Sap Bw: A Step-by-Step Guide

From the Book: Book Objective This book is a how-to guide. It uses step-by-step procedures with screen captures to illustrate SAP BW functionalities. This book focuses on the core SAP BW technology. It discusses other SAP technologies, such as Basis, ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming), and ALE (Application Link Enabling) when necessary. It will not discuss 3rd-party reporting tools and BAPI (Business Application Programming Interface). Intended Readers This book is written for BW implementation teams and those who need a product to understand data warehousing concept. Prerequisites BW is built on Basis 3-tier architecture and coded in ABAP language. ALE and BAPI are used to link BW with SAP systems (R/3 or BW) and non-SAP systems. This book, however, does not require readers have knowledge in these areas. BW has made the development of a data warehouse so easy that people with experience in database design and computer programming can use it. Book Structure As shown in the table of contents, this book is organized into two parts: Part I contains guided tours. We start from a simplified business scenario, then go on to illustrates how to create an InfoCube, load data into the InfoCube, check accuracy of the loaded data, create queries to generate reports, and finally how to manage user authorization. Part II contains advanced topics. There we discuss InfoCube design techniques, aggregates, multi-cubes, operational data store (ODS), Business Content, generic R/3 data extraction, data maintenance, performance tuning, and object transport. In the appendices, we introduce ASAP(AcceleratedSAP) for BW, one of the derivatives of the ASAP implementation methodology developed by SAP, and give an overview of Basis 3-tier architecture.