Business Case for the BI4 Semantic layer and Web Intelligence

Business Case for the BI4 Semantic layer and Web Intelligence on SAP HANA Leverage the power of the SAP BI4 semantic layer to create optimal analytic queries on SAP HANA Authors: Didier Mazoué, Romaric Sokhan (SAP)

Business Case for the BI4 Semantic layer and Web Intelligence on SAP HANA

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREREQUISITES .............................................................................................................................................. 3

SCENARIO ........................................................................................................................................................ 4 End users Requirements ................................................................................................................................ 4

CREATING YOUR UNIVERSE ON HANA VIEWS .......................................................................................... 4

CREATE A UNIVERSE CONTEXT FOR EACH HANA VIEW. ...................................................................... 14

SET UP AGGREGATE AWARENESS TO ENABLE AD-HOC NAVIGATION ON HANA VIEWS ............... 18

TEST YOUR AD-HOC MULTI-FLOW QUERIES............................................................................................ 21

WEB INTELLIGENCE ANALYTICAL REPORTING ON TOP OF YOUR HANA UNIVERSE ....................... 26

CONFIGURING THE UNIVERSE TO LEVERAGE WEBINTELLIGENCE ANALYTIC CAPABILITIES ON SAP HANA ...................................................................................................................................................... 28

(OPTIONAL) ADDING A VISUALIZATION TO YOUR HANA-OPTIMIZED WEB INTELLIGENCE REPORT ......................................................................................................................................................................... 35


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Your corporation has just deployed SAP HANA. Several HANA CO-PA cubes (actual, planned data

etc…) have been modelled inside HANA studio and answers to specific business questions can be

spread over several of cubes. You will use SAP BI4 Information Design Tool to enable your Web

Intelligence end users to perform ad-hoc analytical reporting on top of these HANA cubes.

PREREQUISITES

SAP Customer Solution Adoption KHNC Best Practices for Universe Modeling and Web Intelligence Reporting against HANA - Webinar Replay http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-33221

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-33199

Best Practices: Creating a universe on SAP HANA http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-20569

WebIntelligence on SAP HANA Best Practices http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-30614

Applies to: This article applies to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 (from SP2) and SAP HANA 1.0 (and its service packs up to SPS5)






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SCENARIO

End users Requirements

The end users initial requirements are as follows:

Ability to create ad-hoc reports in order to analyse actual and planned data across the

company.

Being able to perform flexible, real time and performing data analysis on top of HANA.

They want to make sure to have a “single version of the truth” for their reports but still want

to be autonomous enough to avoid relying too much on IT.

The BI tool that has been chosen will be SAP BI 4.0 Web Intelligence

Your goal, as a Business Intelligence model designer is to facilitate the access of the vast amount

of information stored in HANA to your end users. You will use BI 4.0 Information Design Tool (IDT)

to design a Universe on top of HANA cubes that meets the requirements.

However you are aware of some constraints when designing Universes on top of HANA:

It is not recommended to join HANA views inside the Universe for performance reasons.

For flexible ad-hoc reporting, you need to design your Universe to generate optimal queries

depending on end users query selection.

Once your Universe on HANA is designed, you will create 2 Web Intelligence reports: one standard report and 1 report optimized for HANA. CREATING YOUR UNIVERSE ON HANA VIEWS

Start Information Design Tool

Select the project named AP262. You will notice a HANA connection already created named ANB.cnx.

Right-click on the project AP262 and create a new Data Foundation that you can name HANACOPA


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Select Single Source as a Data Foundation Type

Select the HANA connection ANB.cnx


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On the left hand side of the Data Foundation, unfold the connection ANB.cnx and the _SYS_BIC schema.

Note: The _SYS_BIC schema contains all the HANA views created in the HANA system.

You can now use the filter button to display only the Analytic Views that are available in HANA.

Drag and drop 2 HANA views named copa/ACTUAL and copa/PLAN.

Save the Data Foundation.

Right click on the AP263 folder, select “NEW” and select “Business Layer”. :

Select the Relational Data Foundation


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Name it HANA COPA BL

Select the Data Foundation HANACOPA.dfx that you just created by clicking the icon “...”

