Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bjarne Berg
Director SAP BI
[ Learning Points
This is a comprehensive guide to SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence
presentation tools
We will take an overview tour of the Analysis Process Designer (APD), SAP
NetWeaver Visual Composer (VC), Web Application Designer (WAD),
Report Designer, Web publishing, Java Server pages (JSP) and the new SAP
NetWeaver BI Query Designer & BEx Analyzer.
We will look at the strengths and limitations of each tool and see how they
can be used independently or collectively in a SAP BI environment.
Image: SAP
No coding required to
create great-looking
Web-based cockpits
Source: SAP
Enterprise Polestar
Reporting
Report Designer Crystal Reports
Ad-hoc BI Widgets
Query &
Reporting
Web Intelligence
Mobile BI
Advanced
Analysis
SAP BEx Analyzer Voyager Predictive
Web Services
Enterprise Data
Warehousing
& BI Platform SAP NetWeaver BW and BWA BusinessObjects Enterprise
Source: SAP 20009
Polestar
Enterprise
Reporting
Report Designer Crystal Reports
Ad-hoc BI Widgets
Query &
Reporting
Web Intelligence
Mobile BI
Advanced
Analysis
SAP BEx Analyzer Voyager Predictive
Web Services
Enterprise Data
Warehousing
& BI Platform SAP NetWeaver BW and BWA BusinessObjects Enterprise
Source: SAP 20009
Source: SAP AG
We now get color control, header-footer control and many new features such
as location control of cells and integration of pictures, charts and fixed text.
Real Experience. Real Advantage. 27
[ BEx Report Designer is new in BI 7.0
Customizable font styles (i.e.
bold, italic), colors, etc.
Group-level changes with
individual formatting
Layout options, e.g.: Height of
rows, width of columns
Multi-line column headers
Flexible field positioning
Merging cells
Support for hierarchies
Rules for the presentation of
special characteristic values News: BEx Report Designer 7.1, (last release in
2008) will be available under maximum
Integration of text, pictures,
and charts maintenance until 2016 and will be replaced with
the Crystal Base product.
Header & footer for reports
Real Experience. Real Advantage. 28
[ Crystal Report is still available (also in SAP BW 3.x)
With BW you get access to Crystal reports. In fact you have many pre-
developed reports that comes with SAP-BW. Currently, you can modify, or
develop and deploy a few Crystal reports without additional licensing cost.
Crystal is a great tool for batch reporting of "pixel controlled' formatted
reports.
Interested developers
should familiarize
themselves with SAP
NetWeaver
Developer Studio
(NOTE: Crystal & Crystal Base will be the core tools for formatted
reports starting 2010)
Source SAP
Visual
Composer
BI Accelerator
If you implement
this year, you need
to make conscious
decisions about
which method you
select. There are
pros and cons of
each
QT Universes ODA
BW Analytic Engine
RDBMS
BIA
QT Universes ODA
BW Hierarchies
Restricted and Calculated Key Figures
Security
BW Variables
Currency and Unit Conversion
Exceptions, Conditions
SUM, MIN, MAX Aggregations
AVG, COUNT, COUNT DISTINCT, Aggregations
OLAP Cache
Navigational Attributes
Mass Data Enabled
Federation (e.g. BW RDBMS, BW BW)
= fully supported
= limited support / workaround
Polestar is an interesting
technology that companies may
start a prototype with and see Polestar
how it can help them access BI
data from a variety of sources
(NW and others)
Simple Multi-channel
Memory 0.02 8.51 425x consumption of UI, high event
MB/$ MB/$
apps (Fat client volume, cross
UI, EDI) industry value
Addressable chains
Memory 216 264 248x
General-
purpose, Application-
application- aware and
Network 100 10 100 x agnostic intelligent data
Speed Mbps Gbps database management
InfoProvider
Performance is measured in
terms of:
1. BI-A index creation time
2. Multi-user throughput per hour
3. Average report response time
4. Average number of records
touched by each report
BIA is no longer
something exotic.
Chinese Proverb
Source: SAP
March, 2009