SAP BPC 420 NOTES

The data is stored in InfoCubes for each model. The InfoCube is a star
schema and comprises of fact table and dimension tables.

Possible Reasons for Performance Issues:

Lack of data in the development system (reports were built on

completely empty applications) so the performance of the reports
could not be assessed up front.(some dummy data should be
generated in the system).
Lack of stress testing activities in the project plan, in a system with a
large number of concurrent users.
Design Errors: An application, calculation or a report was designed in
such a way that they could not be high performing.

Factor to consider:
Factor
Project Objectives
Scope
Strategy
Timeline
Resources

Example
Define the project objectives. For eg
implementing Cost center planning
Determine the scope of
implementation
Define the project strategy.
Define the sequence of events from a
project planning perspective
Identify the internal project team
members and consultants required

2. A Workspace is a menu with all the components that you are authorized
to access and so group specific content.It behaves like a folder, which
contains items such as reports, input forms,Crystal Dashboards and so on.
3. Library:

The Library allows users to create, view and edit different Planning and
consolidation objects (Workspaces,reports,Input forms, Dash boad and
books)
There are 4 main folders:

Private: You can create your personal folder and save content in it,
which you do not want to share with other users.
Public: This folder contains content that can be accessed and modified
by all users depending upon the permission in place.
Teams: Here the team members can access all content of the team
folder, but only the team leader can update the content
Favorites: You can add objects to this folder to group together the
object that you frequently used.

4. Documents: The documents view is a central repository for storing or

sharing files and websites. You can use the feature of the Documents view to
post, share and retrieve files or contents of a website and to manage the
display of content.
5. Consolidation Monitor: It is a global dashboard for monitoring the
consolidation progress for a specific consolidation scope (for a given
Category, Period, Group or Sub-Group)
The Consolidation monitor is a key component in executing incremental
consolidations, since it lets the consolidation engine know which entities to
execute a currency translation or consolidation on.
In the consolidation monitor, you can do the following:

Display the control set status which verifies the accuracy of reported
data
Display the work status
Display the currency translation status Run currency translations
Display the consolidation status which is the outcome of consolidation
processing
Run Consolidations
Display the running process and display the percentage of completion
Reset the consolidation status i.e due to master data changes

6. Ownership Manager: It enables you to create and manage periodic

and version dependent ownership based hierarchies used for performing
statutory consolidation. An ownership based hierarchy combines Groups
and Entity members, where entities can be connected to disconnected
from groups according to Category and Time.
7. Audit: Audit gives you the possibility to track changes concerning
Security settings, Transaction data and administration activities.
8. Controls: Controls is the individual check for data accuracy and
consistency and can be used in planning application also. Controls are mostly
used to control the consistency of financial data (for eg. That a balance sheet
is balanced or that the flow movements matching the closing balance).
Controls can be enforced (bloscking) or just displayed as warning to potential
problems.Controls replace the former Validation business rules.A document
(report or input schedule) can be linked to each control.This will provide a

hyperlink for the users, so that when a control fails, the user can open that
document to understand where the issue is coming from.

A Non running instance can be reset ( resetting takes the instance back to a
running status and all activities back to their initial stage).
9. Work Status: allows you to lock a region (slice) of data in a model.The
work status setting overrides users member access privileges to write to a
given region.
10. Drill through Function: Drill Through function allows users to access
source data from a report. Source data includes content that can be
accessed from a URL.
Example : Your company is doing a planning report based on regional
data.During reporting, you need to have more information above the
selected region.For this purpose the Drill through functionality is linked for eg
to an online website or a BW query or ERP report.
11. Document Types and subtypes: They categorize document view
posting.This is useful if you want to filter them to see only certain types. You
can add document type and subtype to aid sorting and filtering. Document
subtypes help you further categorize documents when you post them in the
Content library.
12. Properties define the behavior of members within the dimension. By
assigning properties to dimension, you can implement powerful features in
your reporting, member lookup, formulas, Data Manager selection and so on.
The following properties are generated for all dimension types, but are not
displayed in the list of properties for a dimension.
Description: Displays the name of the dimension
CALC: Indicaes whether the member is calculated by means of formula
or at parent level.
HIR: Stores the hierarachy id associated with it for eg, H1, H2
The following are reserved IDs that you cannot enter as property ID when
adding a new user defined dimension property:
SOLVE_ORDER: This defines the order in which system calculates
calculated members when they intersect with other calculated
members.

