SAP TechEd 2020 – Running SAP Data Warehouse Cloud in a Live Environment [CM103]

SAP TechEd 2020 was a completely virtual event and we (the Interdobs DWC team) were given the opportunity to host session CM103 to talk a bit about our experiences with SAP Data Warehouse Cloud (and SAP Analytics Cloud) in a live environment.

Obviously it always better to be in Las Vegas for TechEd, but I must say that this virtual studio event was very well setup and executed by SAP. And, the best thing about virtual events is that you can watch specific content on demand whenever you want. So check the replay of our session below.

Running SAP Data Warehouse Cloud in a Live Environment [CM103]
Explore best practices for running the SAP Data Warehouse Cloud solution in a complex environment with multiple data sources.

Design Studio 1.x and hierarchies: Not Assigned node filtering

In BW hierarchies, the values that are not assigned to a hierarchy node are gathered under the Not Assigned node. The query output shows this node in the hierarchy on the same level as the top node of the hierarchy. This works the same for all SAP front-end tools that support hierarchies (Design Studio, Analysis for Office, BEx Analyzer, BEx Web Analyzer).

So far so good. Last week I ran into an issue with filtering on these Not Assigned nodes in Design Studio. The option just isn’t available! The whole hierarchy is visible in the filter menu, expect for the Not Assigned node! This happens both in prompt filters and the normal filters via a component (i.e. Dimension Filter or filtering via context-menu on Crosstab).

Filter in BEx Web Analyzer:

Display and filter in Design Studio:

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Relative OpenDocument links

In the BI Platform each document and folder has its own direct Document Link. Via this OpenDocument concept the specific object can be opened instantly, without having to browse through the BI Launchpad. You can find the Document Link by right-clicking a document in BI Launchpad/CMC.

In addition, we can use this link to pass parameters between reports. This video explains how to do this in Design Studio:

Lately I got several questions on using OpenDocument links in Design Studio dashboards in the context of BI landscapes with multiple BI Platform installations, let’s say with separate Development, Test, Production systems. For example, what to do when a Design Studio dashboard needs to link to another dashboard?

If we just use the OpenDocument URL it will always reference to the object on a specific system (i.e. Production), independently of the installation the dashboard is running on. This will definitely lead to issues during development and testing, as the referenced object is on a different environment giving probably some unrelated results, and might even not be available or accessible at all!

The solution is pretty simple, but you just have to know this: Always use relative URLs instead of the full absolute URLs. This relative URL should look like: /BOE/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp?sIDType=CUID&iDocID=<CUID>

So it’s basically the OpenDocument Link without the http://<server>:<port> part. This setup will also reuse a session on the BI Platform, saving login time and platform resources.

sitNL 2016

Yesterday was the 8th edition of the yearly SAP Inside Track The Netherlands (sitNL). The event was sold-out and even had a waiting list! Wow! Luckily the new location at the Ciber office in Eindhoven was very spacey and I’d say large enough to host even more participants. Also it is only a 20 minute drive – by bike –  for me, so really excellent location (although I missed the free car wash ?).

The BI track had a very interesting and nicely balanced program. Some high-level sessions, some more detailed ones, back-end stuff, front-end stuff, admin stuff. Good stuff.

Highlights for me were the TechEd recap by Ronald Konijnenburg en Sven van Leuken and the demo of 360Suite (skip the slides next time guys, the demo tells the story ?). I also went to the excellent Machine Learning 101 session by Fred Verheul, which reminded me to finally finish the Data Science for Business book I started reading earlier this year.

Below I put some #sitNL tweets as an impression.

familypicture #sitNL pic.twitter.com/LL1iYG9Ajy

— Wim Snoep (@wsnoep) November 26, 2016

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Migrating Analysis for Office workbooks from BW to BI Platform

We are in process of moving a lot of Analysis for Office (AfO) workbooks from a SAP BW environment to the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform. Besides storing the workbooks on BI Platform, we of course want to use the OLAP connection on the BI Platform to connect to BW, instead of using the direct – locally defined – connection from AfO to BW.

AfO has a nice feature to quickly swap source systems, but it is a bit hidden. We are using Analysis for Office 2.3 by the way.

1. Open the workbook you want to migrate. Make sure your workbook is not connected to the BW system. Display the Design Panel, go to the Components tab and select your workbook. Right-click to Log Off.

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