Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 1 Integrating 3 Integrating 3 rd rd Party Tools with Party Tools with SAP Business SAP Business Information Information Warehouse Warehouse Naeem Hashmi Chief Technology Officer Information Frameworks Tel: 603-432-4550 Cell: 603-661-6820 Email: [email protected]http://infoframeworks.com SAP GO-Live Call April 11, 2002
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Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 1
Integrating 3Integrating 3rdrd Party Party Tools withTools withSAP Business SAP Business Information WarehouseInformation Warehouse
• Strengths:– Custom application development for building specialized views of information– Multiple integration points with SAP R/3 BAPIs and SAP BW ODBO– Application integration with SAP SEM for write-back and SAP R/3 via RFC (NC*)
• Weaknesses:– No production reporting or out-of-the-box tool for business users– Small company size and low visibility in North America
* NC = Not Certified
BW20.SCM
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 11
Reporting Tool Profile: Brio Technology
• Company:– Santa Clara, California-based company known for providing easy-to-use tools
• Certification:– R/3 4.0, 3.1 – Brio.Report for SAP R/3 Release 1.0, BAPIs for Brio.Report– BW-ODB 1.2 – Brio.Enterprise for SAP BW– BW-ODB 2.0 – Brio.Enterprise for SAP BW
• Strengths:– Good SAP R/3 operational reporting and pixel-level formatting– Usability of Brio.Enterprise for manipulation and formatting
• Weaknesses:– Separate products, architecture, and user interfaces for SAP R/3 and SAP BW– Limited BW support for embedding hierarchies to drill, pivot, and perform
ranking and top/bottom analysis
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 12
Reporting Tool Profile: Business Objects
• Company:– Paris, France-based company known for its metadata product
BusinessObjects Universe and an integrated user interface for reporting and analysis
• Strengths:– Integrated reporting and analysis product for BW via ODBO– Specialized query interface, BusinessQuery, for supporting BW– Good reporting and publishing of information to many users
• Weaknesses:– Outdated rapid deployment templates (RDT) to R/3 RDBMS via metadata– Separate BusinessQuery product cost on top of base product– No support for SAP R/3 reporting
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Reporting Tool Profile: Cognos
• Company:– Ottawa-based (Ontario, Canada) company known for its best-of-breed tools
e-Applications for SAP, HeadStart for SAP – OLTP (NC*) & BW
• Certification:– BW-ODB 1.2 – Cognos PPDS ODBO Interface for SAP BW Release 1.0– BW-ODB 2.0 – Cognos PPDS ODBO Interface for SAP BW Release 1.0
• Strengths:– Established breadth of functionality from ETL, models, reporting & analysis, and
applications– Strong analysis and mobile capabilities via PowerPlay– Good visualization and customization capabilities via Visualizer
• Weaknesses:– Limited reporting functionality via PowerPlay– Must build external marts or catalogs via HeadStart for Impromptu– Direct Database Access Against SAP R/3 and BW
* NC = Not Certified
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 14
Reporting Tool Profile: Crystal Decisions
• Company:– Vancouver-based (British Columbia, Canada) company known for its Crystal
Reports and easy report creation and distribution• Products:
– Good integration with mySAP Workplace, SAP R/3, and BW for operational and enterprise reporting and ad-hoc analysis
– Strong operational and BW reporting, Strong Partner with PeopleSoft’s EPM• Weaknesses:
– Minimal direct sales and consulting presence for implementations– Limited interactive analysis for BW – coming in Crystal Analysis
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Reporting Tool Profile: Information Builders
• Company:– New York City-based company known for its data integration and
reporting technology for automating large and complex deployments
• Products:– WebFOCUS, Business Intelligence Dashboard, Maintain,
ReportCaster, Two-Way Email, Reporting Agent, Power Reporter, Managed Reporter, i-vision for Financial Analysis, i-vision for HR Analysis, i-vision for Sales and Distribution Analysis
• Certification:– BW-ODB 2.0 – WebFOCUS for SAP Release 4.3
• Strengths:– Operational and enterprise reporting for SAP R/3 and SAP BW– i-vision reporting solutions for SAP R/3 and BW– Performance and scalability for broad production/enterprise
reporting
• Weaknesses:– Limited ad-hoc reporting and analysis – Lack of usability for interactive report analysis
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 16
Vendor/Tool Profile: PolyVista
• Company:– Houston -based company a new kid on the block with amazing
next generation of Integrated OLAM, OLAP and Visualization tool to quickly analyze huge data volumes.
