How to - Generate Test Data for BPC

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© 2010 SAP AG 1

How To… Generate Test Data for

SAP BusinessObjects Planning and

Consolidation

Applies to:

SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation for NetWeaver 7.0 SP03 and higher.

SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation for NetWeaver 7.5 SP01 and higher.

SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation for Microsoft 7.0 SP03 and higher.

SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation for Microsoft 7.5 SP01 and higher.

For more information, visit the Enterprise Performance Management homepage.

Summary

During the test design phase of the software life cycle, with applications such as SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation (BPC), it can be necessary to generate large volumes of test data to ensure the application will meet the business user’s key performance indicators (KPIs) in a production environment. The BPC DataGenerator tool, included with this How-To Guide, provides one approach to quickly generate test data to import into a BPC application.

Author: Erik Lemen

Company: SAP Canada, Inc.

Created on: 21 February 2011

Author Bio

Erik Lemen has been working with and supporting SAP Technologies since 2009. He has experience supporting both the SAP BusinessObjects Business Planning and Consolidation for the Microsoft platform and SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation product for the NetWeaver platform. He is currently employed in the SAP Vancouver, Canada Lab and previously has previously worked with BusinessObjects Enterprise, and also as a C# developer. His hobbies include rock climbing and playing chess.

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/bpx-epm

How To… Generate Test data for SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation


© 2010 SAP AG 2

Table of Contents

Business Scenario .............................................................................................................................................. 3

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 3

Prerequisites ....................................................................................................................................................... 3

Installing BPC DataGenerator ............................................................................................................................ 3

Installation Welcome Screen .......................................................................................................................... 3

Select Installation Folder ................................................................................................................................. 4

Confirm Installation Options ............................................................................................................................ 4

Installation Complete ....................................................................................................................................... 5

Running BPC DataGenerator ............................................................................................................................. 6

Welcome Screen ............................................................................................................................................. 6

Dimension Selection ....................................................................................................................................... 6

Member Selection ........................................................................................................................................... 7

Output Options ................................................................................................................................................ 7 Output file location ....................................................................................................................................................... 8

Signed data values ...................................................................................................................................................... 8

Member Intersections .................................................................................................................................................. 9

Maximum rows ........................................................................................................................................................... 10

Random Seed Options ............................................................................................................................................... 10

Summary ....................................................................................................................................................... 11

Test Cases ........................................................................................................................................................ 13

Scenario 1 – single file, all sequential member intersections, fixed data values .......................................... 13

Scenario 2 – single file, all sequential member intersections, random data values ..................................... 16

Scenario 3 – multiple files, all sequential member intersections, fixed data values ..................................... 19

Scenario 4 – single file, subset of sequential member intersections, fixed data values ............................... 22

Scenario 5 – single file, subset of sequential member intersections, random data values .......................... 25

Scenario 6 – multiple files, all random member intersections, random data values ..................................... 28

Appendix ........................................................................................................................................................... 31

Appendix A – BPC DataGenerator installation file ........................................................................................ 31

Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 32

Copyright........................................................................................................................................................... 33



© 2010 SAP AG 3

Business Scenario

When designing and creating testing plans, testing scripts and test scenarios it is often not feasible to test an application against actual production data. This could be due to a variety of reasons, such as: the production data does not yet exist; the production data is sensitive and not available to the quality assurance (QA) testers; the production data is physically not accessible to the test server networks.

When production data is not available, a common approach is to test the software application against test data. One way to populate a BPC application with data is to use the Import Transactional Data Data Manager package to upload files containing comma-separated values.

Introduction

This How-To guide outlines how install the BPCDataGenerator tool, as well as step-by-step instructions showing how to use it to create comma-separated value (.csv) files for use with the BPC Import Transactional data, Data Manager package. The BPC DataGenerator tool is a Microsoft Windows application developed for version 2.0 of the .NET framework.

Prerequisites

Required software prerequisites for installing BPC DataGenerator tool:

Microsoft .NET framework version 2.0, or later

Required/recommended expertise or prior knowledge:

SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 7.5 Microsoft Office client, version for SAP NetWeaver or Microsoft.

SAP BusinessObjects Import Transactional data, Data Manager package.

Installing BPC DataGenerator

On a machine with the BPC client installed, run the MSI Windows Installer package, BPCDataGenerator.msi, from Appendix A to install the executable files to run the BPC DataGenerator tool.

The following steps and screenshots walkthrough the installation:

Installation Welcome Screen

After executing the BPCDataGenerator.msi, the Setup Wizard is displayed:

Click the “Next>” button. The Select Installation Folder screen is displayed.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856eacb-4362-4b0d-8edd-aab15c5e04f5&displaylang=en



© 2010 SAP AG 4

Select Installation Folder

Choose a folder to install the BPC DataGenerator tool.

