Better Program Management: SAP BW/4HANA-Its Next-Generation Data Warehouse
SAP BW/4HANA is SAP’s next-generation data warehouse solution. It is a new product from SAP (not a legal successor of any existing SAP Business Warehouse solution), built entirely on one of the most advanced in-memory platforms.
SAP BW/4HANA Benefits
● Simplicity: SAP BW/4HANA enables businesses to get up and running with their data warehouse environment sooner than they would be able to using traditional technologies.
● Openness: With an open SQL interface, BW/4HANA lets businesses manage data in SAP applications and SQL systems. BW/4HANA enables users to access data independent of data model
o Also, access the front-end systems for the overall EDW environment using SQL.
● High Performance: Businesses using BW/4HANA can leverage huge amounts of data in real time for competitive advantage. The HANA in-memory platform allows for 10x faster data processing for operations and 10-100x faster query performance for analytics.
SAP BW/4HANA KEY FEATURES
● In-memory Data Warehousing – SAP BW/4HANA brings real-time performance to the EDW with in-memory data warehouse processing. In-memory processing not only provides a performance boost of 10-1000X over standard disk-access database environments, it vastly simplifies the structure of the data warehouse and the amount of work required to make it functional.
An in-memory data warehouse running on HANA requires no performance-boosting objects to be built or maintained. It does not require aggregates or roll-up processes. It needs fewer indexes.
● Simplified Data Structures and Flows SAP BW/4HANA accelerates and reduces the complexity of designing, implementing, and modifying a data warehouse environment via simplified data structures data flows. The number of modeling object types has been reduced from the standard ten types used by SAP Business Warehouse to only 4.
● Native SQL Access - SAP BW/4HANA enables users to access SAP HANA logic and data via SQL queries. Users can run SQL queries to generate calculated HANA views of data. Automatically generating SAP HANA views enables users to deploy SQL logic on top of generated views.
● Dynamic Tiering - SAP’s dynamic tiering provides the ability to store data either in memory or on disk in a columnar format via the high-performance SAP IQ analytics relational database. This enables users to assign hot (active) data to the in-memory environment while handling warm (less critical) data in IQ. Cooler data (data that is less likely to be accessed) can be moved to near-line storage (NLS).
● Smart Data Access SAP HANA Smart Data Access is a virtualization technique that enables businesses to merge data in heterogeneous EDW landscapes and to access remote data without having to replicate the data to the SAP HANA database first.
● Advanced Analytics SAP BW/4HANA supports advanced analytics via the wide variety of analytical functions already available in the HANA Application Function Library (AFL) or via custom HANA procedures. Core analytics capabilities available via AFL include:
o Predictive
o Text Analysis
o Data Mining
o Machine Learning
SAP BW/4HANA also supports analytical procedures written in Rscript, the scripting front-end of the R analytical programming language.
In the scope of the use of a SAP Business Warehouse, past experience has shown that there have frequently been different approaches in companies that have led to the development of a parallel infrastructure. These tend to be managed by specific departments rather than IT. Solutions such as QlikView, SQL Server, Oracle and TM1 are widely used. These fulfil their tasks in the appropriate situation very well - otherwise they wouldn't be so popular.
The "Mixed Scenario" in detail
In retrospect, this can be seen as the intended purpose of SAP BW as a data warehouse, which "doesn't really support" certain adaptations. In most cases this is also an advantage: it means that on the one hand it is possible to prevent problems with the incorrect types of data and to ensure a consistent state of the data, while on the other hand it is also possible to monitor technically-relevant KPIs at a central location. With its "BW Workspaces" SAP took the first step to provide users with the freedom to upload data in SAP BW themselves, and to connect it with the existing data models. With the "Mixed Scenario" introduced under SAP BW on HANA, SAP has gone even further: here, the Enterprise Data Warehouse in the form of SAP BW is connected with a flexible SQL-oriented level which in many cases enables rapid response times, even with continuously changing departmental requirements.
The SAP BW does not become superfluous, however: rather, both scenarios complement each other with the best attributes from both worlds. An integration can also take place in both directions. Through external HANA views (views generated automatically by SAP BW), mutli-dimensional InfoCubes, queries or master data are made available at the native HANA level. Tables from HANA can be integrated directly in reports via Open ODS Views. In this respect, all of the key areas, such as permissions in SAP BW, are also taken into account.
Advantages of the implementation of SAS BW on HANA
The scenario described above has some key advantages. The data transfer which is required with the third party solution can frequently be omitted, for example, and the permissions can be reused in the key items at the same time. Despite the separation of both of the components, a close coordination has to take place, and in the BI Competence Center it is necessary to ensure that the development of a parallel DWH does not occur. This new flexibility can be managed on a similar basis to the report life cycles that we explained elsewhere Here, current self-service solutions are monitored which manage the requirements of the departments in terms of flexibility as well as the transfer to a standardisation. The requirements and IT processes are not disrupted by the separation in a specific tenant.
Thank you for reading.
I am Gary Phelan (SAP program manager)