FORMULA: The optional property allows you to define member

formulas.

13. Referential Integrity: This option validates the properties of the

dimension with the dimension member IDs of a different dimension. When
you process the dimension, the system checks the values of Refrential
integrity property. Validation does not complete if they do not pass
validation.

In 10.0 , the user can manually define the order of members under each
node of a hierarchy and then apply this specific sorting order to the list of
members when using Apply Hierarchy order
Reporting Model : It holds financial data.

Drivers and rates models support reporting models by holding data such as
currency exchange rates and ownership percentages. You cannot define
business rules to these models.

14. Use of source data : You can use Use of Source of data for
ExternalApplications checkbox to make data within the model available
for evaluation through Process Control. This flag would allow external
applications to use this model as the source of data.This would generate a
virtual provider on top of the cub(model) which enables the ODBO client to
retrieve the data of the model
15. There are 2 different types of optimization available:

Light optimization: A. Closes the open request.

B. compress without Zero Elimination and
C. indexes the cube and
D. updates database statistics for BW InfoCube.
Full Optimization: Will perform the same operations as Light , but will
also check the Net Weaver BW data model.If the data model can be
improved , Full will do so, and this could take a long time to run

16. Denial of data access can be set only at user level

17. Functional Parameter: which must be set by the user, can be found in
UI of the Admin workspace.
Configuration parameters: mainly technical parameters that must usually
be set only once are in IMG
System Parameter: which are set by the system (mainly flags), cannot be
set by the user through an Admin UI
18. Technical Architecture of BO PC:
Planning and Consolidation has the following components:
A.
B.
C.
D.

BPC Rest Layer (replacement of .NET Server)

Business Service Layer
Infrastructure Layer
One important change of this layer is the system is using NW users
for authentication

19. Planning and Consolidation has 2 big components:

Web Client using IE browser
BPC Add in office part of EPM Add in
20. Business Process Flow Activities: This function displays the activities
( of a Business process flow) requiring specific action by you as the current
logged on user.Within the specific process context, individual activities can
have the following status:

Open: Waiting for completion or to be submitted as a new activity

Submitted: Action has been taken and the activity is waiting for review
Completed: Activity is fully completed
Reopened: Completed activity has been reopend
Pending: Activity is waiting for an open activity to be completed
Rejected: A reviewer has rejected an activity , the activity is open
again for user action
Delayed: Completion of the activity has been delayed due to the
previous activity being reopend.

21. Member formulas can slow retrieval performance if you use them
incorrectly

22. In case of Script Logics, Pretty Print function can be used to make
the whole script more readable by adding indentations and using upper case
for keyboards
23. Business Rules are parameter driven functions within BPC for
calculating and posting monetary amounts in support of common accounting
activities such as intercompany bookings, currency translations, elimination
and adjustments.
24. Controls: is the individual check of data accuracy and
consistency.Controls can be enforced (blocking controls) or just displayed as
warnings to inform the users of potential problems.Controls replace the
former Validation business rules.A document (report or input schedule) can
be linked to each control. This will provide a hyperlink for the user, so that
when a control is failed, the user can open the document to understand
where the issue is coming from.
25. You can delete an environment or MODEL when it contains data. You
cannot, however delete a dimension member when there is data associated
to that member in a model.
26. Setting the template versions: If you have made changes to any of
the dynamic templates for reports or schedules, you can force an update of
template files by changing the template versions. Therefore, clients that log
on the environment receive the new templates. Updating the template
version will force an update of the template files to the clients.
27. UJA_DATA_CHECKER is an important tool to help finding errors in an
environment. There is an option to try and fix the error. You should use this
program in the test system as well as in the production system after
transport.
28. S- Subtable : This is used to breakdown the account activity or flow. For
eg, some accounts Such as Fixed Assets, have a Subtables dimension
containing Opening, Additions, Deletions, Transfers and Ending Balance.
29. The maximum length for a member name is 32 characters
30. The maximum length for a property name is 40 characters
31. A model is necessary when you want to store transaction data in BO PC
32. You can schedule the processing of dimension with a Data manager
package.