Click the “Next>” button. The Confirm Installation screen is displayed.

Confirm Installation Options

Confirm that the installation is ready to begin.

Click the “Next>” button. The installation will begin.



© 2010 SAP AG 5

Installation Complete

After a few moments the installation will complete.

Click the “Close” button to exit the Windows Installation package.

The BPC DataGenerator tool is now installed.

Note: This tool is not officially supported by SAP and is provided solely for the purposes of knowledge sharing.

Continue to the Running BPC DataGenerator section for screenshots walking through how to use this tool.



© 2010 SAP AG 6

Running BPC DataGenerator

After installing the BPC DataGenerator a Windows Start menu shortcut is created to run the tool.

From the Microsoft Windows Start menu, choose Programs | SAP BusinessObjects | Planning and Consolidation | BPC Data Generator.

The BPC DataGenerator tool is launched.

Welcome Screen

The BPC DataGenerator Welcome screen is shown.

Select a preferred language.

Click the “Next>” button to continue.

Dimension Selection

The Dimension Selection screen is shown.

From the “Application set” drop down box choose your BPC application set, or choose browse to pick a custom folder containing the BPC dimension cached xml files.



© 2010 SAP AG 7

After choosing an application set, select the dimensions for one of the BPC applications and move them from the list on the left to the right-hand list, as shown.


Member Selection

The Member Selection screen is shown.

For each of the dimensions, represented as tabs on the left, select one or more of the base-level dimension members by placing a check mark next to the member id.


Output Options

The Output Options screen is shown.

The following options are available from the Output File(s) Tab:

Output file location

Signed data values

Member intersections

Maximum rows

The Options Tab is used providing a custom random seed value when using Random Signed data values, or random member intersections. A screenshot and description for each of the available options follows:



© 2010 SAP AG 8

Output file location

Click the ellipse button to have Windows prompt for a file location for the comma-separated import file(s) to be saved. Select the “Generate multiple files” checkbox to have the output results split across multiple .csv files. When the “Generate multiple files” checkbox is selected, the max. rows/file value specifies how many rows to put in each of the output files. The output files are automatically suffixed with a number, i.e. Import001.csv, Import002.csv.

Signed data values

The “Signed data values” option controls the values written to the SIGNEDDATA column of the .csv output file. These values can be positive or negative numbers and supports decimal places. There are three options for the Signed data values:

Fixed

Sequential

Random

Fixed value specifies a single static value to be applied to all dimension member intersections.

Sequential values specify a range from a lower bound value (i.e. 100) to an upper value (i.e. 50000). Each signed data value (row) written to the .csv file is sequentially larger than the previous value. When the upper value is reached the sequential counter cycles back and starts again at the lower bound value.

Random values specify a range from a lower bound value to an upper value. Each signed data value (row) written to the .csv file is chosen randomly between the lower to upper value inclusively.



© 2010 SAP AG 9

Member Intersections

The “Member intersections” option determines how the Cartesian product of member intersections are written to the .csv output files.

There are two options:

Sequential

Random

This is probably best described using an example. If there were 3 dimensions, CATEGORY, ENTITY and TIME and each had two members there would be a total of 8 combinations (2 x 2 x 2). Assume the Category dimension contains members ACTUAL and PLAN, and that the ENTITY dimension contains members CANADA and USA, and that the TIME dimension contains 2011.MAR and 2011.APR.

A sequential file would be generated writing the values directly to file, in order:

CA

TEGO

RY

ENTITY

TIME

SDA

TA

ACTUAL CANADA 2011.MAR 100

ACTUAL CANADA 2011.APR 100

ACTUAL USA 2011.MAR 100

ACTUAL USA 2011.APR 100

PLAN CANADA 2011.MAR 100

PLAN CANADA 2011.APR 100

PLAN USA 2011.MAR 100

PLAN USA 2011.APR 100

A random file would first generate the sequential values in memory, and then randomly choose which ones to write to file.

CA

TEGO

RY

ENTITY

TIME

SDA

TA

ACTUAL CANADA 2011.MAR 100

PLAN USA 2011.APR 100

ACTUAL USA 2011.APR 100

ACTUAL USA 2011.MAR 100

PLAN CANADA 2011.MAR 100

PLAN CANADA 2011.APR 100



© 2010 SAP AG 10

Note: When choosing random member intersection it is strongly recommended to choose a maximum number of rows that is smaller than the maximum possible rows. It does not make sense to use random generation of member intersections if the intention is generate all possible combinations – it is less CPU and memory intensive to simply

generate all values sequentially.

