How To Create Publications with SAP NetWeaver MDM Using MDM Publisher- Advanced Topics

Transcription

1 SAP NetWeaver How-To Guide How To Create Publications with SAP NetWeaver MDM Using MDM Publisher- Advanced Topics Applicable Releases: SAP NetWeaver MDM 5.5 SP06 and above IT Practice: Data Unification IT Scenario: Master Data Management Version 1.0 July 2009

2 Copyright 2009 SAP AG. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP AG. The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice. Some software products marketed by SAP AG and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors. Microsoft, Windows, Outlook, and PowerPoint are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. IBM, DB2, DB2 Universal Database, OS/2, Parallel Sysplex, MVS/ESA, AIX, S/390, AS/400, OS/390, OS/400, iseries, pseries, xseries, zseries, z/os, AFP, Intelligent Miner, WebSphere, Netfinity, Tivoli, Informix, i5/os, POWER, POWER5, OpenPower and PowerPC are trademarks or registered trademarks of IBM Corporation. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, PostScript, and Reader are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. UNIX, X/Open, OSF/1, and Motif are registered trademarks of the Open Group. Citrix, ICA, Program Neighborhood, MetaFrame, WinFrame, VideoFrame, and MultiWin are trademarks or registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. HTML, XML, XHTML and W3C are trademarks or registered trademarks of W3C, World Wide Web Consortium, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. JavaScript is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., used under license for technology invented and implemented by Netscape. MaxDB is a trademark of MySQL AB, Sweden. SAP, R/3, mysap, mysap.com, xapps, xapp, SAP NetWeaver, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serves informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary. These materials are subject to change without notice. These materials are provided by SAP AG and its affiliated companies ("SAP Group") for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP Group shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP Group products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. These materials are provided as is without a warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. SAP shall not be liable for damages of any kind including without limitation direct, special, indirect, or consequential damages that may result from the use of these materials. SAP does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information, text, graphics, links or other items contained within these materials. SAP has no control over the information that you may access through the use of hot links contained in these materials and does not endorse your use of third party web pages nor provide any warranty whatsoever relating to third party web pages. SAP NetWeaver How-to Guides are intended to simplify the product implementation. While specific product features and procedures typically are explained in a practical business context, it is not implied that those features and procedures are the only approach in solving a specific business problem using SAP NetWeaver. Should you wish to receive additional information, clarification or support, please refer to SAP Consulting. Any software coding and/or code lines / strings ( Code ) included in this documentation are only examples and are not intended to be used in a productive system environment. The Code is only intended better explain and visualize the syntax and phrasing rules of certain coding. SAP does not warrant the correctness and completeness of the Code given herein, and SAP shall not be liable for errors or damages caused by the usage of the Code, except if such damages were caused by SAP intentionally or grossly negligent. Disclaimer Some components of this product are based on Java. Any code change in these components may cause unpredictable and severe malfunctions and is therefore expressively prohibited, as is any decompilation of these components. Any Java Source Code delivered with this product is only to be used by SAP s Support Services and may not be modified or altered in any way.

3 Document History Document Version Description 1.00 First official release of this guide

4 Typographic Conventions Icons Type Style Description Icon Description Example Text Words or characters quoted from the screen. These include field names, screen titles, pushbuttons labels, menu names, menu paths, and menu options. Caution Note or Important Example Recommendation or Tip Cross-references to other documentation Example text Emphasized words or phrases in body text, graphic titles, and table titles Example text File and directory names and their paths, messages, names of variables and parameters, source text, and names of installation, upgrade and database tools. Example text User entry texts. These are words or characters that you enter in the system exactly as they appear in the documentation. <Example text> Variable user entry. Angle brackets indicate that you replace these words and characters with appropriate entries to make entries in the system. EXAMPLE TEXT Keys on the keyboard, for example, F2 or ENTER.

5 Table of Contents 1. Business Scenario Background Information Prerequisites Step-by-Step Procedure Merge Like Column Cells Attribute Ratings Management Related Items Combination Publishing Lookup Non Display Fields Data Qualified Table Data Representation Incorporate Images in Text Objects Add Bullet Images Add Images in Text... 23

