SAP NetWeaver BI. Unicode Compliance. Product Management SAP NetWeaver BI. Version 7.0 December, 2008

Transcription

1 SAP NetWeaver BI Unicode Compliance Product Management SAP NetWeaver BI Version 7.0 December, 2008

2 Agenda 1. Unicode in General 2. Excursus: MDMP 3. Unicode support of SAP NetWeaver BI 4. Interfaces to SAP Systems 5. Interfaces to non-sap Systems SAP 2007 / Page 2

3 Unicode Essentials What is Unicode? Character encoding schema for (nearly) all characters used world wide Each character has a unique number ( Unicode code point ) Notation U+nnnn (where nnnn are hexadecimal digits) See for complete code charts

4 Representation of Unicode Characters UTF-16 universal transformation format, 16 bit encoding Fixed length, 1 character = 16bit. Surrogates using 2*16 bit Platform dependent byte order 16 bit alignment restriction (needs even addresses) UTF-8 Unicode transformation format, 8 bit encoding Variable length, 1 character = bytes Platform independent No alignment restriction Character Unicode code point UTF-16 big endian UTF-16 little endian UTF-8 a U ä U+00E4 00 E4 E4 00 C3 A4 U+03B1 03 B1 B1 03 CE B1 U E3 91 B9

5 Transparent Unicode Enabling of SAP Business Suite Character expansion model Separate Unicode and non-unicode versions of SAP ERP ABAP source Non- Unicode R/3 1 character = 1 byte (types C, N, D, T, STRING) Non-Unicode kernel Non-Unicode database Unicode ERP 1 character = 2 bytes (UTF16), (types C, N, D, T, STRING) Unicode kernel Unicode database No explicit Unicode data type in ABAP Single ABAP source for Unicode and non-unicode systems Automatic conversion of character data for communication between Unicode and non- Unicode systems

6 Implications You are not interested in Unicode? No customer is forced to convert to Unicode Possibly minor changes for not Unicode enabled programs (more restrictive syntax check as of WebAS 6.10 on) You are interested in Unicode? Major part of ABAP coding is ready for Unicode without any changes Minor part of ABAP coding, i.e. some customer-specific ABAP coding, has to be adapted to comply with Unicode restrictions SAP will deliver powerful tools to convert your existing system

7 Resource Requirements for Unicode-compliant BI What are the additional resource requirements after a Unicode conversion? Text fields are usually bigger in a Unicode environment than in a Non-Unicode environment. Enhanced functionality requires additional resources, which strongly depend on the given customer scenario. In the following, we give a rough estimation what a Unicode conversion could mean for the resources. CPU s We expect additional SAP NetWeaver BI requirements of roughly 30% more CPU power - like the SAP ERP requirements. Main Memory We expect additional SAP NetWeaver BI requirements of roughly 50% more memory - like the SAP ERP requirements. Disk Storage Disk Storage depends strongly on the underlying DBMS and the given data model/volume. For a significant share of InfoCube data (only numeric keys!), there might not be a significant increase of the DB size. For SAP ERP on ORACLE, tests have resulted in roughly 35% additional disk space. For SAP BI, we expect depending on the scenario less additional disk space. Note that after a conversion, the disk size may even decrease because of DB reorganisation.

8 The Unicode Upgrade Project Preparation Conversion Post-Conversion Set up the Unicode upgrade project Analyze data to minimize downtime To be done during system downtime Unload /reload process for small databases Minimum downtime tool for large databases (Incremental Migration IMIG) Set up the system for Unicode Start up the Unicode system

9 Agenda 1. Unicode in General 2. Excursus: MDMP 3. Unicode support of SAP NetWeaver BI 4. Interfaces to SAP Systems 5. Interfaces to non-sap Systems SAP 2007 / Page 9

10 MDMP Definition What does MDMP mean? In the past, SAP supported multiple languages by MDMP MDMP = Multiple Display Multiple Processing Mixed code page technology depending on logon language Several 100 satisfied customers MDMP was an SAP workaround for accessing multiple code pages Defined users where accessing the solution using SAPgui frontend Only little integration into the world wide web MDMP should not be used anymore for new installations MDMP is not supported for SAP NetWeaver BI