Maximum rows

The “Maximum rows” option restricts the total number of data values written to all output files. This option allows the user to choose to not write the complete set of Cartesian product results to file and to include only the first X number of rows.

Random Seed Options

BPC DataGenerator tool is designed to use a pseudo-random number generator when either the member intersections are chosen randomly, or when the signed data values are generated randomly. Pseudo-random numbers are generated starting from a seed value; each time the program is run a new seed value will be used, which will cause different random numbers to be generated. If there is a requirement to recreate the same random sample data in the future, save the Random Seed number and use that number in a future run of the BPC DataGenerator tool.



© 2010 SAP AG 11


Summary

The Summary screen is shown.

This provides an opportunity to review the selections chosen from the previous screens.

Click the “Finish” button to generate the import file(s).

A progress bar can be optionally displayed, and when the import files have been generated a message is displayed with the amount of time it took to create the files.

The import files are then available.



© 2010 SAP AG 12

The import files are ready to upload into the BPC system to make them available to the BPC Import Transactional data, Data Manager package.

You now have an import .csv file containing test data to upload into your BPC application. The import data matches in structure to the application’s dimensions and members, as such no transformation rules or conversion mapping need be specified in the transformation file.

Congratulations!



© 2010 SAP AG 13

Test Cases

The following screenshots are provided as test case scenarios that can be performed against the sample ApShell application set that comes with BPC 7.0 for NetWeaver platform. The purpose of these test scenarios are to confirm that basic functionality for BPC DataGenerator tool is working as expected.

Scenario 1 – single file, all sequential member intersections, fixed data values

This scenario will create a single import file (import.csv) with a fixed signed data value (100) for all of the possible intersections (216 intersections). Those intersections will be written sequentially to the import file.



© 2010 SAP AG 16

For the options chosen in this scenario, this is the import.csv file generated:

Scenario 2 – single file, all sequential member intersections, random data values

This scenario will create a single import file (import.csv) with random signed data values (between 100 and 50000) for all of the possible intersections (216 intersections). Those intersections will be written sequentially to the import file.



© 2010 SAP AG 19

For the options chosen in this scenario, this is the import.csv file generated:

Import (scenario 2).zip

Note: To generate the same random values, be sure to use the same random seed.

Scenario 3 – multiple files, all sequential member intersections, fixed data values

This scenario will create multiple import files (import1.csv, import2.csv, import3.csv) with a fixed signed data value (100) for all of the possible intersections (216 intersections). Those intersections will be written sequentially to the import file. Each of the files will contain a maximum of 75 rows.



© 2010 SAP AG 22

For the options chosen in this scenario, these are three import .csv files generated:

Note: When BPC DataManager upload/downloads data files the operation may time out, see SAP Note 1491655. This

is one reason to split large import .csv files into multiple smaller files.

Scenario 4 – single file, subset of sequential member intersections, fixed data values

This scenario will create a single import file (import.csv) with a fixed signed data value (100) for a subset of all possible intersections (only 100 of the possible 216 intersections will be generated). Those intersections will be written sequentially to the import file.

https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1491655



© 2010 SAP AG 25

For the options chosen in this scenario, this is the import .csv file generated:

Scenario 5 – single file, subset of sequential member intersections, random data values

This scenario will create a single import file (import.csv) with a range of randomly generated signed data values (between 100-50000) for a subset of all possible intersections (only 100 of the possible 216 intersections will be generated). Those intersections will be written sequentially to the import file.



© 2010 SAP AG 28

NOTE: The random seed value has been intentionally set to match the value used in Scenario 2. This test confirms that when the same random seed is used the same data values are generated.

For the options chosen in this scenario, this is the import .csv file generated:

Scenario 6 – multiple files, all random member intersections, random data values

This scenario will create multiple import files (import1.csv, import2.csv, import3.csv) with a range of randomly generated signed data values between 100 and 50000 for all possible intersections. Those intersections will be written randomly to the import file.



© 2010 SAP AG 30

Note: When choosing random member intersections a Cartesian product of all member intersections are generated in memory first, then the intersections are randomly chosen to write to disk.

For the options chosen in this scenario, these are the import .csv files generated:



© 2010 SAP AG 31

Appendix

Appendix A – BPC DataGenerator installation file

This MSI installation package will install the BPC DataGenerator tool (Section 4).

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/90334709-1553-2e10-6ab1-9917a8e7f3d7



© 2010 SAP AG 32

Related Content

For more information, visit the Enterprise Performance Management homepage.

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/bpx-epm



© 2010 SAP AG 33

Copyright

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How to - Generate Test Data for BPC

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