6 1. Business Scenario Using SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management (MDM) you can create visually stimulating print catalogs which retain their connections to ever-changing product data. The GUI client for creating printed catalogs is the MDM Publisher. 2. Background Information MDM Publisher offers an elegant and seamless combination of different technologies, concepts, and minute details to create a comprehensive solution to an age-old problem: how to produce visually stimulating catalogs which retain their connections to ever-changing product data. This guide highlights several individual cases and provides a step by step description how to achieve a desired layout. 3. Prerequisites In order to start creating your publications as explained in this document the following prerequisites must be fulfilled: General: Your MDM repository has been created and most or all of the initial data has been added. In the Families tables, a family field is defined. The selected family field serves as the basis of all your future publications and all your families will be based on the selected taxonomy. Only a lookup taxonomy field may be selected. Software: The following SAP NetWeaver MDM components should be installed: MDM Server, MDM Layout Server, MDM Publisher, and MDM Indexer. MDM Data Manager is needed to manipulate the families partition though it is not mandatory as a default partition is automatic. Please also see Note to troubleshoot issues in starting work with the MDM Publisher. A prior experience and knowledge in MDM is an advantage though not mandatory. It is useful to be familiar with MDM operations (such as MDM Console operations). Being familiar with the data is an advantage, it is recommended to spend some time to get familiarized with the data (different data types, data population, taxonomy structure, the different data domainslookup tables etc.) You may use the basic How to Guide: How to Create Publications with SAP NetWeaver MDM Using MDM Publisher 2c10-fba6-fffae ?overridelayout=true which provides a step by step procedure for creating simple publications. July

7 4. Step-by-Step Procedure 4.1 Merge Like Column Cells When structuring tables for publishing you may notice that the entire table s records share common column cells. Sometimes you will not want to promote such items. Rather, you would want to display them in the table itself. Even so, you may want to merge the common repetitive cells to make the table more readable and sometimes to salvage paper space. Let us consider such an example of table data manipulation, having a shared common single valued cell value. In a specific family of interest we have the following default, raw table: Notice that the last table column Standard Package Size has the same value across all records. You may want to merge such a value so that it appears once. For that, navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Items Tab. Select the Item Standard Package Size and select the Property: Merge Like Cells in Unpivoted Column (Under Property header Unpivoted Columns). July

8 See the effect in the image below: You now may want to align the text direction so that it appears in the center and not aligned to the top left. Steps to achieve a center aligned text: 1. Define a corresponding style. Navigate to Workspace properties, and choose the Styles tab. Right click on the Styles and choose Add Style. Provide a meaningful name (e.g. Center alignment). Define its properties: Horizontal Alignment= Center, Vertical Alignment= Center. July

9 See that in the image below: 2. Define item s style properties Navigate back to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Items Tab. Select Item Standard Package Size and select the Property: Column Value Style (Under Property header Styles). See the effect in Image below: July

10 ... How To Create Publications with SAP NetWeaver MDM Using MDM Publisher- Advanced Topics The same function can be useful in the case of common multi valued cell values. Consider the following table: Suppose that Misc. item is a multi-valued text attribute and all the Products have the same valued. You may want to combine the text values and show them once. 1. Merge Like Cells in Unpivoted Column Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Items Tab. Choose the Misc. item. Set Merge Like Cells in Unpivoted Columns Under Unpivoted Column. July

11 2. Define Multi-Valued Delimiter Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Items Tab. Choose the Misc. item. Set Multi-Valued Delimiter under Delimiters. You may want to set it to. 4.2 Attribute Ratings Management Ratings are defined for numeric attributes, which appear by default as a suffix to the attribute display name (e.g. Length [Nom], Height [Min], etc.). You may want to make general definitions on how the rating notations should be displayed. There are several issues you may want to be able to manage in this regard: 1. Managing the display of rating suffix: You may want to hide the rating suffix in several cases. Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Items Tab. Select all items. Under Property header Ratings choose one the following: July

12 a. Choose Hide nominal rating [Nom] only in Rating Tags Property. See the effect in the Image below: b. Choose Hide All in Rating Tags Property. For both options you can choose Hide Only if Single Rating. In that case, if more than one rating is available, the ratings are not hidden. f 2. Merge more than one rating value in a cell. Often, when having a numeric attribute with a minimum and maximum rating, you would want to merge these values in a compact way. Consider this example: Numeric attribute Width has minimum and maximum ratings. The two ratings appear as an independent item in the items list and as a separate column in the table. See that in the image below: July

13 Now consider the following steps to merge the min and max ratings: a. Combine items Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Table Layout Tab. Under Sort/Combine Items, choose the two items you wish to combine (in this example: Width[Min] and Width [Max]) and add them. See the effect in the Image below: b. Change the combined items delimiter Notice that the combines items delimiter is ;. You may want to change it to - to represent a range of values. July

14 Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Items Tab. Under Delimiters, choose one of the items and under Combined Items Value Delimiter set the correct delimiter. See the effect in the Image below: c. Rephrase the column header name. Notice that the attribute name Width appears twice needlessly. You may want to show the attribute name once. There is more than one way to achieve that. One way is to Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Items Tab. Choose the second item, in this case: Width [Max]. Under Item Name property header, remove the Display Name. July

15 Choose the first item, in this case: Width [Min]. Under Item Name property header, change the Display Name to capture the entire header e.g. Width range. d. UOM Display. Notice that UOM appears twice needlessly. You may want to show it once after the second item. Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Items Tab. Choose the first item in this case: Width [Min] and set Common Unit Format = Hide July

16 Entirely under Units of Measure property header. e. Leading Zeros Display. You may want to show the leading zeros of the values. Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Items Tab. Choose both items and set Display Leading Zeros under Numeric Formatting. July

