Integrating Party Tools with SAP Business Information Warehouse

Naeem Hashmi
SAP GO-Live Call April 11, 2002
Chief Technology Officer Information Frameworks Tel: 603-432-4550 Cell: 603-661-6820 Email: nhashmi@infoframeworks.com http://infoframeworks.com
Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 1

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Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks.

Agenda

Anatomy of BI Tools Data Access Interfaces in SAP BW (Pro and Cons) 3rd Party Reporting Tools and SAP BW Challenges in integrating 3rd Party tools with BW What SAP or 3rd party vendors can do to address SAP BW Integration Issues Q&A
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Basic Components of 3rd Party BI Tools

A Typical Data Access, Query/ Reporting and ETL Tool
Metadata Mostly Database Oriented (SQL) Query Reporting OLAP Mining Engine ETL Engine

Data Access Interface

Structured Data Un-Structured Data

Distribution Engine

Presentation

Data Storage

Tools provide several Data Management layers Each layer impacts overall performance
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SAP BW Interfaces
SAP certifies 3rd Party tools for individual Interface/Version

SAP Portal OleDB for OLAP OLAP BAPI

XML RRI Interface RFC,BAPI SBAPI, TBAPI DB Connect ALE/TRFC

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Source: SAP
Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 4

SAP R/3 & BW 3rd Party BI Tools Interfaces

Remote Function Calls (RFC) Business API ( BAPI) No OLEDB for OLAP BAPIs for SAP R/3
A Typical Data Access, Query and Reporting Tool
Query Reporting Data Structured Distribution Presentation OLAP Access Data Engine Mining Interface Un-Structured Engine Data Metadata

Data Storage

Database Level Access

Source: Business Information Warehouse for SAP by Naeem Hashmi, Prima, 2000

- ODBC, SQL*NET, etc.

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Naeem Hashmi

Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW

Accessing SAP BW - ODBO/BAPI Interface

3rd Party Client Application

MDX Dataset

OLAP ENGINE
Application Server

ODBO

Query Cubes

InfoCube

MOLAP Cube
ODS Object

DATABASE SERVER
Source: Business Information Warehouse for SAP by Naeem Hashmi, Prima, 2000

NOTE: Understand that in BW you never access the physical database when accessing through these APIs.
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Comparing Data Access Performance

3rd Party OleDB for OLAP Certified Tool -- BEX -- InfoSet Query

Source: Business Information Warehouse for SAP, Naeem Hashmi, Prima 2000 Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 7

3rd Party BI Vendors/Tools BW

Arcplan Brio Technologies Business Objects Cognos Crystal Decisions Information Builders PolyVista

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Naeem Hashmi

Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW

3rd Party BI products and their Usage

Vendors and Products
Vendor ArcPlan Brio Business Objects Cognos Comshare Crystal Decisions Product dynaSight Brio.Report, BrioQuery BusQuery, WebIntell. PowerPlay, Visualizer Decision Enterprise, Analysis R/3 BW Vendor X X X ESRI X IBI X MIS X SAS X Viador X PolyVista Product Connect WebFOCUS Alea, OnVision Enterprise Guide E-Portal Suite R/3 BW X X X X X

PolyVista

Product and Intended Audience

MANAGEMENT
ArcPlan dynaSight Cognos Visualizer Comshare Decision PolyVista

ANALYST
Business Objects BusinessQuery Cognos PowerPlay Crystal Analysis PolyVista

POWER USERS
Crystal Enterprise IBI WebFOCUS MIS Alea, SAS Enterprise Guide PolyVista

INDIVIDUAL
Brio.Report Crystal Enterprise IBI

PRODUCTION
Crystal Enterprise IBI

Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks.

Naeem Hashmi

Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW

Reporting Tool Profile: ArcPlan

Company:

BW20.SCM Langenfeld, Germany-based company known for its EIS and custom development environment

Products:
dynaSight, inSight BW-ODB 1.2 inSight 2.35 BW-ODB 2.0 dynaSight 3.0 BW-OBI 2.0 dynaSight 3.0 Custom application development for building specialized views of information Multiple integration points with SAP R/3 BAPIs and SAP BW ODBO Application integration with SAP SEM for write-back and SAP R/3 via RFC (NC*) No production reporting or out-of-the-box tool for business users Small company size and low visibility in North America

Certification:

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

* NC = Not Certified
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Reporting Tool Profile: Brio Technology

Company:
Santa Clara, California-based company known for providing easy-to-use tools for reporting on RDBMS BrioQuery, Brio.QuickView, Brio.Insight, Brio.Report, Brio.Portal, Brio.Impact R/3 4.0, 3.1 Brio.Report for SAP R/3 Release 1.0, BAPIs for Brio.Report BW-ODB 1.2 Brio.Enterprise for SAP BW BW-ODB 2.0 Brio.Enterprise for SAP BW Good SAP R/3 operational reporting and pixel-level formatting Usability of Brio.Enterprise for manipulation and formatting Separate products, architecture, and user interfaces for SAP R/3 and SAP BW Limited BW support for embedding hierarchies to drill, pivot, and perform ranking and top/bottom analysis
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Products:

