What is SAP Business Warehouse Instance?

SAP Business Warehouse (BW) is a model-driven data warehousing product based on the SAP NetWeaver ABAP platform. It collects, transforms and stores data generated in SAP and non-SAP applications and make it accessible through built-in reporting, business intelligence and analytics tools, as well as third-party software.

SAP Business Intelligence (BI) means analyzing and reporting of data from different heterogeneous data sources. SAP Business Warehouse (BW) integrates data from different sources, transforms and consolidates the data, does data cleansing, and storing of data as well. It also includes data modeling, administration and staging area.

The data in SAP BW is managed with the help of a centralized tool known as SAP BI Administration Workbench. The BI platform provides infrastructure and functions which include -

  • OLAP Processor

  • Metadata Repository,

  • Process designer and other functions.

The Business Explorer (BEx) is a reporting and analysis tool that supports query, analysis and reporting functions in BI. Using BEx, you can analyze historical and current data to different degree of analysis.

SAP BW has the most comprehensive tools, business processes and functions for access and visualization. These tools enable administrators working with SAP BW to display the detailed information gathered by them along with extensive – planning data and business data analysis. Administrators can do so in exhaustive detail or as a brief overview depending on how the data needs to be presented. Additionally, data can be presented in any work environment in the form of Web based data or Microsoft Excel.

The following diagram shows an open, broad and standard based Architecture of Business Intelligence.

Figure 1 : Architecture of SAP Business Intelligence

SAP BI allows you to acquire data from multiple data sources that can be distributed to different BI systems. A SAP Business Intelligence system can work as a target system for data transfer or source system for distribution of data to different BI targets.

BI objects consists of the following components:

  • Roles

  • Web templates and workbook

  • Queries

  • InfoProvider

  • Update Rules

  • InfoSource

  • Transfer Rules

  • InfoObjects

  • DataSources

BI objects are divided into multiple BI content areas so that they can be used in an efficient way. This includes content area from all the key modules in an organization, which include −

  • SCM

  • CRM

  • HR

  • Finance Management

  • Product Lifecycle

  • Industry Solutions

  • Non-SAP data sources, etc.

Another important aspect of SAP BW is how well it is integrated with SAP Business Intelligence (BI). The integration of SAP BW and SAP BEx with SAP BI is seamless and allows for much better reporting and analysis of the data. This also makes Data Warehousing all the more efficient and effective.