP NW BI to the Busines Object premium offering.

What is SAP’s strategic direction for Ad-hoc Query and Reporting?
1. Web Intelligence is the flagship product for web-based ad-hoc query and reporting.
2. The focus of Web Intelligence lies in the creation of light-weight reports in an ad hoc web environment.
3. At present, Ad-hoc Query and Reporting is not covered extensively by the SAP NW BW tools. WebI clearly extends the value of SAP NW BW by addressing business user needs for answering business questions in an agile and easy to use way.

What is SAP's strategic direction for Master Data Management?
SAP NW MDM and SAP BusinesObjects Data Services (Data Quality) are naturally complementary products. MDM provides a modeling environment, a central repository, generic data cleansing and matching capabilities, synchronization and workflow capabilities. SAP BusinesObjects Data Quality provides first class address cleansing and fuzzy matching of customer data that greatly enhances those of MDM. Today, there is already integration of the two products. Going forward, SAP intends to release an integrated version of SAP BusinesObject Data Quality with MDM for enhanced cleansing and matching of addresses and customer data. In a typical workflow, customers will be able to start a Data Qualtiy initiative locally with address cleansing against a CRM system, and move up towards central management, cleansing and distribution across the complete system landscape. At the same time, SAP will continue to offer SAP NW MDM and SAP BusinesObjects Data Services.

What is the future of the BEx Query Designer?
The BEx Query Designer is not affected by the roadmap. It remains a central tool for SAP NetWeaver BW.

What is SAP’s strategic direction for composite applications?
1. CE is and will continue to be SAP's flagship product for building composite applications, which can include both BI information and transactional/operational steps.
2. VC is an integral part of SAP NetWeaver's Composition Environment (CE).
3. SAP continues to invest in CE and CE will also be enhanced with premium functionality from SAP BusinessObjects.

What is SAP’s strategic direction for the data warehouse?
SAP NetWeaver BW continues to be a strategic focus and investment area for SAP. BW provides a complete data warehouse solution including a sophisticated modeling environment, industrial strengths for data provisioning and dissemination, and an enterprise-ready solution for handling business intelligence. SAP NetWeaver BW thus offers an efficient approach for dealing with BI, giving enterprises the opportunity to standadrize on one technology that runs their transactional and information environment.

What is SAP's strategic direction the SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator?
SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator continues to be a strategic focus for SAP. SAP BW Accelerator ensures high-performance access to SAP NetWeaver BW data that directly benefits the SAP BusinesObject BI tools. As part of this strategic focus, SAP has leveraged the power of the SAP BW Accelerator by combining it with an intuitve BI front which has been released as SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.

Does SAP plan to discontinue support for products in the current BEx portfolio?
SAP will continue to offer support for the SAP BEx BI tools based on customer's existing maintenance policy with SAP. However, all current and future innovation and development in the BI front-end is focused on the SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions while the SAP BI tools within NetWeaver are no longer the strategic direction.
What is the strategic direction for Visual Composer?
SAP encourages customers to use Visual Composer and will continue to provide support for the application. Over the past years, SAP has invested in reshaping Visual Composer to be an integral part of SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment (CE). The key achievements include: support for clustered services, componentization support, support for lifecycle management of modeling artifacts, model debugging and support for the SAP standard UI , Web Dynpro.With Visual Composer enhancements coming later in 2009, SAP will complete the Visual Composer road map as laid out during TechEd '08. This includes integration capabilities into SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management (BPM). This means that Visual Composer is a mature and fully supported capability by SAP. Besides Visual Composer, customers can of course continue to use the capabilities of Web Dynpro Java to model UIs directly there.
What is the strategic directoin for BEx Web Application Designer?
Web Application Designer (WAD) is no longer the strategic direction in terms of Dashboarding and Data Visualization but will continue to be supported under SAP's maintenance policy Xcelsius is the clear direction and recommended product for dashboards and sophisticated visual presentations: However, the ability in WAD to build web templates for web application design and advanced analysis will be provided by Pioneer going forward.

What is SAP and BOBJ’s future offering for Information Broadcasting?
Information Broadcasting is no longer the strategic focus for information delivery and publishing. The SAP BusinessObjects BI suite offers a mature and robust suite of information delivery capabilities that customers can take advantage of today. However, for those SAP NetWeaver BW customers who want to continue to use Information Broadcasting, SAP will continue to support the product under SAP's maintenance policy.

