What's new in SAP BW/4HANA
SAP has announced next generation Data Warehouse application SAP BW/4HANA, running a real-time digital enterprise on September 7th 2016. SAP have already released its 4th generation SAP S/4HANA, apparent that an update for the data strategy was required. Also the Customers want to know: where they can store historic information, should they use either SAP BW or SAP HANA. So what will be the next SAP Data Warehouse Strategy?.
Why SAP BW/4HANA other than any Data-warehouse ?
SAP BW/4HANA is an integrated data warehousing solution that has been optimized to fully leverage the SAP HANA in-memory database. This optimization empowers business’ to deliver on the demand for simple, open, flexible and highly scalable solutions that will meet the data warehouse needs of the business today and beyond.
Simplify your data warehouse architecture and free up more time for line-of-business requirements
Ø Integrate SAP and non-SAP applications and data into one logical data warehouse for a single version of the truth
Ø Future ready for new business opportunities and growing volumes of data
Ø Built for on-premise and the cloud
What is SAP BW/4HANA?
1. SAP BW/4HANA only runs on HANA database and takes full advantage of the platform’s capabilities to optimize performance across data warehousing processes including data loading, querying and analysis.
2. SAP BW/4HANA, also known as BW4 or B4, is The next generation logical data warehouse (LDW) system.
3. It is designed to be a simplified, high-performance, open platform for historic and legacy enterprise data.
4. It is a logical successor both for SAP BW customers, and for traditional EDW customers running Teradata, Netezza, Oracle and IBM DB2.
How SAP BW/4HANA customers will benefit..?
SAP BW4HANA can provide end-to-end data management which can run live digital business through the automatic generation of views (Attribute View, Analytical View & Calculation view) in SAP HANA that combine SQL data logic and application data taken directly from SAP S/4HANA.
Ø High performance through advanced technology which is in-memory Analytics and the Algorithm pushdown.
Ø Faster designing of application development with a fully redesigned user interface for enhanced data flow modeling.
Ø It will reduced data management and storage costs through automatic distribution of multi-temperature data.
Ø We can Easy transition existing customers with SAP Business Warehouse application to SAP BW/4HANA through utility features.
What are the main features of SAP BW/4HANA?
One thing to bear in mind is that SAP took a deliberate strategy with SAP BW/4HANA: announce the product and the vision, and deliver product immediately.
Ø Code simplification, so the product is leaner and meaner.
Ø The new modeling tools are in the initial release.
Ø The Simplified Object Model is delivered, so BW and HANA native schemas are interchangeable.
Ø The Advanced Multi-Temperature Management delivered is complete, so older data can be aged out to less expensive storage and still be updated.
Ø Pushdown of complex EDW algorithms into the HANA database, instead of running in an application tier
The benefits of this approach are the customers have a clear view of strategy and roadmap. They can immediately start the work to prepare for BW/4HANA and get on the initial release.
Do you need SAP BW/4HANA if you have SAP S/4HANA?
SAP BW was originally designed due to deficiencies in the Oracle database that meant it was not well suited to reporting on transactional data. SAP customers implemented BW so they could take load off the transactional system and harmonize data.
It later grew into an EDW, where data from many other systems was consolidated into one place.
SAP S/4HANA pushes operational reporting back into the transactional system where it belongs and integrates it with the Fiori User Experience so customers have aggregated data available on demand.
However, SAP S/4HANA is not designed to be a Logical Data Warehouse for data from many systems, or as the location to store long-term historic data.
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In the Current competitive world and with the increasing new demands like real-time, flexible analytics and data everywhere coming in different source systems like Social Media, Sensors, Legacy systems etc..,. there will be always a need of modern data warehouse which is SAP BW4/HANA . BW4/HANA is natively written on HANA with Modern Interface and High Performance.
With the new innovation of SAP BW4HANA there is a drastic reduction in the number of object types.
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Evolution of SAP's data Warehouse(SAP BW4HANA) over the years shared by SAP below:
SAP BW/4HANA is an evolution of SAP BW, that is completely tailored and optimized to SAP HANA. SAP BW/4HANA code can only run's on SAP HANA. It is especially important as it extends into the world of big data via SAP HANA VORA, an asset that will be heavily used by BW/4HANA.
What's New with SAP BW4HANA.?
Design principles?
Design principles?
In the Current competitive world and with the increasing new demands like real-time, flexible analytics and data everywhere coming in different source systems like Social Media, Sensors, Legacy systems etc..,. there will be always a need of modern data warehouse which is SAP BW4/HANA . BW4/HANA is natively written on HANA with Modern Interface and High Performance.
(a) Simplification of Data Flow:
With the new innovation of SAP BW4HANA there is a drastic reduction in the number of object types.
Ø All the Objects like Multi-provider, Info-set and Composite Provider are replaced with New Composite Provider.
Ø Virtual Provider & Transient Provider is replaced with Open DSO View
Ø Info-cube, DSO (Standard & Advanced ),Hybrid Provider and PSA Table is replaced with ADSO(Advance Datastore Object)
Ø Info Objects remains the same with new enhancements.
SAP BW4HANA image shared below:
Due to the decrease of persistence layer it will solve many consistency issues, which further result in reduction of layers, total memory used, total lines of code and ultimately reduction in TCO.
In addition it also supports advanced multi-temperature management option with which BW4HANA knows the usage of data in the tables and categorizes them accordingly i.e. hot store (active data ) and warm store ( not so active data) to effectively utilize the memory as shown by SAP below:
(b) Integration:
With the New feature SAP BW4/HANA Models can be exposed as HANA views in HANA system and also vice-versa HANA Models can be Exposed to SAP BW Syste. With these capabilities, it means there is no need to replicate the data between the systems and supports any native SQL data warehousing approach which is very important considering customers comprising users and engineers from different SQL backgrounds to ease the usage of BW4/HANA.
(c) Modern UX in SAP BW4HANA:
New Modern UI's to simplify the access for every user.
Below is the UI's Picture shown below:
In UI's its ease of connect with HADOOP and flexibly changing the data model to gain additional insights of data to have a better marketing campaign to make business better. By Using SAP HANA Vora we can connect to HADOOP Systems.
High Performance in BW4/HANA is always given top priority with unified data load management approach and supporting high frequent data loads in real-time. The SQL pushdown to SAP HANA and also to minimize unnecessary overheads to the performance while trying to connect with data on Hadoop to HANA were taken care in BW4/HANA
(d) High Performance Improvement: