Tips and tricks for using

SAP NetWeaver Business

Intelligence 7.0 as your
Enterprise Data Warehouse
Dr. Bjarne Berg
2008 Wellesley Information Services. All rights reserved.

In This Session ...

We will explore 6 large-scale EDW implementations, and see how to
apply lessons to your strategy and projects.
Examine the difference between an evolutionary SAP NetWeaver BI data
warehouse architecture and a top-driven design method.
Compare the results of using a data mart (bottom-up) approach to an
EDW (top down) approach, and determine which approach best fits your
requirements.
Explore the ways in which new SAP NetWeaver BI enhancements can
support real-time data warehousing
We will look at common EDW pitfalls and how to leverage the SAP
NetWeaver BI architecture in a large landscape using the Corporate
Information Factory (CIF)
2

What Well Cover

Difference between evolutionary DW architecture and a design

Data marts vs. Data warehouses

Real-time Data warehousing

The many mistakes of EDWs

Successes and failures of six large-scale SAP BI-EDWs

SAP NetWeaver BI architecture & Corporate Info. Factory (CIF)

Wrap-up

Evolution of Data Warehousing

Level of Embedded Analytics

Complex (score cards,

budgeting, planning, KPI)

Horizontal approach
(2nd generation)

Emerging
(1st generation)
Emerging
(1st generation)

Integrated analytical
(3rd generation)

Vertical approach
(2nd generation)

Interactive Mgmt.
reporting (OLAP, MQE)
Toolsets &
accelerators

Level of Pre-delivered Content

Source: Mike Schroeck, David Zinn and Bjarne Berg, Integrated Analytics Getting Increased Value from
Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, Data Management Review, May, 2002;
Adapted: Bjarne Berg How to Manage a BW Project, BW & Portals Conference, 2007, Miami

Analytical applications
for specific industries

A General Conceptual Enterprise DW Architecture

Metadata

Source Data

Extract

Operational
Data Store

Transform

Data
Warehouse

Functional Area
Invoicing
Systems
Purchasing
Systems
General
Ledger
Other Internal
Systems
External Data
Sources

Custom
Developed
Applications

Purchasing
Data
Extraction
Integration
and
Cleansing
Processes

Marketing
and Sales
Corporate
Information

Data
Mining

Translate
Attribute

Summation

Calculate

Product Line

Derive

Location

BI Applications

Summarize

Segmented
Data Subsets

Summarized
Data

Synchronize

Statistical
Programs

Query Access
Tools

Data Resource Management and Quality Assurance

Source: Bjarne Berg, Introduction to Data Warehousing,
Price Waterhouse Global System solution Center, 1997

SAPs Technical EDW Architecture

Enterprise Portal
Visual
Composer BI
Kit

KM

Business Explorer Suite (BEx)

Information Broadcasting
BEx Web
BI Pattern
Web
Application
Designer

Web
Analyzer

BEx Analyzer
Report
Designer

MS Excel
Add-in

BI Consumer Services

BEx Query Designer

BI Platform

Analytic Engine

Meta Data Mgr

UDI
SAP
JDBC XMLA ODBO
Query

Data Warehouse

DB
Connect

BAPI

Service
API

File

XML/A

Source: SAP AG

SAPs EDW Enablers - Query optimization

SAP
BW

Analytic
Engine

The SAP BI accelerator

makes query response
time 50-10,000 faster.
You use process chains to
maintain the HPA engine
after each data load

Any
tool

InfoCubes
HPA Engine/Adaptive Computing
Data
Acquisition
SAP NW 2004s BI

Both HP and IBM have standard solutions

ranging from $32K to $200K+ that can be
installed and tested in as little as 2-4 weeks
(+ SAP licensing costs)

1. In-memory processing
2. Dictionary-based, smart
compression using integers
3. High parallel data access /
horizontal partitioning
4. Column-based data storage &
access/vertical table decomposition
7

SAPs EDW Enablers - Remodeling Tool Box

In NW2004s you get a new tool to add characteristics and key figures to
your model.
In older BW versions,
if you forgot to
include a field in your
infocube, the rework
was quite substantial
and often involved
reloading the
infocube as well.
Source: SAP AG, Richard
Brown, Aug. 2006

NW 2004s goes a long way to address the complaints that BW is a

hard to maintain environment with forever fixed models.

SAPs EDW Enablers - Central EDW Adm. & Tool reductions

In a custom data warehouse
environment you need many tools:

In a SAP data warehouse

environment you need one tool:

- Data loads and transformations

- Scheduling of jobs
- Database management
- Data modeling
- Managed query environments
- On-line Analytical Processing tools (OLAP)
- Statistical analysis tools
- Data visualization tools
- Formatted reporting tools
- Web presentation tool
- Security administration tool
- EDW administration tool(s)
- Others ?

SAP NetWeaver

SAP NetWeaver has solutions for a complete

EDW architecture, including an Administrator
Cockpit for managing the system

SAPs EDW Enablers - Global Tool Reach

After the SAPs Acquisition of Business Objects, many have questioned
the long-term vision of SAP as the EDW. In Response, SAP published
their tool integration vision in February 2008:

The SAP Message:

BO and SAP
provides
Alignment,
Extension &
Augmentation of
two leading,
complementary BI &
EIM solutions

Source: SAP February 2008

10

SAPs EDW Enablers - Long-term communicated vision

SAP has a long-term commitment to EDW and has published their 3-year
tool plan so that customers can plan ahead.

Notice that SAP

Web Application
Designer is
Replaced by
Xcelsius+ in
2009 and a new
tool called
Pioneer will be
launched that
year also.
Source: SAP February 2008

11

What Well Cover

Difference between evolutionary DW architecture and a design

Data marts vs. Data warehouses

Real-time Data warehousing

The many mistakes of EDWs

Successes and failures of six large-scale SAP BI-EDWs

SAP NetWeaver BI architecture & Corporate Info. Factory (CIF)

Wrap-up

12

Design Vs. Evolution

An organization has two fundamental choices:
1.

Build a new well architected EDW

2.

Evolve the old EDW or reporting system

Both solutions are feasible, but organizations

that selects an evolutionary approach should
be self-aware and monitor undesirable add-ons
and workarounds.
Failure to break with the past can be
detrimental to an EDWs long-term success

13

ODS Vs. Data Warehouse Vs. Data Marts

To Understand the differences between DSO, Data Warehouses and Data Marts we
can examine them in terms of usage, modeling and purpose:
Data Store Objects (DSO)
Acts as source to populate
DW and marts
Often used for operational
reporting
Detailed, atomic data
Huge data volumes
Integrated, clean data
Cross-functional and crossdepartmental
Supports data mining
May use denormalized form
modeling (NOT dimensional)

Data Warehouse
Provides mgmt reporting
Summarized data
Tuned to optimize query
performance
Multiple departments or
processes
May act as staging area for
data marts
Uses dimensional data
modeling

Data Mart
Specific application or
workgroup focus
Narrow scope
Customized or stand alone
analysis
Interactive query
Highly summarized
Single subject and
department oriented
Uses dimensional data
modeling
14

Data Warehouse Vs. Data Marts - Implementation Sequence

There are several alternatives for an iterative approach to implementing
the various storage structures, based upon organizational needs.
The various structures can be enterprise or departmentally focused.
They can be built first, middle, or last. They can be stand-alone or
combined. The important point is to have a concept of the long term
vision of the data warehouse project and how each type of structure is to
be used.
A) ODS first: Start by building an enterprise data warehouse from a subject area
perspective and then gradually move subsets of data to data marts. This
approach may take a longer time to implement.
B) Data mart first: Start by building data marts to get data out to users quickly.
This approach may encounter difficulties in integrating data from an enterprise
perspective.
C) Data marts first within the framework or vision of an ODS: Start by developing
a high-level enterprise or subject area data warehouse framework to guide the
incremental development of the data marts or data warehouse.
15

Advantages of building the data marts first

There is a significant trend in the industry today toward building data
marts first, then consolidating backwards to create the data warehouse
and operational data store. There are several advantages to this
approach:
A) Allows faster implementation
The average data mart may take 2-3 months to implement; the average EDW evolves
over many iteration and may take years to mature. Several marts can be started in
parallel.

B) Reduces political liability through alignment with a specific business need.