Does SAP recommend to upgrade an existing BW installation to SAP NetWeaver 7.0?
1. SAP definitely recommends to upgrade your existing BW 3.x systems to SAP NetWeaver BW 7.0.
2. Although the SAP BusinesObjects BI tools and platform can run in conjunction with SAP NetWeaver '04 BW (SAP BW 3.5), SAP NetWeaver 7.0 BW provides significant advantages in particular in the area of the BIWserver.
3. With this release, you can take advantage of the significant performance benefits and minimized maintenance of SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator.
4. The new security approach for analysis authorizations guarantees easy and transparent definition of multidimensional access rights.
5. Important options also complement the data warehousing layer, including write-optimized DataStore object for very fast staging layer, new transformation concept and data flow design (DTP).
6. Real-time BI is facilitated by new methods to continuously request data from SAP sources and web service data (real-time data acquisition).
7. In the information lifecycle management, SAP NetWeaver 7.0 offers interfaces to Near-Line Storage systems that enable to export data from the operational database into NLS partitions under control of the particular NLS vendor soution. Several vendors are already certified. From the Query perspective the existence of NLS partitions for basic cubes or data store objects is totally transparent.If a Bex Query is marked with the additional flag 'Read NLS as well' the data of external NLS partitions is directly accessable without the need of reloading.NLS partitions of an InfoProvider are read-only and therefore typically contain older data that is not of interest for the entire Business User community. The NLS concept finaly reduces TCO for database management and also keeps old data - that nobody wants to look at - away from the BW Accelerator. NLS therefore has to be seen as complementary to the BWA approach.In order to establish NLS as a SAP NetWeaver BW Data Warehouse corner stone, in the BI 7.0 release NLS is supported for basis cubes and DataStore Objects (from 7.01 for write optimized DS Objects). From the BW release 7.1 on MultiProviders will be supported as well in order to strengthen SAP NetWeaver's BW OLAP and Data Mart extension strategy through NLS as well.

8. Beyond these highlights, many more usability and performance improvements have been made, including new administration and monitoring facilities (such as the Administration Cockpit), and further modelling options.
9. In general, we recommend the NetWeaver BW 7.0 upgrade because planned future investments into an even more seamless integration of SAP BusinesObject tools with NetWeaver BW (for example plans around direct connectivity of Xcelsius or Pioneer directly on top of NetWeaver BW queries) will be based on NetWeaver BW 7.0 as the source system. Therefore you can expect that integration of SAP BusinesObject tools on top of NW BW will be even tighter with BI 7.0 than with older BW releases.
10. For users of the NetWeaver Composition Environment, especially Visual Composer 7.1, an upgrade to NetWeaver BI 7.0 is also highly recommended, as Composition Environment & Visual Composer 7.1 do not connect to NW BI releases prior to NetWeaver BI 7.0. (Accessing 3.x NW BI is possible in theory via XMLA but is not recommended by SAP due to the many functional restrictions).
11. Whereas the technical upgrade to NW BI 7.0 is generally recommended (see reasons above) active usage of the BEx 7.0 tools depends on the specific customer requirements and is not always necessary. However, we do not recommend using BEx Report Designer, as SAP can already offer a far superior Reporting tool with Crystal Reports. BEx Web Application Designer should be used if a specific project requires it, but keep in mind that there will be no future development for BEx Web Application Designer and the BEx Web Runtime. We recommend evaluating NetWeaver Composition Environment 7.1.1 as well as tools such as Xcelsius and WebIntelligence. BEx Analyzer can be used in its 3.5 or 7.0 version. There will be migration support for standard 3.5 & 7.0 workbooks that do not include Visual Basic coding.

Does SAP provide a transition path from the Bex Analyzer to current or future SAP BusinessObjects BI tools?
In the short-term, SAP recommends that customers look to the full SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite to meet all new and future BI requirements. However, for those customers who see value in the BEx Analyzer and want to continue to use the tool to meet advanced analysis needs, SAP recommends the continued use of the BEx Analyzer. However, for the mid to long term timeframe, SAP is developing the next generation BEx Analyzer tool called Pioneer that will be available in mid 2010. Pioneer will provide a superset of capabilities from SAP BEx Analyzer (Excel), SAP BEx Analyzer (Web), and SAP BusinessObjects Voyager. End users will find an easy transition in moving from the BEx Analyzer to Pioneer as Pioneer will allow the consumption of most BEx workbooks and the re-use of the same BEx Queries that the BEx Analyzer uses today.