33. Based on the data Entry Mode for your reporting model, you can decide
if transaction data for this model is entered in periodic or YTD basis.
34. When you create new environment and models, only a small amount of
data exists.Since the amount of data you maintain grows over time, we
recommend you periodically run the optimize function to improve
performance.
Light Optimization:

Closes the open requests,

compress without Zero elimination and
indexes the cube and updates the database statistics for the BW info
cube.

Full Optimization: Will perform the same operations as Light Optimization,

but will also check the Net Weaver BW data model.If the data model
can be improved, Full optimization will do so, and this could take a long
time to run (for cubes with large volume of data).Full optimization will
check whether data model of the Bw CUBE is built properly.
Specifically, it will check:

Dimension table have <20 % size of the fact table

As many line item dimensions are used whenever possible

It is possible to execute the optimization online or via data manager

package.

Task Profile: define what type of activities or tasks a user or team of users
can perform.
Planning & Consolidation is installed with three administrative task profiles
by default (System Admin, Primary Admin, Secondary Admin).You cannot
modify these default profiles. You can however, copy these profiles to create
additional profiles for users and teams.
Task Profile is the only security object that uses the NetWeaver authorization
objects while rest of the objects info are stored in BO PC specific ABAP tables
System Administrator:

Manage Environment
Manage Security
Use system when Offline

Secondary Administrator:

Manage Dimensions
Edit content of Public folder

General Rules for Data Security:

Defining Parameters : 3 types of parameters used in BO PC:

Functional Parameters: It can be set in UI of the Admin workspace.

For eg, enabling work status, or during model set up when u want to
enable comment
Configuration Parameters: It is mainly technical parameters that
must be usually be set only once. ALLOW_FILE_SIZE
System Parameters: which are set by the system (mainly flags)
cannot be set by the user through an ADMIN UI

Table = UJA_PARAM (Cross Environment Model)

UJA_PARAM_APP (Environment & Model Level)
One Important Model Parameter is BPC_STATISTICS: The parameter is used
to monitor System performance.Certain modules in Planning and
Consolidation write detailed run time statistics to tables UJ0_STAT_HDR and
UJ0_STAT_DTL so that you can better analyze where performance bottleneck
occur.Valid values are ON & OFF.
EPM Add In: It is an Office Add in for Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
Epm Add In: The members selected on the axis of a report Override the
members selected in the context.
Data Manager: The ability to access the Data Manager User Interface is
only possible with a Webservice connection, using the standard Planning and
Consolidation type:
If you connect to a BPC environment using ODBO provider (for MS NW), the
Data manager button will be grayed out. Data Manager is a module that
helps to move data into the system, copy or move data within and across
application and export data from application for use in an external tool.It also
supports mapping and complex transformation of data.
By default there are 3 types of packages within the data packages:

Financial Process
Data Loading process
Other Processs

Using
Tcode
SE38
with
program
Name
:
UJD_BACK_END
_DATA_MAINTAINENCE allows you to delete obsolete data when Data
management packages Dump. This improves performaces.
38. Package Links can be used to bundle together more than one data
packages.Packages in one package link are executed in sequence. If one
package fails, then all subsequent packages will not run.

The main difference between two versions (NW AND MS)

is the landscape.

BPC NW - Is built over Netweaver BI (7.3 in version 10).

BPC MS - Uses the Microsoft SQL Server as database.
It depends on the current architecture. If you have SAP
ECC and BI, then it will be good to move to BPC NW.
However, if these are not in place, then I would prefer BPC
MS.
BPC NW 10.0 is more powerful than BPC MS 10.0. BPC
NW 10.0 is supported with HANA. And some new

enhancement requests are only delivered in BPC NW

10.0, such as time dependent hierarchy, etc.

You can always plan on leaf member (base) but never on a node
member (parent).This is because node members in BO PC sums up the
transaction data for the leaf relevant to the node.