The mart can deliver value to the organization in a much shorter period of time and
can focus on a specific business function or problem. The business sponsors will
see faster results and can affirm their decisions with benefit analysis and feedback.
This is important to maintaining interest and adequate funding levels for the
program. This is in contrast to the time and complexity of building an enterprise
data warehouse.
16

Advantages of building the data marts first (continued)

C) Limits risk while learning how to implement data warehouse.
Building very large databases of several Terabytes is inherently complex. Backup
and recovery systems may require specialized hardware and software. Complex
tuning may be necessary to achieve satisfactory query performance levels.
Identifying and defining data from many different sources creates opportunities for
users and sponsoring departments to disagree. The ultimate business goals may be
overshadowed by the technical and political difficulties of building the large
warehouse. Starting small with a data mart, experimenting, and using the
implementation as a learning experience, will reduce the risk and may actually result
in a higher quality deliverable.

D) Costs less than an EDW.

Initially, the economics of smaller scale hardware, software, and development staff
may contribute to lower costs for marts than EDWs.
17

Major Risks of building the Data Marts first

Data marts do not replace data warehouses.
The data mart is not the next step in data warehouse evolution. It must
be planned and implemented as part of the overall architectural vision.
To be effective, you must maintain centralized control of data distribution
to the mart in order to support the enterprises overarching warehouse
goals of data quality, consolidation, and sharing.
Data marts also increase the complexity of the data warehouse
environment with multiple extract, transform, and transfer routines.
There are some great risks of succumbing to political pressures.
Business units that demand a quick hit and a stovepipe
implementation of data marts may only serve to undermine the best
laid plans for an integrated and durable data warehousing program.
18

Risks of building the data marts first

If the IT department agrees to a bottom-up EDW, a strictly
application specific approach, they may end up with multiple data
marts that can not be integrated into a larger EDW/ODS view and
which can not support analysis across different marts.
The bottom line is plan and build a reusable data and technical
foundation (technology standards, data modeling principles, and
integrated databases).

The Gartner Group estimates that resources required to manage a

disjointed data mart environment are three times greater than an
integrated data warehouse architecture.
19

SAPs Vision of Data Marts

If you insist on building data marts, you can
also use SAPs newly acquired Rapid Marts tool
from Business Objects.
Built with Data Integrator, SAP Rapid Marts are readymade data marts for SAP. It has pre-built data flows,
business logic, and schema that understand the SAP
meta-data.
SAP Rapids Marts also include content that is
immediately consumable by business users and can
be deployed independent from an EDW
implementation.
It supports data profiling and cleansing and can be
the first step toward a holistic EIM program or global
EDW strategy. In a prototype environment it can
also provide early understanding of data quality
problems.
Source: SAP, Feb 2008

SAP has now inherited a tool

for Data Marts that is
independent from the SAP
NetWeaver Platform
20

What Well Cover

Difference between evolutionary DW architecture and a design

Data marts vs. Data warehouses

Real-time Data warehousing

The many mistakes of EDWs

Successes and failures of six large-scale SAP BI-EDWs

SAP NetWeaver BI architecture & Corporate Info. Factory (CIF)

Wrap-up

21

Real-time SAP Enterprise Data warehousing gets better

NW 2004s has more features for updates that does not follow the
typical asynchronomous (batch) updates. This include:
1. We can use XML to fill the PSA directly
2. Daemon-based update from delta queue (BW API)
3. Daemon-based update of the ODS and minimal logging

Note: XML documents creates

many tags that will slow down
large dataloads due to the size of
each XML record (relatively large)
However, it works great for
smaller streams of data.

22

Limitations of Real-time SAP Enterprise Data warehousing

There are some limitations depending on the version of SAP BI/BW you
use. For versions 3.5 and higher, there are few limitations and they
include:
You can only use real-time to load ODSs or PSA
A normal delta update and a real-time update cannot happen at the
same time for the same DataSource and/or ODS
For data targets that subsequently store the real-time-supported ODS
objects, real time data transfer cannot be used
InfoPackages that use real-time updates cannot be associated with
InfoPackage Groups or Process Chains
Consider Using SAP Exchange Infrastructure (SAP-XI) to generate the XML
documents from non-SAP Systems. This can help build a corporate data hub center
that can reduce the number of custom interfaces in the organization
Tip
23

What Well Cover

Difference between evolutionary DW architecture and a design

Data marts vs. Data warehouses

Real-time Data warehousing

The many mistakes of EDWs

Successes and failures of six large-scale SAP BI-EDWs

SAP NetWeaver BI architecture & Corporate Info. Factory (CIF)

Wrap-up

24

Common EDW Mistakes Not Using Standard SAP Solutions

In the 1950s, you could buy a standard Sears house for $2,065 and pay
$935 more to have it implemented on your own land
The customers who selected to buy
the standard house were either
extremely happy or totally
disappointed.
When Sears examined why, they
found a strong correlation between
level of modifications to the home
and unhappiness
You buy SAP NetWeaver for its pre-built content
and connections to other SAP applications.
The more you add to the standard solutions, the
harder it will become to realize the benefits you
sought in the first place.