How do the SAP BusinessObjects BI products integrate with the SAP NetWeaver Portal
Reports, Analyses & Dashboards built with the SAP BusinesObject BI technology can be integrated into the SAP NetWeaver Portal on an iView level. SAP is currently working on even tighter integration. Crystal Reports is already tightly integrated with NW Portal´s Knowledge Management services.

When should I use SAP BusinessObjects Rapid Marts instead of SAP NW Data Warehouse?
1. If your long-term company strategy is going clearly towards an enterprise-wide Data Warehouse approach, you can get started right away using SAP NetWeaver BW Data Warehouse.
2. If you are planning a project with limited scope in terms of either size and reach (for example a specific BI solution for a business department) or of time (either as a quick win or intermediate solution) you should consider an approach using SAP BusinessObjects Rapid Marts. You can then extend to a full-blown Enterprise Data warehouse later on by bringing in an SAP NetWeaver BI Data Warehouse.

Do I need an additional server for the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform?
1. Yes, an additional server is required for the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform (Business Objects Enterprise (BOE)
2. The SAP BusinessObjects platform provides the infrastructure for most of the client tools, such as the universe repository, scheduling services, caching services, etc.
3. BOE supports various platforms, including Linux, Microsoft Windows, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX and HP-UX.From a DI&DQ perspective the amount of additional resources for the Data Services Server is reviewable.

Will the SAP BusinesObjects BI platform and SAP NetWeaver be integrated into one single platform?
SAP NetWeaver and SAP BusinessObjects BI serve different IT and business user needs and both have unique platform requirements. For example historical SAP NetWeaver and BOBJ customers potentially run data warehouse strategies based on distinct platforms. Therefore it is not planned for the foreseeable future that the complete SAP BusinessObjects BI platform and the SAP NetWeaver platform will run on the same platform. However SAP is working on a platform rationalization strategy that will reduce the overall adminstration when running both with the aim of lowering overall cost of ownership. Examples include the sharing of such services as server management, administration console, user store, authorizations, job scheduling, lifecycle management, content delivery etc.

Can the the SAP BusinesObject BI platform be deployed on an SAP NetWeaver system with usage type AS Java?
No, as this is not a J2EE application, but a mix of Java and C++. SAP is evaluating if the SAP BusinesObject BI platform/server can be shipped as a "Standalone engine" (as it is the case for BWA and Livecache), interoperating with the SAP NetWeaver system at low TCO.

Real Time Data Acquisition

Definition
Definition: Real-time data acquisition supports operational reporting and analysis by allowing the user to send data to the delta queue or PSA table in real-time and to pass this data to InfoProviders in the operational DataStore layer at regular short intervals using a daemon.
The data is stored in the BI system persistently.
Purpose
Real-time data acquisition supports tactical decision-making.
It also supports operational reporting by allowing you to send data to the delta queue or PSA table in real-time.
Use Daemon to transfer Datastore objects to the operational datastore layer at frequent regular intervals.
Prerequisites
1: The Datasource has to support real-time data acquisition.
1:1 BI Content DataSources have to be delivered with the property for supporting real-time data acquisition.
1:2 The real time enabler/indicator has to be set in the generic delta settings for generic datasources.
Process Flow
1. Data is loaded into BI at frequent, regular intervals
1:1 then posted to the DataStore objects that are available for operational reporting.
1:2 Data is available for reporting as soon as it has been successfully posted to the datastore obtject and activated.
Web Service
A: you use this service to write the data from the source into the PSA.
B: Only an infopackage (full upload) is required to determine specific parameters for real-time data acquisition.
Using Service API
A: Data from the SAP source system can be loaded into the PSA using an Infopackage created specifically for this purpose.
B: You have to simulate the initialization of the delta process for the datasource beforehand.
Challenges
1.
1: You can only use real-time data acquisition to fill DataStore objects.
1.1. Data is first transferred into the PSA and then into the DataStore object.\
1.2. The DataStore object cannot be used as the source for a further real-time data transfer to another DataStore object.
1.3. Master Data cannot be transferred to the BI System with Real-Time data acquisition
1.4. Navigation attributes of the characteristics could no longer be used in aggregates.
aggregates cannot react to real-time updates since the change run in the RDA process cannot be triggered automatically for the loaded data.
2. Datasources that are used for real-time data acquisition cannot be used in the delta process for standard data transfer.
2:1 A data transfer with RDA and a scheduled data transfer cannot be executed simultaneously in the Delta process for a DataSource because there may be only one entry in the delta queue for each datasource and target system.
2:2 A data is updated from the PSA to a DataStore object a DTP for Real-time data acquisition, and to another datastore object with a standard DTP.
3. If you load data into a datastore object with real time data acquisition, you cannot load data into this datastore object simultaneously with an additional DTP.
1a: This is because there can only be one open activation request in a datastore object.
1b: Real-time data acquisition keeps an activation request open parallel to each DTP request.
1c: A further data transfer process cannot load into the same datastore object as long as an activation request is open.
4. Depending on requirements you can nevertheless merge the data that you load with a real-time data acquisition in an infoprovider with additional datasources.
4:1 The datastore object in which you load data with real time data acquisition can be used in a multiprovider or infoset.
4:2 Using a process chain you can restrict the time in which you load data into the datastore object with real time data acquisition. You can load into the same datastore object with a different data transfer process during the remainder of the time.

Daemon
Definition: Background process that processes the infopackages and data transfer processes assigned to it at regular intervals.
Use: The Daemon controls and monitors the transfer process for real time data acquisition.
1. If you are transferring data from an SAP source system, the Daemon starts the transfer of data into the PSA using an infopackage.
2. It controls the status of the data transfer.
3. It starts the further processing of data into the datastore object using a data transfer process.
4. It closes and opens requests when threshold values are reached.
5. It triggers the subsequent process chains.

Function: When you extract data the daemon works on the basis of the list of Datasources assigned to it in the infopackage.
1. extracts the data from the source systems
2. transfers it to the PSA tables and datastore objects.
3. It informs the service API in the source system when the data for the target system has been successfully updated.
4. When the PSA request has been successfully closed and a new delta request has been opened, the updated data is deleted from the delta queue of the source system.
1. When you further update data from the PSA to the Datasource objects, the daemon works on the basis of the list of sources (datasources) and targets (DataStore objects) assigned to it in the data transfer processes.
1:1 It transfers data to the datastore object.
1:2 The data is directly activated in standard datastore objects and written to the change log.

Operating Mode
1. 1: The daemon runs in a permanent background job and switches to idle mode, during which the background job continues execution, between extraction processes.
a. If you are using API to transfer data, the RFC connection to the source system remains open.
i. This implies that a permanent RFC connection is required between each source system and BI for real time data acquisition using the service API.
b. To prevent the system from using too much main memory and to avoid keeping the RFC connection open for too long, the daemon stops independently on a regular basis and reschedules itself.
i. As a result the main memory can be released and a new RFC connection is opened.
A: This happens without having to close the request for real-time data acquisition.

Error Handling
1: The daemon writes each successfully executed step to a control table.
a. : If the extraction or update is terminated the daemon restarts itself and continues the process from the point at which it was terminated.
i. : It repeats the entire substep with the granularity of a data package.
(IE) If execution of the DTP is terminated the daemon gets the new data from the source and loads, it into the infoprovider together with the data packages that terminated previously.

DTP Process
1: The system synchronizes infopackage requests ( PSA request), data transfer process requests (DTP) and change log requests in the standard datastore object and these requests remain open across several load processes.
a. When a daemon is started, it opens a PSA request in the first load process.
b. The system opens a DTP request and change log request when the PSA request contains data. c. The daemon uses the threshold values defined in the infopackage to determine when to close a request.
i. The data transfer process copies these settings from the infopackage.
ii. When a PSA request is closed, the related DTP and change log requests in the same load process are closed too.

d. D: When the requests are closed, new requests are opened automatically the next time daemon accesses data and the data transfer for real time data acquisition continues with these new requests.
e. E: If you are transferring data from an SAP source system, data is automatically deleted from the delta queue when the new PSA request is opened.
i. You can only update data from the datastore object to further infoprovider (an infocube), for example, if the DTP and change loge, request is closed.
f. In the monitor for real time data acquisition you can close PSA and DTP requests manually.