Purpose
The reporting, analysis, and interpretation
of business data is of central importance to a company in guaranteeing its
competitive edge, optimizing processes, and enabling it to react quickly and in
line with the market. As a core component of SAP NetWeaver, the SAP
Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) provides data
warehousing functionality, a business intelligence platform, and a suite of
business intelligence tools that enable businesses to attain these goals.
Relevant business information from productive SAP applications and all external
data sources can be integrated, transformed, and consolidated in SAP BW with
the toolset provided. SAP BW provides flexible reporting and analysis tools to
support you in evaluating and interpreting data, as well as facilitating its
distribution. Businesses are able to make well-founded decisions and determine
target-orientated activities on the basis of this analysis.
The following graphic shows how the SAP BW
concept is structured. Data Warehousing, BI Platform and BI Suite represent the
core areas of SAP BW.
Integration
The following graphic shows where SAP BW is
positioned within SAP NetWeaver. Furthermore, those subareas that incorporate
SAP BW are listed. These are described in detail below.
Integration with Other SAP NetWeaver Components
BEx Information Broadcasting allows you to
publish precalculated documents or Online links containing Business
Intelligence content to SAP Enterprise Portal (SAP EP). The portal role Business
Explorer illustrates the various options that are available to you
when working with content from SAP BW in the Enterprise Portal. For
more information, see Information Broadcasting.
You are able to integrate content from SAP BW
in SAP EP using the BEx Broadcaster, the BEx Web Application Designer, the BEx
Query Designer, KM Content, the SAP Role Upload or the Portal Content Studio.
For more information, see Integration into the SAP Enterprise Portal. For
an overview of the ways in which BI content can be integrated into the
Enterprise Portal, see Overview: Ways of Integrating and Displaying BW content in
the Portal.
The documents and metadata created in SAP BW
(metadata documentation in particular) can be integrated using the repository
manager in Knowledge Management in SAP Enterprise Portal. The BW Metadata
Repository Manager is used within BEx Information Broadcasting. For more
information, see 
BW Document Repository Manager and BW Metadata Repository
Manager.
BW Document Repository Manager and BW Metadata Repository
Manager.
You can send data from SAP and non-SAP
sources to SAP BW using SAP Exchange Infrastructure (SAP XI). In SAP BW the
data is placed in the delta queue where it is available for further integration
and consolidation. Data transfer using SAP XI is SOAP-based. For more
information, see Data Transfer Using SAP XI.
Integration with SAP BI Content Add-On
With SAP BI Content, SAP delivers
pre-configured role and task-based information models and reporting scenarios
for SAP BW that are based on consistent metadata. SAP BI Business
Content offers selected roles in a company the information they need to carry
out their tasks. The information models delivered cover all business areas and
integrate content from almost all SAP and selected external applications.
SAP BI Content is delivered as an add-on to
SAP BW.
Features
SAP BW Subareas
Area
|
Description
|
Data
warehousing in SAP BW represents the integration, transformation,
consolidation, cleanup, and storage of data. It also
incorporates the extraction of data for analysis
and
interpretation.The
data warehousing process includes data modeling, data extraction, and administration
of the data warehouse management processes.The central tool for data warehousing tasks in
SAP BW is the Administrator Workbench.
|
|
The Business Intelligence platform serves as the
technological infrastructure and offers various
analytical technologies and functions. These include the OLAP processor, the
Metadata Repository, Business Planning and
Simulation, special analysis processes such as Data Mining, and the Reporting Agent.
|
|
The
SAP BW Business Intelligence Suite, the Business Explorer (BEx), provides flexible
reporting and analysis tools for strategic analyses, operational reporting, and
decision-making support within a business. These tools include query,
reporting, and analysis functions. As an employee with
access authorization you can evaluate past
or current data on various levels of detail, and from different perspectives,
not only
on the Web but also in MS Excel.
You
can use BEx Information Broadcasting to distribute Business Intelligence
content from
SAP BW by e-mail either as precalculated documents with past data, or as
links
with
live data. You can also publish it to the Enterprise Portal.
The Business Explorer allows a broad spectrum of
users access to information in the SAP BW using the Enterprise Portal, the Intranet
(Web application design) or mobile technologies.
|
|
-BI Java SDK
With the BI Java SDK you can create analytical applications with which you access both multidimensional (Online Analytical Processing or OLAP) and tabular (relational) data. You can also edit and display this data. BI Java Connectors, a group of four JCA-enabled (J2EE Connector Architecture) resource adapters, implement the BI Java SDK APIs and allow you to connect applications that you have created with the SDK to various data sources.
-Open Analysis
Interfaces
The Open Analysis Interfaces make various interfaces available for connecting front-end tools from third-party providers.
-Web Design API
The Web design API and
table interface allows you to realize highly individual scenarios and demanding
applications with customer-defined interface elements.
|
The following graphic shows how subareas and their functions are integrated into the SAP BW architecture:
Referrence:
