September 10-13, 2012 Orlando, Florida

Best Practices for Creating and Maintaining an SAP BW Relational Universe with the Information Design Tool
Ahmed Sherif

Learning Points
How to create an SAP relational Connection (JCO), Data Foundation, and Business Layer How to maintain an SAP relational Universe after updates have been made in BW How does this Change the Game?

Before 4.0
Creating a universe off of SAP data 1. .UNV off of a Bex Query 2. Data services pulling data into SQL server or comparable server to be built off of relational tables

As of BI 4.0 SP2 Patch 6

There is another! Creating an SAP relational JCO connection based off of BW cubes (multiproviders, infoproviders, DSOs, etc)

Lets Get Started

Project First we will create a local project. In this project the shortcut to the Relational connection, the data foundation and business layer will be saved. Enter a name for your project and click Finish.

Connection
Traditional Relational connection created locally wont reveal a connection source to SAP BW

Connection
So, whats going on? You will need to create the connection first in the repository and then publish it locally to your project.

Connection
Heres what you see when you right-click on the server and click for relational connections.

Connection
Continue to input your credentials Select the appropriate infocube Click OK

Finally, publish a shortcut of your connection in the repository to your local project or folder

Connection
This part is opposite to a traditional relational connection where you create the connection locally and then publish it to your repository.

Data Foundation
Right-click on your project or folder and select create a data foundation Select a multi-source enabled data foundation Check on the location connection shortcut that points to the JCO connector on the server Click Finish

Data Foundation
Depending on what type of cube you are connected to, you can see only one table or thousands of tables connected together that make up the BW architecture

Business Layer (Universe)

Again, right-click on your project and select New Business Layer Select Relational Give it a name and point it to your data foundation just shortly created before Select Automatically create classes and objects for SAP BW Netweaver connections (Recommended)

Business Layer (Universe)

Again, right-click on your project and select New Business Layer Select Relational Give it a name and point it to your data foundation just shortly created before Select Automatically create classes and objects for SAP BW Netweaver connections (Recommended) Your Universe is now complete

Maintaining a Universe
What happens when there is an update to BW Will your relational universe update automatically? Is there a button to push to update your universe similar as there is to OLAP Universes? What do I do?

Drawbacks
You will need to go in manually, refresh the data foundations and pull in the new fields manually into the universe

Benefits
The BOBJ developer is more in control Less dependence on your BW counterpart Minimizes the need for 50,000 BEx queries

Custom Measures created at the Universe

Pre-defined conditions can be created in the Universe Create Navigation Paths (Hierarchies)

Key Learnings
Creating a Relational BW connection is not too different from a traditional relation BW connection and Universe Maintaining a BW Relational Universe can be painful in the early stages when many changes are being made to the BW architecture The benefits of being in control on the BOBJ side will give you greater control of your universe and your flexibility when creating Webi/Crystal reports and dashboards.

Contact Info
Ahmed Sherif BI Consultant for itelligence, inc. Ahmed.Sherif@itelligencegroup.com Twitter: @asherif844

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