SAP BW and MicroStrategy A Functional Overview Including Recommendations for Performance Optimization Peter Huegel, Senior Sales Engineer SAP Solution Specialist
Content Architectural Overview Aspects of working with SAP BW Aspect Performance
MicroStrategy with SAP BW Overview Past/Presence OLAP BAPI MDX Web service ODBC/SQL SAP BW BW Queries views SAP HANA R/3 ECC R/3 /ECC 3
SAP (BW) (near) future projection SAP BW OLAP BAPI MDX BW Queries Web service views ODBC/SQL SAP HANA Common tables R/3 ECC R/3 /ECC 4
Aspects of working with SAP BW - 1 What can you expect to get? Key figures (standard, calculated, restricted) Characteristics Navigational attributes Filter BW variables (Selection, Authentication) Structures Cell references/calculations SAP exits (in key figures and variables) Customer exits (in key figures and variables) Hierarchies
Aspects of working with SAP BW - 2 What are challenges of SAP BW MicroStrategy can address Challenge Complexity Made from specialists for specialists Answer Hide/Cover complexity expose relevant data (sets) only in easy to consume manner Primarily designed for data warehousing, not for reporting Made for reporting Merge with non SAP data Easy to merge, blend, multisource non SAP data with SAP data Agility not build in Agility a must, hands on an option Performance Intelligent Cubes, High Performance SQL
Aspect Performance What can you expect to get? Standard Setup MicroStrategy with SAP BW with or w/o BWA Good performance for small and medium data sets from BW Less good performance for big data sets from BW Big data sets are possible >= 1m cell yet, performance definitely not google-like Best results: use MDX interface for what it is designed for
Influence Performance
Change Performance with SAP BW Various Approaches operational RSRT Setup MSTR VLDB cache tactical Intelligent cubes strategical SAP HANA
Change Performance with SAP BW operational operational RSRT Setup MSTR VLDB cache tactical RSTR make sure BW query definition <use selection of Structure Members> is checked Setup MSTR take in account best practices Intelligent cubes VLDB MDX/Cell vs Column, tune reports Cache make use of MSTR caches for better end user experience use MDX interface what it is designed for
Change Performance with SAP BW tactical tactical Intelligent cubes Creating Intelligent Cubes will give you best possible end user experience with regards to performance. Leveraging incremental cube creation capabilities you can create big data sets suitable for free analysis.
Change Performance with SAP BW strategical strategical SAP HANA SAP HANA is besides other things a fast In-Memory database with an open SQL interface to SAP data. This allows to make use of existing SAP (BW) objects making use of the best performance (on big data sets) possible SAP can possible offer. The full range of MicroStrategy capabilities becomes available.
Compare Approaches Approach Pro Con Operational (use as is, best practices) Low/no costs low/medium/good improvement in performance Tactical (icubes) Strategical (HANA) Clear performance improvement Clear performance improvement Change paradigm reporting SAP Administrative effort buys end user performance Costs database Effort modelling Change paradigm reporting SAP
Summary The situation Conceptually BW considers performance not be a top priority. End user do The solution To bring together these two concepts you have a couple of options ranging from mild changes in configuration to shift in reporting paradigm. The Rational for thinking big SAP introduced the concept of reporting SAP content through SQL for a reason.
Questions & Answers More Questions? phuegel@microstrategy.com
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