Top Down Planning: If you want to work top-down, which means you would
like to plan some data on a node member, you will have to find a work
around.
EVSEND means that you can save data from an Input schedule in BO PC
server.
UJA_FORMULA: It is used to add a new measure for eg: Month to date,
Rolling 12 months Total.If you want add a new formula into UJA_FORMULA for
an existing application, you will also need to manually update
UJA_FORMULA_APP, as well
Assigning one or more team leaders is useful when you want to give them
special access rights to the teams folder. You can assign team leaders while
you are defining or modifying a team.If a user is flagged as Team Leader and
is authorized for the Manage Template Task, they can access and save
templates to their respective team forlder.
Loading Master Data: The total level number of the sub tree including the
root node is 3. if Level =0 is selected , then only the specified member ID
will be returned as a tree which only has one node. If the Level is not
specified (blank), then the whole sub tree is selected by taking the member
ID as root. If Overwrite is choosen, the master data in Planning and
Consolidation will be replaced/owerwrttienby the new master data.If master
data values are occupied by the transaction data or hierarchy , the master

data values are not deleted , while other unoccupied master data will be
deleted. If Update mode is choosen, the property values will be overwritten
if the ID is the same, while other master data will be kept and the new
master data will be added.
If Internal format is selected, no conversion routine is used during the
import process.If External format is set, then the related ABAP conversion
routine will be used, if one is maintained on the source Infoobject from BW
transaction RSD1
For Hierarchy Load: The user does not have to import the entire hierarchy.
Alternatively, a sub tree can be selected by taking the member ID as root
and specifying the level.

UNIT 3 USING THE EPM ADD IN

The EPM Pane provides multiple ways to create a new report incl:

EPM Report Editor

Entering members directly in a sheet
EPM Pane
Report using Copy & Paste
Drag & Drop

UNIT 4 : DATA ACQUISITION:

UNIT 5 : LOGIC FILES:

Logic Scripts-Golden Rules:

1. Stay Away from MDX Logic: Experience has shown that MDX queries
may easily deliver very poor performance and do not scale well.

In Practically all cases where MDX logic has been replaced with SQL
logic, the improvements have been substantial.
MDX formulas should only be used in dimension formula members and
even there you should avoid them.

2. Load In Memory only the required data: When you need to make
sure that all required data are in memory, it is equally important to load in
memory as few records as possible, otherwise the time to load the records
and scan them one by one may become unacceptably long.
3. Keep the logic structure as Compact as possible: ie reduce the size
of the logic to combine the instructions for the accounts that have the same
behavior.
4. Minimize the number of logics: Each COMMIT section in logic triggers
the following set of actions:

Some input records are read from the database, issuing one or more
SQL queries and pulled into memory.
The input records are scanned one by one and some records are
generated.
The new records are sent to database.
These actions , if performed several times, makes the logic slower.

While reducing the entire logic into a single logic COMMIT may not be
practically feasible, try and merge different COMMIT sections into as few as
possible.
Loading less data in memory is not effective a performance improvement as
reducing the number of COMMITs.
5. Keep in default logic only the calculations that are absolutely
required to be performed in real time: Use Data Manager Packages to
execute Logic scripts instead. They have a much better performance
compared to Online execution.
6. Avoid Save and Refresh Workbook Data or Save and Refresh Worksheet
data

Constant File:
1. At Environment Level: The system constant file is the logic file that maps
your dimension name to an environment Constant. By updating the
dimension constant file with your dimension, you avoid having to change or
rewrite any fuction (dimension logic,script,delivered and custom
logic).Applicable where all your models use the same dimensions.
2. At Model Level: Here mapping is done only at model level. Here you have
to integrate the Include into the Default Include for this model.

VLOOKUP V/S. DESTINATION APP :

With Lookup you are able to READ data from another cube/same cube
(when a value is required for calculation outside the scope of your selected
region) .
With DESTINATION_APP you are able to WRITE the results of the data to
another cube

TMVL PARAMETER:

For eg. Actual records are copied over to the

same period in the following period with a 10 % increase.
When Adding a new DIMENSION to the dimension type, you supply the
following information:

Adding Properties to the new dimension:

When you add a property to a dimension , you must specify and keep in mind
:

Properties in BPC with a length lower than 60 are stored as

Navigational Attributes in BW. Properties in BPC with a length bigger
than 60 appear as Display Attributes formally but are actually stored in
different table.