25

Leveraging SAP Standard Content in The EDW

Mostly standard storage objects

Some customization
Highly customized storage objects

As a guiding principle,
map requirements to
standard content before
customizing

31%

However, youll probably

also have external data
sources that require
custom ODSs and
InfoCubes
Customizing lower level
objects will cause higher
level standard objects to
not work, unless you are
willing to customize
these also.

36%

33%

An example from a large

manufacturing company

BW Content available (BI

(BI 7.0)
7.0)

Cockpits
???
Workbooks 2,211
Queries
4,325
Roles
934
MultiProviders 402

InfoCube
783
DSO objects 687
InfoObjects 14,368

26

How to Leverage Standard BI Content in the EDW

1. Create a model based on pre-delivered SAP BW content
2. Map your data requirements to the delivered content, and identify gaps
3. Identify where the data gaps are going to be sourced from
Material
Material number
Material entered
Material group
Item category
Product hierarchy
EAN/UPC

Storage
Requirements

Plant
Shipping/receiving point

Currency Key
Unit of Measure
Base unit of measure
Sales unit of measure
Volume unit of measure
Weight unit of measure

Billing

Customer

Unit

Logistics

Sold-to
Ship-to
Bill-to
Payer
Customer cla ss
Customer group
~ Customer country
~ Customer region
~ Customer postal code
~ Customer industry code 1
End user

Number of billing documents

Number biling line items
Billed item quantity
Net weight
Subtotal 1
Subtotal 2
Subtotal 3
Subtotal 4
Subtotal 5
Subtotal 6
Subtotal A
Net value
Cost
Tax amount
Volume

Organization

Standard content

Company code
Division
Distribution channel
Sales organization
Sales group

Map functional requirements to

the standard content before
you make enhancements

Personnel
Sales rep number

Accounting
Cost center
Profit center
Controlling area
Account a ssignme nt group

Billing information
Billing document
Billing item
Billing type
Billing category
Billing date
Creation date
Cancel indicator
Output me dium
~ Batch billing indicator
Debit/cre dit re ason code
Biling category
Reference document
Payment terms
Cancelled billing document
Divison for the order header
Pricing procedure
Document details
Sales order docume nt type
Sales deal
Sales docuement

Time
Calendar
Calendar
Calendar
Calendar

year
month
week
day

Storage
Objects

LEGEND
Delivered in standard extractors
Delivered in LO extractor
Not in delivered Content -but in R-3

27

Common EDW Mistakes No Tailored Approach

Build a global data warehouse

for the company, and proceed
sourcing data from old legacy
systems driven from a topdown approach.

BOTTOM-UP APPROACH

CHANGE

CONTINUE

TOP-DOWN APPROACH

Focus on a bottom-up approach where

the BW project will prioritize supporting
and delivering local BW solutions,
thereby setting the actual establishment
of the global Data Warehouse as
secondary, BUT not forgotten.

Each organization has different corporate cultures and considerations.

The Top-down approach is preferred in centralized organizations, and the bottom-up is
preferred in decentralized organizations. Pick one approach and stick with it.

28

Common EDW Mistakes loose data standards

Some Many organizations place little value on enforcing data standards.
This include InfoObject, DSO and InfoCube naming standards. It also include naming conventions for queries and InfoAreas.
As a result, these organizations often have a mess where it is hard to understand what is available without researching every field and data store.
It may also lead to problems integrating data with different data types and data lengths due to lack of enforcement

Develop your data standard and have an architect

enforce them throughout the lifetime of the EDW.
0FIA
R_O
05

X0C_K01

0SD_C03

SUDHIRC99

Vcha
r2(15
)

ry
Jims Que

AA Z0986 Query

Ch
ar

(18
)

29

Common EDW Mistakes Lack of environment management

Some organization have a hard-time to say No to the business community.
As a result, their architecture often looks like mix-and-match of systems that was
acquired to put out urgent needs.
In these organizations, multiple portals are common and overlapping reporting
systems is the rule, not the exception.