Uncheck “Automatically create folders and objects” and click “Finish”

The Business Layer is generated. Right click on your “HANA COPA BL.blx” and select “New” and “Folder”


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Create 2 folders called: Actuals, Budget. You can rename your folder name by pressing “F2”

Click on the HANA COPA BL.blx, go to the Query Options tab (on the right hand), uncheck “Limit size of result set to”

Drag and drop the same fields from the Data Foundation to the Business Layer as in the screenshot and the mapping table below : you can find the list of objects in the next page


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You will have to turn the values inside the Actuals and Budget folder into sun

Dimensions objects mapping. Please rename the following objects and objects mapping Note : You can use the fields coming from either ACTUAL or PLAN because they have common names

Field

Description

Type

GJAHR Fiscal Year Dimension

LAND1.description Country Dimension

REGIO Region Dimension

ORT01 City Dimension


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KUNNR description Customer Name Dimension

MATNR.description Product Name Dimension

Actuals and Budget measures objects mapping. Please rename the following objects and objects mapping and drag the objects to the relevant folders.

Field

Description

Type Drag and drop to folder

ACTUAL

"copa/ACTUAL"."VV010" Gross Revenue Measure (SUM) Actuals

"copa/ACTUAL"."VV960" Other Expenses Measure (SUM) Actuals

"copa/ACTUAL"."VV290" Production Variance Measure (SUM) Actuals

"copa/ACTUAL"."VV070" Sales Deduction Measure (SUM) Actuals

"copa/ACTUAL"."VV140" Cost of Goods Sold Measure (SUM) Actuals

"copa/ACTUAL"."VVIQT" Invoiced Quantity Measure (SUM) Actuals

PLAN

"copa/PLAN"."VV010001" B Gross Revenue Measure (SUM) Budget

"copa/PLAN"."VV290001" B Production Variance Measure (SUM) Budget

"copa/PLAN"."VV070001" B Sales Deduction Measure (SUM) Budget

"copa/PLAN"."VV960001" B Other Expenses Measure (SUM) Budget

"copa/PLAN"."VVIQT001" B Invoiced Quantity Measure (SUM) Budget

"copa/PLAN"."VV140001" B Costs of Goods Sold Measure (SUM) Budget


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At this stage the Business Layer should look like this

You are going to test some queries:

Click on Queries tab as indicated in the picture above’.

And select the Insert Query icon


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In the query panel select the dimension Fiscal year and the measure Gross Revenue from the Actuals folder.

Click on “Refresh” button

The query results should appear in the Result set pane at the bottom of the Query Panel.

Now, add another measure from the Budget folder, called B Gross Revenue and click on “Refresh” button “

You will notice an error while executing the query (we will understand and fix it in the next steps)


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You are now going to analyse what went wrong. By clicking on View script, you will notice that 2 queries have been generated because you selected 2 measures from 2 different HANA views. The semantic layer attempted to execute the 2 queries separately and merge the results in a Full Outer Join. By clicking on each query, you’ll be able to analyse the SQL statement that has been sent.

The Query #1 looks fine: in query the field GJAHR along with the measure VV010 (e.g., is Gross Revenue) with a SUM aggregation

The FROM clause include the ACTUAL HANA view which is correct.

The Query#2 looks erroneous: the SELECT statement looks fine but the FROM clause includes the ACTUAL HANA view but it should have included only the PLAN view.

Click on OK and again on “OK” in order to Save and Exit the Query Panel.


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CREATE A UNIVERSE CONTEXT FOR EACH HANA VIEW.

In order to enable ad-hoc reporting on top of HANA data, you will need to configure your Universe to generate optimal SQL queries against HANA views. You will need to generate a context for each HANA view. A context is generally used to resolve loops when a universe contains several fact tables. When properly implemented, contexts will prevent Fan Traps and Chasm Traps from returning incorrect results. If a user runs a query which includes objects from two different contexts, Web Intelligence will generate two separate SQL statements, and join the results on the common dimensions after results have been retrieved. In order to create contexts on each HANA view, you need to create a self-join for each view.

Select the HANACOPA.dfx tab and right-click on any dimension field from the ACTUAL HANA view (e.g. GJAHR) and select Insert Filter…

You will notice the self-join create in the Join Expression. Click OK to validate it.


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Do the same operation as above but with the PLAN HANA view (e.g. KDGRP)

Now that your joins are created you can create and configure your contexts.


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Select the Aliases and Contexts pane (in the bottom of the page)

In the Aliases and Contexts pane click on the add context icon and create 2 contexts for each fact table, Actual and Budget

Select the Actuals Context you just created and select the join from the relevant fact table/HANA view

ACTUAL. Once the join is selected, the green check icon appears.


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For the Budget context, select the join from the relevant fact table/HANA view PLAN. Once the join is selected, the green check icon appears.

Your Data Foundation is now configured to leverage contexts. As end users can select dimensions and measures coming from different HANA views you have to authorize the query technique to work with more than one context but also you have to avoid cartesian products. So the following data foundation parameters must be set:

Parameter Position

Allow Cartesian products OFF

Multiple SQL statements for each context ON

To display the data foundation parameters list,

Click on the data foundation tab, then select the data foundation node as in the screenshot below

Now save the data foundation.


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SET UP AGGREGATE AWARENESS TO ENABLE AD-HOC NAVIGATION ON HANA VIEWS

Now you need to configure your Business Layer to enable your users to navigate transparently throughout both HANA views. In order to perform this, we will use the Universe function @aggregate_aware to navigate between the ACTUAL and PLAN views. The contexts created previously will ensure that the right HANA view is used when you are selecting dimensions and measures.

Select your Business Layer : the HANA_COPA_BL.blx and the Select the “Business Layer” pane.

In your business Layer select the dimension “Fiscal Year” and select the “SQL Assistant”

You need to modify the SQL expression by adding a “@aggregate_aware” function as describe below.

Note: if you try to validate the SQL expression, you might encounter an “Invalid Expression” error. You can ignore it by clicking on “Close”

Repeat the same steps for all dimensions :

Dimension

Updated SELECT with @aggregate_aware

Fiscal Year @Aggregate_Aware("_SYS_BIC"."copa/ACTUAL"."GJAHR","_SYS_BIC"."copa/PLAN"."GJAHR")

Country @Aggregate_Aware("_SYS_BIC"."copa/ACTUAL"."LAND1.description","_SYS_BIC"."copa/PLAN"."LAND1.description")

Region @Aggregate_Aware("_SYS_BIC"."copa/ACTUAL"."REGIO","_SYS_BIC"."copa/PLAN"."REGIO")

City @Aggregate_Aware("_SYS_BIC"."copa/ACTUAL"."ORT01","_SYS_BIC"."copa/PLAN"."ORT01")

Customer Name

@Aggregate_Aware("_SYS_BIC"."copa/ACTUAL"."KUNNR.description","_SYS_BIC"."copa/PLAN"."KUNNR.description")


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Product Name @Aggregate_Aware("_SYS_BIC"."copa/ACTUAL"."MATNR.description","_SYS_BIC"."copa/PLAN"."MATNR.description")

Once your dimensions have been configured for aggregate awareness, you need to define the incompatibilities between objects. For example, the ACTUAL HANA view should not be querying measures from the PLAN view otherwise you will get an SQL error.

Save your Business Layer by clicking the save icon in the IDT toolbars.

In the IDT toolbar, select Actions from the IDT Menu Bar and click on Set Aggregate Navigation

You can manually apply the incompatibilities between objects and tables/views, but this operation can be time consuming so Information Design Tool provides an automatic way to do it. Incompatibilities: automatic operation

Just click on the button in the Navigate Aggregation panel: all incompatibilities will be automatically set.

In order to come back to the manual incompatibilities mode uncheck the “Incompatible Objects only”


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Incompatibilities: manual operation

Click on copa/ACTUAL view and select the entire Budget folder. All the measures from this folder should be selected

Click on copa/PLAN table and select the entire Actuals folder. All the measures from this folder should be selected

Click “OK” to close the “Aggregation Navigation” Windows

Save your Business Layer by clicking the save icon in the IDT toolbar.


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TEST YOUR AD-HOC MULTI-FLOW QUERIES

Click on the “Queries” button (in the bottom of IDT) in order to come back to the query you saved previously

Select your “Query” and click on “Edit Query”

Select “View Script”


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Select the “Query#1”, you can notice that the Query#1 is still good, but you can notice that the self join has been pushed into the SQL statement.

Query#1 Before Query#1 Now

Select the “Query#2”

The Query#2 is now fixed: the FROM clause only contains the PLAN view thanks to the self join created on it.

Query#2 Before Query#2 Now


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You can now refresh the query by clicking the refresh button. The result set has been generated for Fiscal Year / Gross Revenue and B Gross Revenue and merged into a single table.

Click OK to save and exit the Query Panel


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Save your Business Layer if it is not already saved

Right click on your HANA_COPA_BL.blx , select Publish and To a Local Folder

Skip “Check Universe Integrity” by clicking on the Next> button

Select a Folder Path:

Browse the file system from student>App Data>Roaming>SAP BusinessObjects>Universes Note: Export your BLX in the Universes folder and not in the other subfolders “@....”


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Click “Finish” and “Close “


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WEB INTELLIGENCE ANALYTICAL REPORTING ON TOP OF YOUR HANA UNIVERSE

Start Web Intelligence

You don’t need to be log into the BI4 system so you don’t need to enter login and password

In New Document, select More… from the Universe section.

Select the universe you created and published locally and click “Select”


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Drag and drop the dimension Fiscal year and all the measures from folder Actuals and Budget folder

Click on “Run query” , your report should be generated

From the Web Intelligence toolbar, click on the “Save” icon and name it “Actual vs Planned per year”

Close your report


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CONFIGURING THE UNIVERSE TO LEVERAGE WEBINTELLIGENCE ANALYTIC CAPABILITIES ON SAP HANA

You’ll now configure the Universe in order to enable drill-down reporting on top of your CO-PA views.

Go back to Information Design Tool and the HANACOPA.blx Business Layer

Select Navigation Paths at the bottom of the left hand pane of the Business Layer

Select the Custom radio button and add a Navigation Path by clicking on the icon

Click on Add button: a popup will allow you to select the drill down dimensions

Select all the dimensions and add them into the Navigation Path

The dimensions should already be stacked in the right drill-down order:


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Save your Business Layer and Publish it again into the same local folder

Right click on your HANA_COPA_BL.blx , select Publish and to a Local Folder

Skip “Check Universe Integrity” by clicking the Next> button

Keep the previous path

Click on “Finish” and “Yes” in order to overwrite the current universe.

Click on “Close”

Go back to Web Intelligence

Re-open the report you previously saved, named “Actual vs Planned per year”

Go to “Data Access”, “Edit” Edit the “Query” and select “Display by Navigation Paths” button

And click on “Run the Query”

In the Analysis tab, click on Drill button from the Interact sub-tab.


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By clicking on “Fiscal Year”, you will now drill down in the table from Fiscal Year to the next level until Product Name as defined in the Business Layer Navigation Path.

The first navigation path level is Country

Drill down from Country to Region

Drill down from Region to City

Drill down from City to Customer Name


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Drill down from Customer Name to Product Name

Once you reached the Product Name level, click on Data at the top-right corner

Note: You’ll notice that in order to display the last drill level, Web Intelligence had to retrieve several thousands of rows between HANA and its local microcube ((the microcube is data cache of the Web Intelligence document). It took several seconds in order to execute and fetch the data locally.

In this scenario, the data is preloaded in the microcube which is not the best way to leverage HANA capabilities (pushing calculations down to the database and retrieve only the results).

Save your document. Next, we will create another document designed for HANA for comparison purposes.


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Click on New

Select No Data Source

In the Properties tab, select Document

In the Document Summary options, check “Use Query Drill” and click “OK”

Note: The Query Drill operation will send a new query to the database each time a user performs a drill action. As SAP HANA executes queries very fast, the user has instant access to "live" data each time he drills down or up. This feature helps reducing the amount of data going through the network by pushing down the calculation to SAP HANA and retrieving only the results into the microcube.

In the Data Access > Data Providers tab, select a new Universe Data Provider


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Select the Universe you created and repeat the steps to create the same report

Select dimension Fiscal Year and measures from Actuals and Budget folders and Run your Query


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In the Analysis tab, click on Drill button from the Interact sub-tab.

Drill down from Fiscal Year to Product Name (the 4 levels)

Try to follow the same drill path as your previously created document.

Click on the Data button at the top-right corner

Notice the performance Duration now down to 1 second. The amount of rows is now minimal.


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(OPTIONAL) ADDING A VISUALIZATION TO YOUR HANA-OPTIMIZED WEB INTELLIGENCE REPORT

You are now going to add a visualization chart to your report. The goal is to be able to synchronize your drill actions and update the chart dynamically.

At the top-right corner of Web Intelligence, click on then select « Options »

In the left hand menu, select Drill and select the “Synchronize drill on report blocks” checkbox

In the report, select the vertical table, do a right-click and select Copy


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Find another free area in the report, right click and select Paste

A copy of the vertical table should be pasted in the report. You should have 2 visible table elements

Right-click on the table you just pasted and select “Turn Into” and Pie Chart

Right-click on the Pie Chart you created and select “Format Chart” and in the Global General section uncheck “Show dimension values with empty measure values”

Click “OK”

You can now navigate through your report with a pie chart synchronized with your drill actions


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END OF SCENARIO

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