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Page 1 of 2 Part 1 - BI Front End Options in NW2004s
There was a time when most BW implementations used third-party tools to report on the data stored in BW. This included software from companies like Cognos and Business Objects. With each new release of BW, its front-end capabilities have significantly improved such that by now the use of third-party software is most often superfluous. (In some instances such as with Crystal Reports, SAP has also acquired the software provider and integrated the software into the BW suite.)
With the latest release as part of the NetWeaver 2004s product suite, BW is now called NetWeaver BI. Greatly increased front-end capabilities can be found in the wider range of functionality in existing tools but also in a multitude of new tools. Moreover, some tools have become obsolete and have been replaced with entirely new solutions (for example, the Reporting Agent has been replaced by the Information Broadcaster). Other tools have been merged (e.g. the BI patterns wizard has been integrated into the Web Application Designer) or this is planned for the future (e.g. the Web Application Designer will be integrated into the Visual Composer).
The goal of this posting is to bring some clarity into this topic and to provide an overview of available tools. In the first part, we will look at the tools available for reporting and analysis and explore in particular less well-known front-end tools and technologies such as the Reporting Designer, the Analysis Process Designer and the Visual Composer.
In the second part, we will pay specific attention to front-end technologies that allow you to get data from user input into BW, i.e. without an automated ETL process. The most common usage scenario for this is planning and forecasting with SEM-BPS being the standard technology for this purpose. With NetWeaver BI, Integrated Planning has emerged as a new technology, which unlike BPS is directly integrated in the business warehouse. Apart from this, there are also other scenarios where direct data input might be of interest. We will look at some of the options you can use.
Tools & Technologies for Analysis and Reporting
The following table provides an overview of common as well as some less well-known front-end technologies that can be used to analyse and report on data from BW.
|
Tool / Technology |
Area of Application |
Customization Possibilities |
|
Query Designer |
* Create queries on data in BW |
* Filters: constant,
* Variables: manual input, customer exit, authorization
* Hide/Show Key Figures
* Cell Editor
* Include Virtual Characteristics and Key Figures |
|
Web Application Designer |
* Create Web pages containing data from one or multiple queries or query views
* Export to Excel, PDF, CSV possible * Integration into the Enterprise portal (layouts can be determined with portal schemes) |
* HTML
* Web commands via URLs or JavaScript
* Custom CSS style sheets for corporate-specific layouts
* ABAP Interface classes to customize the layout of Web items |
|
BI Pattern Wizard |
* Standard Web templates based on user categories (e.g. information consumer) that can easily be configured
* Allows to maintain corporate-wide standards for Web templates |
* Can be customized in Web Application Designer |
|
BEx Analyzer |
* Excel-based display of query data
* Easy access to variables, filters
* Easy to switch between tabular and graphical data display |
* VBA for custom functionality |
|
Web Analyzer |
* Web application for data analysis
* Allows execution of ad hoc analyses on the Web
* BEx Web Analyzer as an iView in the portal |
* Pushbuttons
* Links
* Navigation pane
* Context menu |
|
Report Designer |
* Pixel-accurate layout of reports |
|
|
Information Broadcaster |
* Scheduled execution of reports
* Allows broadcasting of reports via email or other media |
|
|
BEx Mobile Intelligence |
* Access Web applications on the move using:
* PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) with Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 Operating System and Pocket Internet Explorer
* WAP-enabled mobile telephone
* i-Mode-enabled mobile telephone
* Mobile device with an EPOC32 operating system |
* Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
* Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
* Wireless Markup Language (WML)
* Compact Hypertext Markup Language (cHTML) |
|
Visual Composer |
* Enables business analysts to easily create applications for the Enterprise Portal
* Business analyst tool with a broader scope than pure BI context
* Easy embedding of existing BI content or querying diverse data sources: SAP and non-SAP (including OLAP and relational), connections, which are configured in SAP EP via the BI Java Connectors |
|
|
Analysis Process Designer |
* Data Mining Tool |
* Decision Trees
* Clustering
* Association Analysis
* Scoring
* Weighted Score Tables
* ABC Classification |
|
BSP / Web Dynpro |
* Completely custom built Web interfaces to display and manipulate BI data and data from other sources (e.g. OLTP data)
* Use of BAPI / MDX for data access |
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Tools & Technologies for Direct Data Entry
There are a number of situations when there is the need to input data directly in the data warehouse system:
On Planning and forecasting direct input of key values permit the constructing different scenarios and versions. When the source data comes from unstructured documents (e.g. spreadsheets) the effort to restructure the same for flat files load can be too high. There is also the case where data volume is too low to warrant a system (only needed for reporting, and the alternative would be a custom-built system or off-the shelf software that then needs to integrate with BW).
There may exist security concerns or political issues (e.g. in joint ventures) when integrating with other systems. The transactional source system may not allow changing or restructuring data.
For all the reasons mentioned above, SAP provides tools for direct data entry.
The following table compares the options for direct data entry.
This table compares different user interface technologies for direct data input. All of these need to access the BW using BAPIs.
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