17 4.3 Related Items Combination There may be several items that have a common general meaning. You may want to combine these items visually in order to highlight their relation to one another and create by doing so items sub sections. In this example, you want to publish a set of such related attributes. They represent Drilling performance on different materials. Consider the following raw table: The table may be more readable transposed. Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Table Properties Tab. Choose Transpose Tables. July

18 In order to show the three Drilling performance attributes items in a combined manner: 1. Combine Items Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Table Layout Tab. Under Sort/Combine Items, choose the three items you wish to combine and add them. see the effect in the Image below: July

19 2. Set Combined Value and Name Delimiter. Notice that the combines items delimiter is ;. You may want to display each items in a different row. Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Items Tab. Under Delimiters, choose one of the items and under Combined Items Value Delimiter and Combined Items Name Delimiter set to (line feed symbol: keyboard stroke Alt+0182). See the effect in the image below: 3. Omit repetitive item name tokens. Notice that the prefix item name Drilling Performance in is common to the three items; you may want to display it once. Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node properties, Items Tab. Choose the second item. Under Item Name, change the display name- omit the repetitive items and provide spaces instead. July

20 Do the same for the third item. July

21 4.4 Publishing Lookup Non Display Fields Data By default, in MDM Publisher, only the Display Field(s) of the lookup tables is visible and accessible. Nevertheless, you may want to publish not only the lookup tables Display Field(s) but also fields that are not defined as Display Fields. It is possible however to display the non Display Fields in MDM Publisher without needing to change the data model. Let s suppose that the main table Products references a Flat Lookup Table Countries. The Countries Flat lookup table has two fields: The country name is a display field and the country code is not Display Field. By default, in MDM Publisher, only the Display Field(s) of the lookup tables is visible and accessible. Nevertheless, it is possible to define Alternative Display Fields. The Alternative Display Fields allows accessing values of lookup table fields (other than the lookup table display field). In MDM Console, with an unloaded repository in the tables list, select the Families Table, open the Alternative Display Fields dialog, right click add Field and choose the path of the country code in Countries Lookup Table. Now, from MDM Publisher you will notice an additional item: country code, marked with the suffix [ADF] (stands for Alternative Display Field). July

22 ... How To Create Publications with SAP NetWeaver MDM Using MDM Publisher- Advanced Topics 4.5 Qualified Table Data Representation MDM Publisher allows an easy way to manage qualified links. It enables filtering or including qualified links per their Non-Qualifier value as needed. For example, we may consider the case of a Prices Qualified Table referenced from the main Table Products. The prices vary based on the country were they are sold (which translated to a Country flat lookup table field as Non-Qualifier and a Price Real field as Qualifier). You may notice that the table currently as default, is not that readable and separating between each product s prices is somewhat difficult. There are several issues in this regard: 1. Exclude/ Include links based on Non-Qualifiers. You may want to publish a catalog for France only, for example, and exclude the Germany prices links. This may be achieved very easily. Navigate to Presentation Objects, Node Properties, Qualified Records Tab. The list of Non-Qualifiers records is displayed. You may include/ Exclude as needed. July

23 In the below image, the Germany links were excluded, notice the effect in the table records. 2. Table pivotting You may pivot the table to make it more readible. Explore the different options of doing so. 4.6 Incorporate Images in Text Objects When publishing data residing in multiple forms of text (Text/ Text Blocks/ Non-Family Text/ Text Large etc), you may want to incorporate images to make it visually more stimulating Add Bullet Images Consider the following features list (modeled as M.V text block): July

24 You may Display Values as Bullets (property under Bullets header): Alternatively, you may incorporate images in the text to make it visually more stimulating. To do so, follow these steps: 1. Add Non-Family Images By dragging and dropping images from the Images table in MDM Data Manager to the Spread, you can add non- family images, that will function as image bullets for you text. Adding one more image: July

25 3. Resize Images: Select the Image, resize its borders: July

26 Resize Images: How To Create Publications with SAP NetWeaver MDM Using MDM Publisher- Advanced Topics Fit Content To Frame: 4. Place the resized Images in the proper place: 5. Group Items You would want to treat the images and text as a group, so that you can replace it and manipulate it as a whole. Select with SHIFT the three items: two images and text block box right click and select group items. July

27 You may now replace the text block box position: July

28 4.6.2 Add Images in Text You may want to incorporate images (e.g., trademarks, logos etc.) in the middle of texts. In this example, a text E@sy to use is published. Let s say E@sy is a trademark and a trademark symbol should appear next to it. To do that, follow these steps: 1. Add trademark Image: As explained before, add the requested image. 2. Wrap Text Around Images: You would want to make the Image incorporated into the text seamlessly so that the text will wrap around the image automatically and dynamically. Navigate to Image Properties Tab, select the Trademark Image, and set Wrap Text Around Images. July

29 July

30 3. Position image: Position the Image, the text will wrap around it: July

31