EDWs are like marriages between IT and

Business. You have to work at it constantly,
give it attention, and be faithful to the solution.
30

Common EDW Mistakes lack of transport controls

Most companies have strong change management of their R/3 systems. However, it is common that the same organizations have very loose approval processes for their BI
systems.
BI is becoming a mission critical system for most organizations and the same processes placed on the R/3 system should be applied to a production BI system.
Dont allow quick-fixes and untested service packs and notes to be applied to the production box without adequate testing. BWQ is not for window dressing!!

If you want a stable BI system, you

have to enforce testing and controls

31

Common EDW Mistakes Poor Performance

When you build an enterprise data warehouse, you should
plan for at least 10-15% of your project time for
performance testing and tuning.
Click-stream analysis have shown the 50% of your casual
audience will hit the refresh button or navigate away from
your web site if the reports take more than 7 seconds.
If your query takes more then 20 seconds to run, you have
major problems.
Get substantial amount of memory for caching and make
sure your have a fast network and hardware resources.
#1 complaint of EDW is lack of performance.
Consider BIA as part of your infrastructure
32

What Well Cover

Difference between evolutionary DW architecture and a design

Data marts vs. Data warehouses

Real-time Data warehousing

The many mistakes of EDWs

Successes and failures of six large-scale SAP BI-EDWs

SAP NetWeaver BI architecture & Corporate Info. Factory (CIF)

Wrap-up

33

SAP EDW in 6 large Companies - Overview

In this EDW case study we are going to look at 6 diverse organizations
and see their lessons learned in their own words

34

SAP as the EDW in an Insurance Company

Go-live Year: 2003 (BW v. 3.0b)
Mistakes Made: Under estimated the time it would
take to get the staff up to speed and trained in
BW. Had no SAP web skills in-house and went
with the wrong portal choice (non-SAP)

Successes: Built foundation data stores first (AP,

AR, GL, etc. before we started the individual
department needs. This created a real EDW
foundation instead of data marts. Now we are building
more multiproviders and fewer new data stores.
Because we built the EDW first, we can now deliver
solutions faster.

Technology Challenges: Needed 3 app servers and

Next Steps: Performance
tuning (BIA) and cockpits

more memory than first anticipated.

35

SAP as the EDW in Oil & Gas Company

Go-live Year: 2001 (BW v. 2.1c)
Mistakes Made: Stated with wrong area (MM). Should
have done FI first and then HR. MM, APO and
Motor Vehicle Fuel Tax reporting was too
complex and ambitious for the first implementation
when we were learning.

Successes: Met budgets, deliverables and timelines.

User satisfaction was very high when we went
from only BEx workbooks to the web
templates. Upgrade to BI 7.0 was well received
by developers and users.
Next Steps: Adding the
subsidiaries and corporate
entities in Asia and Europe
(650 more users)

Technology Challenges: Did not know how to

performance tune the workbooks when we upgraded.
They went from kilobytes to
Megabytes. Needed
on-line user training (CBT)
36

SAP as the EDW in another Oil & Gas Company

Go-live Year: 2000 (BW v. 2.0b)
Mistakes Made: No formal commitment to the EDW,
that evolved over time (3 years). Did not have the top Clevel commitment until 2003 and had
to do a lot
of rework to accommodate the new global vision.

Successes: We are 8 years into the EDW and it has

been adapted as the core platform for global HR,
finance and sales reporting. We have most divisions
on the system and have retired six legacy reporting
environments.

Technology Challenges: Needed more HW than

Next Steps: Adding
European training and rollout
(2 more R/3 systems)

originally planned. Performance was a real

until 2006 when we started using the
Broadcaster and cached some reports in

problem
memory.
37

SAP as the EDW in a Manufacturing Company

Go-live Year: 1999 (BW v. 1.2b)
Mistakes Made: Started too early with too ambitious
scope. BW was not ready for EDW in 1999. Not
until version 3.0b (2002) did we get a real ODS
and could realize our earlier ideas of the EDW.

Successes: We kept the scope small and manageable,

and had good consultants. The turnover rate
on the project team has been low and the
system
was allowed to mature without
business
disruptions. We have consolidated three reporting
groups into one and saved hundred of thousands of
dollars in licenses
each year.
Next Steps: Add more
functionality (purchasing)
and rollout to purchasing
group and the sales reps.