11 MDMP Connection How can I connect SAP BI to an SAP MDMP source system? Language-dependent source tables Most text tables include the language key. In an SAP system, the code page can be derived from the language key. This enables the correct conversion of the texts from the source system to SAP NetWeaver BI. Language-independent source table If a text table does not include the language key (e.g. customer texts), these texts have to be converted manually. The code page (or language) has to be defined for EACH record in these language-independent tables either by appending a new column into the table or by defining the extraction job in the corresponding codepage. If there is no language information given, the source tables will be converted based on the logon language of the user.

12 MDMP Project Based Solution Why is there no generic solution for the connection of MDMP source systems? All language-independent source tables must be checked and for each record, the code page which it was created in must be determined In order to derive this code page information, attribute values, organizational assignments or heuristics may help, but there is no generic approach Examples: in order to determine the code page of a customer name, the country where she/he lives in may be used usually not correct, if e.g. a Japanese customer lives in Russia Alternatively, the assignment to a sales organization may help For more information see How-To Guide in SDN

13 Design Principles for Source Systems How can I ensure a smooth Unicode conversion? SAP NetWeaver BI receives the following information from source systems Date and timestamp information Key figures Characteristics by key Texts How should I design the data in the source system? Date and timestamp information as well as key figures are just figures; the conversion is not critical Characteristic keys (e.g. material number, customer number, brand key, country key) must be designed as 7-bit-US-ASCII characters (common characters). Don t use other characters as keys or attributes. As a benefit, the permitted character setting in the BW customizing need not be maintained. See SAP note for more information. Note that maintaining the permitted characters makes you code page-dependent. There might be problems with the conversion to Unicode (e.g. characters like µ are a lower case letter in Unicode and thus not allowed) Texts are ONLY loaded into the text tables of the InfoObjects; transaction data and master data attributes must NOT contain texts. Texts are usually language-dependent and must be designed in the source system with an associated language key (even if e.g. the SAP ERP data model is not providing this).

14 Agenda 1. Unicode in General 2. Excursus: MDMP 3. Unicode support of SAP NetWeaver BI 4. Interfaces to SAP Systems 5. Interfaces to non-sap Systems SAP 2007 / Page 14

15 Unicode-Compliant SAP NetWeaver BI Unicode-compliance compliance means: SAP NetWeaver BI can interpret and display Unicode characters User interface will be shown in local language Business data can use all languages in parallel SAP NetWeaver BI can extract data from source systems with specific code pages (Non-Unicode or Unicode) SAP NetWeaver BI can extract data from SAP source system running mixed code pages (MDMP) Interfaces to 3rd party systems support correct code page conversion

16 Unicode Platform Availability Which platforms support Unicode? Database Management Systems Available DB management systems MS SQL-Server DB2/UDB V8 maxdb 7.5+ ORACLE 9.2 DB2/AS400 V5 R2 Delayed DB management systems DB2/zSeries, available as of 2004 Informix: no Unicode support planned Operating Systems restrictions Reliant Unix is not Unicode-enabled OS/390 available as of 2004

17 Unicode in SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 and later SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 is fully Unicode compliant SAP NetWeaver BI Server Fully Unicode compliant Note: when loading from a double-byte (i.e. Non-Unicode) SAP ERP source system (release <= 4.6D) into Unicode SAP NetWeaver BI, so-called container misalignments may occur (see SAP notes and for more information). SAP ERP <= 4.6D Non-Unicode Project Solution NW BI Unicode SAP NetWeaver BI BEx Web Analyzer Fully Unicode compliant (including right-to-left languages) BEx Analyzer (.NET tools) Fully Unicode compliant Exception: Right-to-left languages are not supported by all controls

18 Supported Scenarios for SAP BW 3.5 Unicode supprt for SAP BW 3.5/SAP NetWeaver 04 SAP NetWeaver BI Server (backend) Load of data in different code pages Display of all data in SAP Gui environment Unicode Web front end Display of all data if front end is configured in Unicode code page Restrictions for MS Windows-based client tools (BEx Excel front end, Web Application Designer, Query Designer) see also SAP note Object keys must be in US-7-bit-ASCII to ensure access to keys in all logon languages / code pages The restrictions only apply to texts, transactional data is not affected. The client is configured in one Non-Unicode code page. Note that also the Windows default code page must be switched to this Non-Unicode code page. Only the data in the logon code page are displayed correctly: I.e. a Russian employee can see all Russian texts, but not the German ones ( # characters will be displayed for special German characters), whereas the German employee can see the German texts (but not the Russian ones) English texts (US-7-bit-ASCII) are displayed correctly A user must not change and save queries, work books, query elements or web templates with Non-US-7-bit- ASCII (English) texts that have been originally created in a different code page. For example, a query containing Russian text elements should only be changed in Russian code page.

19 Front end Restrictions SAP BW 3.5 in Detail 1 Restrictions for MS Windows-based client tools Example: BEx Excel Frontend Logon Language Russian German characters corrupted Logon Language German Russian characters corrupted No restrictions in Web Frontend Correct characters from both code pages independent from logon language

20 Front end Restrictions SAP BW 3.5 in Detail 2 BEx Analyzer Excel front end Note that the corrupted text is a pure display matter; the data in the database is always correct! Query Designer / Web Application Designer In order to avoid corrupted text written back to the database, organizational means must be installed. There are basically two options Queries, query elements, work books, web templates must only contain English texts (US- 7-bit-ASCII) Queries, query elements, work books, web templates containing texts (also hidden ones in e.g. restricted key figures or variables) in a specific language / code page must not be changed by users in a different code page RTL (Right-to-Left) Languages The Windows frontend components (BEx Analyzer, Query Designer, Web Application Designer) do not support RTL languages (like Hebrew, Arabian). However BEx Web does support them. Keys in US-7-bit-ASCII Keys (of any InfoObject) must be in US-7-bit-ASCII to enable users in every code page to enter the key in a search criterion; if Russian characters were allowed in keys, a German user could never enter these and, hence, never select these

21 Supplementation Business Scenario You run your SAP NetWeaver BI in different languages, but the availability of translations for all languages cannot be guaranteed. Hence, you want to define a standard language. This standard language is used to generate all missing translations. Example: you want to use English material texts in case the Japanese ones are not available. Supplementation The text tables can be supplemented with a standard language. Usage Start in transaction SMLT and check by double-clicking on the (target) language (e.g. Japanese), if the supplementation language has been maintained (e.g. English). Then use the menu path Language Special Actions Supplementation (Expert) in order to select all affected tables (usually all language-dependent /BIC/T* and /BI0/T*-tables those tables are cross-client class A tables) If you want to run supplementation periodically, you can use report RSTLAN_SUPPLEMENT_PERIODIC (parameter: preceding supplementation run) and include it into your process chain. Check SAP note for supplementation of German language

22 Unicode Installation and Conversion How can I make SAP NetWeaver BI Unicode-compliant? compliant? Delivery You can choose between Non-Unicode and Unicode installation Note: Unicode installation requires more hardware resources (depending on DB platform) Installation modes New Install Conversion of an existing SAP NetWeaver BI Before the conversion, upgrade your SAP NetWeaver BI to SAP BW 3.5 (or later release) R3LOAD converts an existing SAP BW 3.5 (or later release) automatically by exporting the DB, realigning the DB and importing the DB again Note that the Unicode Conversion is a pilot project as part of a BW System Copy (see note ) Customer-developed programs (variable exits, virtual characteristics/key figures, transformation rules, table interface etc.) must be in line with the Unicode rules The duration of a conversion depends on the size of the existing database

23 Agenda 1. Unicode in General 2. Excursus: MDMP 3. Unicode support of SAP NetWeaver BI 4. Interfaces to SAP Systems 5. Interfaces to non-sap Systems SAP 2007 / Page 23

24 Interfaces to SAP Source Systems Which SAP Source System Types exist? Single code page systems One single code page can include several languages (e.g., Latin-1 contains German, French, Spanish, Italian etc.) A Unicode source system is also a single code page system Mixed code page systems SAP source systems with several code pages (usually: MDMP) How does the conversion work? RFC-Calls are enhanced by source and target code page parameters; they transform characters on the fly to the correct code page The RFC call derives the source code page information from the language key Note: English texts (US-7-bit-ASCII) is converted correctly in ALL code pages For mixed code page systems, language information on RECORD level defines the conversion PROJECT based solution

25 Connection Scenarios 1 Which systems can I connect to? Overview on the supported connections SAP NetWeaver BI Unicode SAP BW 3.x Non-Unicode SAP BW 2.x Non- Unicode SAP source Unicode Ok ok, but some information might be lost not recommended Project! Some information might be lost not recommended SAP source non- Unicode Ok (from double-byte sources: on project basis) (*) ok ok (*) see slide 17 SAP source MDMP Project! ok, but some information might be lost not recommended ok, but some information might be lost not recommended

26 Connection Scenarios 2 What are the prerequisites for a proper connection? Unicode SAP NetWeaver BI systems and Unicode / Non-Unicode SAP source systems SAP BI-Service API 3.0B SP3 resp. PI_BASIS 2002_1_620 SP3 is required to connect the Unicode source system with SAP BI e.g. R/3 BI Unicode / Non-Unicode Service API 3.0B SP3 or PI_BASIS 2002_1_620 SP3 Unicode BI See slide 17 for restrictions for double-byte languages from SAP ERP <= 4.6D. No issues as of release 4.7.

27 Connection Scenarios 3 Non-Unicode SAP BW 3.x systems and Unicode SAP source systems During conversion some information might be lost. The following restrictions apply Characters might be corrupted as the target system does not know all Unicode characters In multi-byte code pages (Asian languages), suffix characters could get cut off during the extraction, as the bigger Unicode containers must be mapped to the target non-unicode containers e.g. R/3 Restrictions apply Unicode Non-Unicode SAP BW 3.x Non-Unicode SAP BW 2.x systems and Unicode SAP source systems SAP BW 2.x as non-unicode BW system is not generally released to extract data from Unicode source systems; in special scenarios, this connection might be possible on a project basis BI e.g. R/3 Project Solution Unicode Non-Unicode SAP BW 2.x BI

28 Connection Scenarios 4 What about other interfaces to SAP source systems? The same connection scenarios apply for transient interfaces to SAP source systems Report-Report-Interface RemoteCubes Virtual InfoProviders to SAP source systems

29 Technical Settings for Unicode Be sure to set up your system according to the following recommendations Languages You can only extract languages to SAP NetWeaver BI, which are defined in the basis parameter ZCSA/INSTALLED_LANGUAGES (language vector)

30 Agenda 1. Unicode in General 2. Excursus: MDMP 3. Unicode support of SAP NetWeaver BI 4. Interfaces to SAP Systems 5. Interfaces to non-sap Systems SAP 2007 / Page 30

31 Unicode-compliance of Interfaces Which source system code pages are supported for Non-SAP sources? For Non-SAP sources, it is difficult to determine the source code page. In most cases, only English texts (7-bit-US-ASCII) or Unicode texts are converted correctly Examples Flat File DB Connect (Same restrictions apply like for all MultiConnect connections independent from Unicode) UD Connect Virtual InfoProviders to Non-SAP sources

32 Unicode-compliance of BAPIs and 3 rd Party Tools What about Unicode with respect to BW-BAPI BAPI s s and 3 rd Party Tools? Loading data into BW via Staging-BAPI (and 3 rd party ETL-tools) This interface is released for the following sources: (see SAP note ) Single-byte code pages Unicode UTF-16 All other code pages, but only for transfer structure of size 250 characters and smaller This interface is not released for the following sources: Multi-byte code pages with variable byte length (I.e. Asian code pages and UTF-8) AND Transfer structure is larger than 250 characters Displaying data in a 3 rd party front end via OLAP BAPI, OLE DB for OLAP or XMLA These interfaces are currently released as a pilots for Unicode ETL or frontend partners Ask our partners for Unicode-compliance of their products

33 Thank you! SAP 2007 / Page 33