Types of Configuration parameters:

Global Parameters
Environment Parameters
Model Parameters

3 Distinctive pages in dimension:

Hierarchical view of the members

The structure of dimension
Members Maintaince page

It is possible to return and change some settings or to press Create

to confirm the model and then automatically return to the model:
page

If you Edit multiple teams at a time, you can see the list of users
assigned to the selection under the User tab.

UNIT 6: BUSINESS PROCESS FLOW:

UNIT 7: ADMINISTRATION
Validating Master Data: You use master data validations when
you want to make sure that special combinations of data
selections are exclusively allowed when loading data or
when written online to the server .You also use it if you want
to prevent special member combinations from being saved to the
server. IF the conditions are not met, system will automatically
generate an error message while saving data. The configuration
of validation is performed via transaction UJ_VALIDATION in your
backend system.The configuration is environment specific.
Master data validations works with Driver Dimension concept,
which means that the driver dimension is the dimension in each
model for which the validation rules will apply.In most cases, it
is the Account dimension.It is possible to have 1 driver
dimension per model. If you leave the driver dimension empty,
then no validation rules will be applied to this model.Several rules
per one driver dimension are possible.
Deleting a dimension that is a driver will delete all validation
configurations

Configure Audits: You can perform activity auditing to track

administrative and user tasks at the environment level and data
auditing to track changes to transactional data at model level.
Audit is broken into 2 categories:
Activity Auditing: This function tracks administrative and
user tasks at the environment level
Data Auditing

You cans set up Data Manager packages to archive activity audit

information.
Data Auditing at Model level:

Concurrency Locking:

Configuring Work Status: Work status is the ability for a

customer to lock a slice or region of data in a model.The work
status is set up in the administrative view. Work status is NOT
process flow management.Work Status is optional for the
customer.

Transport Management: In BPC we have a granular transport

feature which allows users you transport almost all components
individually using the standard NW transport
framework.Transport should only contain the object which are
needed.Transporting one or more environment at a time is
possible.
2 modes of transport that are supported:
Normal Mode: In this mode, if a transported object exist in
the target system, it is modified with the changes from the
source system.If it does not exist , it is created.
Deletion mode: For deleting objects.In this mode, you
explicitly specify the objects to be deleted.

All aspects of an environment are transported except transaction

data.

There are 3 types of dependency check:

During transport creation process
During import process
During Data checker process
To make transport successfully, make sure that the dependent
objects exists either in target system or transport request.
During transport creation process : the transport will check the
existence of these dependent entities.If the dependant entities
already exists in the target system, transport will succeed
otherwise it will fail.
During import process If it fails, a roll back will happen on the
single entity that encounter error during transport and will not
affect other entities.
The Data checker is executed after importing.Roll back will not
be executed at this step.Error or warning message will be
returned back when there are issues during this step.

Before transporting, make sure that the Environement is offline in

both Source and target system,so as to not to allow any further
changes during Transport.

Do not add a normal transport and a deletion transport for the

same environement into one customizing request.
The program UJT_AFTER_FAIL_PROCESS can be used when
transport problems occurs.
There are two typical landscape deployment scenerios:
Development to production: Here typically all objects
are created in development and transported to
production.Exception: security and teams
Production Only (with development for patch testing)
Best Practise for Ongoing Development: 2 environment: one
for new development and one for production support change.

MEMBER FORMULA:

Driving Dimension : At the time of creating a Process Template for the

purpose of creating a BPF , we define a driving dimension in which the owner and
reviewer property is maintained Under Activities of Process templates.
Under Process Setting: We select the Model and process context, each time the
process is launched, the user is asked to provide values of the dimenison.
Process Monitors under Process Settings: Process Monitors are users who can
monitor all the instances created from this template.When an instance is created ,
one of the users will be given the responsibility of finalizing it.