Technology Challenges: Data integration was the

hardest. We had to spend most of our project time on
masterdata mapping & consolidation.

38

SAP as the EDW in a High-Tech Company

Go-live Year: 2003 (BW v. 3.1c)
Mistakes Made: User interface was not prioritized
high enough. Executives and casual users hated BEx
workbooks. We had to relauch the EDW in 2006 with a
new web interface.

Successes: After the relaunch we have had success

with user adaptation and have a functional steering
committee and CFO sponsorship. Closing the
financial books have gone from 5 days to 3.

Technology Challenges: Was unsure on how to

Next Steps: Add 2 more
acquired companies to
SAP R/3 and BI.

interface our existing portal with SAP BI

content
(SSO). Security setup was hard and advise was too
divergent. Process chains ran
very slow until we
tuned the ABAP.
39

SAP as the EDW in a Government Organization

Go-live Year: 2005 (BW v. 3.5)
Mistakes Made: Source data was in too many diverse
old system with no real standards. We under
estimated the time it would take in integrate nine
different mainframes, some that was 20+
years old.
Should not used a big-bang go-live.

Successes: Civilian and uniformed personnel worked

well together and training was well received.
The data collection and reporting that used to
take 14 days each month to produce, now
takes 30
minutes.

Technology Challenges: During the BI 7.0 upgrade,

Next Steps: Add another
maintenance organization
and work on web cockpits.

the unicode conversion took long (did not

complete over the weekend). The BSP web templates
had to be rebuilt completely.
40

What Well Cover

Difference between evolutionary DW architecture and a design

Data marts vs. Data warehouses

Real-time Data warehousing

The many mistakes of EDWs

Successes and failures of six large-scale SAP BI-EDWs

SAP NetWeaver BI architecture & Corporate Info. Factory (CIF)

Wrap-up

41

The Corporate Information Factory (CIF)

In 2001, Bill Inmon (the father of DW) and Claudia Imhoff
proposed a reporting architecture known as the CIF.
At the heart CIFs reporting strategy
is the EDW. It is the source of:
1.

Decision Support System applications

(APO, CRM, OLAP, Reporting etc).

2.

Data Mining and APD

3.

Departmental Data Marts

4.

Access Media Accelerators (BIA)

Bill Inmon is a SAP BI

technology advisor. He has
advised SAP on how to develop
NetWeaver BI

42

Using the CIF Reducing number of Platforms

A major CIF decision is how to integrate the solutions in as few
platforms as possible.
NetWeaver helps by:
1. Reducing

number of
hardware servers

2. Consolidates

the platform
needs for budgeting,
planning, forecasting and
scheduling

3. Simplifies

the platforms for

web access, security,
reporting and analysis.

CIF provides a corporate framework for the EDW;

NetWeaver provides the capabilities to do so with
one platform

Solution

43

SAPs Conceptual Enterprise Data Warehouse Architecture

SAP recognizes that we do not build EDWs, we are doing Enterprise
Data warehousing. This is an on-going activity that merges information
systems, people and processes.

EDW is an ongoing activity

with continuous
investment
needs.
44

What Well Cover

Difference between evolutionary DW architecture and a design

Data marts vs. Data warehouses

Real-time Data warehousing

The many mistakes of EDWs

Successes and failures of six large-scale SAP BI-EDWs

SAP NetWeaver BI architecture & Corporate Info. Factory (CIF)

Wrap-up

45

Resources

Resource

COMERIT (Presentations, articles and accellerators)

www.comerit.net

Enterprise Wide Data Warehousing with SAP BW

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/5586d2900201-0010-b19e-a8b8b91207b8
Enterprise DataWarehousing SAP Help
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/en/29/d9144236bcda2ce10000000
a1550b0/frameset.htm

46

7 Key Points to Take Home

Plan Your Target EDW Architecture before you start the project.

Enforce Standards and pick the right tools for the job

SAP BI is no longer leading or bleeding edge and is used extensively

as the EDW for large organizations

If you are still on BI 3.5: Upgrade!

SAP BI has many new tools that will enhance the front-end for end users.
Your EDW will need them

Critical to EDW success: reduce number of competing reporting system

very quickly

Hire an EDW Technical Architect if you have not already.

47

Your Turn!

How to contact me:

Dr. Bjarne Berg
bberg@comerit.net
48