• Products:– PolyVista 1.2
• Certification:– None
• Strengths:– Strategic data analysis – data mining– OLAM, OLAP, and Visualization– Performance and scalability to handle vary large data volumes
• Weaknesses:– Limited to Microsoft OLAP environment– Not a data access and query tool– No SAP BW API certification
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 17
Reporting Tools – Strengths & Weaknesses
ArcPlan
Cognos
Vendors Strengths
Brio Technology
Business Objects
Crystal Decisions
Information Builders
Weaknesses• Custom application development• Integration with BAPI and ODBO• Integration with SEM for write-back
• Operational reporting for SAP R/3• Usability of Brio.Enterprise for
manipulation and formatting
• Integrated reporting and analysis• Specialized query interface• Publishing information to users
• Complete ETL, mart, tools• Strong analysis and mobile abilities• Good visualization and customization
• Integration – Workplace, BW, R/3• Operational and BW reporting
• Operational and BW reporting• i-vision solutions for R/3 and BW• Scalability and performance
• Limited reporting and ad-hoc analysis• Low visibility and small company size
in North America
• Separate product for SAP R/3 and BW• Limited interactive analysis for BW
• Outdated Rapid deployment template for SAP• Additional cost for BusinessQuery• No SAP R/3 reporting
• Limited reporting via PowerPlay• External marts/catalogs needed for reporting• External marts needed for applications
• Minimal direct sales and consulting presence
• Limited interactive analysis for BW
• Limited ad-hoc reporting• Lack of usability for interactive report
analysis
PolyVista • Very Strategic and Analytic• Scalability and performance• Dynamic Visualization
• Limited to Microsoft OLAP Platform• Limited Ad-hoc or production
reporting
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 18
SAP Certification and Validation for Integration
• The certification and validation process is critical to ensuring the ability of third-party products to perform SAP R/3 reporting
• SAP provides certification and validation at integration points:– Interface Certification: Development and testing of third-party
software vendors’ interfaces. Available for BW-ODB and WP-WAI*.– Interface Validation: Where certification is not available, special
business and technical validation of third-party software vendors’ interfaces. Available for RFC/BAPI.
• Leveraging SAP documents to further investigate third-party integration points and certification and validation:
– OLAP BAPI for BW 2.0B – April 2000– OLAP ODBO for BW 2.0B – 2000– OLAP ODBO for BW 1.2B – 1998– Business Object Repository Programming Interface 3.0D & 4.0B –
1998– Workplace Certification 2.1 – 2000
* Workplace - Web Application Integration (WP-WAI)
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 19
Vendor Certification by SAP System and Interface
SAP Business
Information Warehouse
BW-ODB
BW-OBI*
ArcPlan
Cognos
InterfaceCertification Vendors Products/Interface Name
dynaSight 3.0
Brio Technology
Business Objects
Comshare
Crystal Decisions
ESRI
Information Builders
ArcPlan
MIS
SAS
Viador
Crystal Decisions
Brio Technology
SAP
Brio.Enterprise for SAP BW
BW Connect 5.1.1
PPDS ODBO for BW Release 1.0
Decision 2.5.1
Crystal Enterprise mySAP 2.0
ESRI Connect Release 1.0
WebFOCUS for SAP Release 4.3
OnVision & Alea 3.7 – 1.2
Enterprise Guide Release 1.2
E-Portal Suite 6.0
dynaSight
Brio.Report for SAP R/3 Release 1.0
Crystal Enterprise mySAP 2.0
RFC/BAPI
WP-WAIWorkplace
SAP R/3
2.0
2.0
2.0
2.0
1.2
2.0
2.0
2.0
2.0
1.2
2.0
4.0/3.1
2.1
SAP = Latest certification interface testedInformation as of 8/15/01
3.6-4.6
* Business Information Warehouse - OLAP BAPIs (BW-OBI)
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Crystal Decisions – Business Content
Start_demo.exeCrystal Reports & BW 3.0x
Source: SAP
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 21
PolyVista
Active Visualization
OLAPOLAM
Schema
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 22
3rd Party Tools Integration Issues
• Product Architecture and IT Culture– 3rd Party BI Tools are designed keeping SQL Interfaces
in mind and not API centric. This is a big problem.– IT Environment: Companies have established BI
standards based on tools and solution and can’t think beyond DBMS tables.
• Immature ODBO Standard– Primarily based on MS OLAP Server. No future
enhancement committee on ODBO specs.
• Performance– 3rd Party Tools have their own Data Management
Layers to manage entire BI environment – while BW has its own - no pass through capability.
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 23
3rd Party Tools Integration Issues
• Vendors: Can’t justify ROI for improving BW Integration issues – BW user community is not large enough that warrants investment
• Vendors not interested in doing more than certifying their products against BW due to present SAP and BI tools OEM relationships
• SAP Data Access Strategy: API only – No direct database access
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 24
So what we do now?
• Forcing SAP to allow BW DBMS level access is not going to work
• Integrating 3rd Party Tools with BW has to do with your Information Delivery Architecture rather to force fit a tool with BW
• If BW is in your long term strategy, define a balanced Information Delivery strategy– Balance Traditional DW and BW usage– Exploit Hub and Spoke Services (BW3.0B) to build
traditional DBMS data marts for 3rd Party tools data access
• Work with SAP to enhance Hub& Spoke services to address 3rd Party data access issues, for example, flattening of hierarchies.
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 25
SAP BW - 3rd Party BI Tools:An Integrated approach
• Integrate 3rd Party tools and BW at the Portal Level through the use of iViews
• Exploit SAP Portal’s unification and aggregation services to provide a Tool agnostic information access environment
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 26
Q&A
• Which 3rd Party BI products are you using?
• What are the major issues that you are facing when using these tools against BW?
• Who are the end-users?
• What do you expect from SAP on 3rd Party BI tools Integration?