Certification:

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

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Reporting Tool Profile: Business Objects

Company:
Paris, France-based company known for its metadata product BusinessObjects Universe and an integrated user interface for reporting and analysis BusinessObjects 5i, WebIntelligence, BusinessQuery, InfoView, InfoView Mobile, SetAnalyzer, Application Foundation BW-ODB 1.2 BusinessObjects BW-ODB 2.0 BusinessObjects BW Connect 5.1.1 Integrated reporting and analysis product for BW via ODBO Specialized query interface, BusinessQuery, for supporting BW Good reporting and publishing of information to many users Outdated rapid deployment templates (RDT) to R/3 RDBMS via metadata Separate BusinessQuery product cost on top of base product No support for SAP R/3 reporting
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Products:

Certification:

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

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Reporting Tool Profile: Cognos

Company:
Ottawa-based (Ontario, Canada) company known for its best-of-breed tools Impromptu and PowerPlay Impromptu, PowerPlay, Visualizer, Upfront, 4Thought, DecisionStream, e-Applications for SAP, HeadStart for SAP OLTP (NC*) & BW BW-ODB 1.2 Cognos PPDS ODBO Interface for SAP BW Release 1.0 BW-ODB 2.0 Cognos PPDS ODBO Interface for SAP BW Release 1.0 Established breadth of functionality from ETL, models, reporting & analysis, and applications Strong analysis and mobile capabilities via PowerPlay Good visualization and customization capabilities via Visualizer Limited reporting functionality via PowerPlay Must build external marts or catalogs via HeadStart for Impromptu Direct Database Access Against SAP R/3 and BW * NC = Not Certified
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Products:

Certification:

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks.

Reporting Tool Profile: Crystal Decisions

Company:
Vancouver-based (British Columbia, Canada) company known for its Crystal Reports and easy report creation and distribution Crystal Analysis, Crystal Reports, Crystal Enterprise, Holos Analytic System, Balanced Scorecard, Customer Profiling, Budgeting, Report Alerts Crystal Enterprise Solution Kit for mySAP.com Release 2.0 InfoSet Driver, ABAP Query Driver (Release 3.x and above), Open SQL Driver (Release 3.x and above), WP-WAI via MiniApps WP-WAI 2.1 Crystal Enterprise Solution Kit for mySAP.com Release 2.0 BW-ODB 2.0 Crystal Enterprise Solution Kit for mySAP.com Release 2.0 BW-ODB 1.2 Seagate Holos 7.0, Info 7.0, Worksheet 7.0, Crystal Reports 7.0 Good integration with mySAP Workplace, SAP R/3, and BW for operational and enterprise reporting and ad-hoc analysis Strong operational and BW reporting, Strong Partner with PeopleSofts EPM Minimal direct sales and consulting presence for implementations Limited interactive analysis for BW coming in Crystal Analysis
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Products:

Certification:

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

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Reporting Tool Profile: Information Builders

Company:
New York City-based company known for its data integration and reporting technology for automating large and complex deployments

Products:
WebFOCUS, Business Intelligence Dashboard, Maintain, ReportCaster, Two-Way Email, Reporting Agent, Power Reporter, Managed Reporter, ivision for Financial Analysis, i-vision for HR Analysis, i-vision for Sales and Distribution Analysis

Certification:
BW-ODB 2.0 WebFOCUS for SAP Release 4.3

Strengths:
Operational and enterprise reporting for SAP R/3 and SAP BW i-vision reporting solutions for SAP R/3 and BW Performance and scalability for broad production/enterprise reporting

Weaknesses:
Limited ad-hoc reporting and analysis Lack of usability for interactive report analysis
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Vendor/Tool Profile: PolyVista

Company:
Houston -based company a new kid on the block with amazing next generation of Integrated OLAM, OLAP and Visualization tool to quickly analyze huge data volumes.

Products:
PolyVista 1.2

Certification:
None

Strengths:
Strategic data analysis data mining OLAM, OLAP, and Visualization Performance and scalability to handle vary large data volumes

Weaknesses:
Limited to Microsoft OLAP environment Not a data access and query tool No SAP BW API certification
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Reporting Tools Strengths & Weaknesses

Vendors
ArcPlan

Strengths
Custom application development Integration with BAPI and ODBO Integration with SEM for write-back Operational reporting for SAP R/3 Usability of Brio.Enterprise for manipulation and formatting Integrated reporting and analysis Specialized query interface Publishing information to users Complete ETL, mart, tools Strong analysis and mobile abilities Good visualization and customization Integration Workplace, BW, R/3 Operational and BW reporting Operational and BW reporting i-vision solutions for R/3 and BW Scalability and performance Very Strategic and Analytic Scalability and performance Dynamic Visualization
Naeem Hashmi

Weaknesses
Limited reporting and ad-hoc analysis Low visibility and small company size in North America Separate product for SAP R/3 and BW Limited interactive analysis for BW Outdated Rapid deployment template for SAP Additional cost for BusinessQuery No SAP R/3 reporting Limited reporting via PowerPlay External marts/catalogs needed for reporting External marts needed for applications Minimal direct sales and consulting presence Limited interactive analysis for BW Limited ad-hoc reporting Lack of usability for interactive report analysis Limited to Microsoft OLAP Platform Limited Ad-hoc or production reporting
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Brio Technology Business Objects Cognos

Crystal Decisions
Information Builders PolyVista

Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks.

SAP Certification and Validation for Integration

The certification and validation process is critical to ensuring the ability of third-party products to perform SAP R/3 reporting

SAP provides certification and validation at integration points:

Interface Certification: Development and testing of third-party software vendors interfaces. Available for BW-ODB and WP-WAI*. Interface Validation: Where certification is not available, special business and technical validation of third-party software vendors interfaces. Available for RFC/BAPI.

Leveraging SAP documents to further investigate third-party integration points and certification and validation:
OLAP BAPI for BW 2.0B April 2000 OLAP ODBO for BW 2.0B 2000 OLAP ODBO for BW 1.2B 1998 Business Object Repository Programming Interface 3.0D & 4.0B 1998 Workplace Certification 2.1 2000 * Workplace - Web Application Integration (WP-WAI)
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Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks.

Vendor Certification by SAP System and Interface

Certification Interface Vendors
ArcPlan Brio Technology Business Objects Cognos

Products/Interface Name
dynaSight 3.0 Brio.Enterprise for SAP BW BW Connect 5.1.1 PPDS ODBO for BW Release 1.0

SAP
2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0

BW-ODB

SAP Business Information Warehouse

Comshare
Crystal Decisions

Decision 2.5.1
Crystal Enterprise mySAP 2.0

1.2
2.0

Information Builders
MIS SAS Viador

WebFOCUS for SAP Release 4.3

OnVision & Alea 3.7 1.2 Enterprise Guide Release 1.2 E-Portal Suite 6.0 dynaSight ESRI Connect Release 1.0 Brio.Report for SAP R/3 Release 1.0 Crystal Enterprise mySAP 2.0

2.0
2.0 2.0 1.2 2.0 3.6-4.6 4.0/3.1 2.1

BW-OBI* SAP R/3 Workplace RFC/BAPI WP-WAI

ArcPlan
ESRI Brio Technology Crystal Decisions

* Business Information Warehouse - OLAP BAPIs (BW-OBI)

Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi

SAP = Latest certification interface tested Information as of 8/15/01

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Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW

Crystal Decisions Business Content Crystal Reports & BW 3.0x

Start_demo.exe

Source: SAP

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Naeem Hashmi

Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW

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PolyVista
Schema Active Visualization

OLAM OLAP

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Naeem Hashmi

Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW

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3rd Party Tools Integration Issues

Product Architecture and IT Culture
3rd Party BI Tools are designed keeping SQL Interfaces in mind and not API centric. This is a big problem. IT Environment: Companies have established BI standards based on tools and solution and cant think beyond DBMS tables.

Immature ODBO Standard

Primarily based on MS OLAP Server. No future enhancement committee on ODBO specs.

Performance
3rd Party Tools have their own Data Management Layers to manage entire BI environment while BW has its own - no pass through capability.
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3rd Party Tools Integration Issues

Vendors: Cant justify ROI for improving BW Integration issues BW user community is not large enough that warrants investment Vendors not interested in doing more than certifying their products against BW due to present SAP and BI tools OEM relationships

SAP Data Access Strategy: API only No direct database access

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So what we do now?
Forcing SAP to allow BW DBMS level access is not going to work Integrating 3rd Party Tools with BW has to do with your Information Delivery Architecture rather to force fit a tool with BW If BW is in your long term strategy, define a balanced Information Delivery strategy
Balance Traditional DW and BW usage Exploit Hub and Spoke Services (BW3.0B) to build traditional DBMS data marts for 3rd Party tools data access

Work with SAP to enhance Hub& Spoke services to address 3rd Party data access issues, for example, flattening of hierarchies.
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SAP BW - 3rd Party BI Tools: An Integrated approach

Integrate 3rd Party tools and BW at the Portal Level through the use of iViews Exploit SAP Portals unification and aggregation services to provide a Tool agnostic information access environment

Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks.

Naeem Hashmi

Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW

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Q&A
Which 3rd Party BI products are you using? What are the major issues that you are facing when using these tools against BW? Who are the end-users? What do you expect from SAP on 3rd Party BI tools Integration? More?
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