SAP BW – Data Warehousing Service of SAP

One of the most optimized data warehousing services based on the SAP NetWeaver ABAP platform is the SAP Business Warehouse. Data that is generated on SAP and non-SAP applications are collected, transformed, and stored in the data warehouse and is available for reporting, business intelligence, and analytics together with third-party software. Programmers also use the SAP Business Warehouse as a platform to create and modify data warehouses, carry out data management activities, and generate reports for advanced business analytics.

The SAP Business Warehouse is a unique model-driven environment and hence stands apart from other data warehousing platforms. This means that a developer can use the interface of the Business Warehouse to define the flow of data and the storage in a data warehousing ecosystem. BW also helps in the execution of the processes of data ingestion, data transformation, and storage, effectively handling the model on the database. This model of the SAP Business Warehouse has gained a lot in popularity in the current cloud-based business environment.

Additionally, it is possible for developers to log into the SAP GUI and use RSA1 and similar codes of transactions to build solutions for data warehouses. In comparison, other processes use SQL and stored procedures in their database management system.

In recent times, the focus of the SAP Business Warehouse has seen a move towards open-source Eclipse and web-based tools based on the SAP Fiori design language. The tools have in-built models that are optimized for implementation on a development system that is tested and moved to quality assurance and production platforms.

Before the launch of the SAP Business Warehouse, BW was database inclined and operated on the SAP NetWeaver ABAP platform. Hence, it complemented all the databases supported by NetWeaver like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and IBM DB2. Now, SAP Business Warehouse still operates on the ABAP platform but requires the use of the SAP HANA database. However, many businesses continue to use the BW 7.5 on non-HANA databases.

SAP Business Warehouse has its advantages and drawbacks. On the positive side, users have flexibility to make changes as required to the platform as there is almost negligible development work needed. Further, by using in-memory technologies, it is possible to increase the performance of the SAP BW, especially where demanding scenarios with unpredictable query types, high volumes of data, and high query frequency and complex calculations need to be processed. If there is a need to persist database data for a BW object, it can be done faster by storing this data in the SAP Business Warehouse Accelerator.

On the other hand, being a proprietary toolkit, developers specialized in this field are hard to come by.

SAP Business Warehouse continues to evolve and support additional data sources while offering modeling features like data aging and spatial and predictive processing.