SAP BW Mentor

Load Google Analytics Data into SAP BW - Part I: The Data Flow

22. March 2015 in Data Warehousing, Extraction, DW Developers by sapbwmentor

Overview

One of the most challenging part of Data Warehousing is to find the right way of extracting external data. Recently I have got a question about Google Analytics:

Google analytics data, is there any idea how to consume it in BW ?

For the first sight, I was thinking, "well it's challenging", because I went through the different standard tools for connecting data to BW and I didn't find an obvious solution:

  • SAP Service API ? No, Google is not an SAP source system
  • DB connect ? No, Google is not a DB system like Oracle or MSSQL
  • File ? Maybe yes, if I can manage the automatic download to csv...
  • Web Service ? Maybe yes, if I can manage the automatic download and conversion, but it's similar to the File interface problem...

How to use Rule Groups in BW Transformation

10. March 2015 in Data Warehousing, DW Developers by sapbwmentor

Overview

Based on my experience, many BW developers use transformation and many of them implement ABAP in several places: Start Routine, End Routine, Field calculation etc. So these options are widely used and known. During my trainings I receive questions from developers where we come to the conclusion that many people miss the opportunities and the power of the Rule Groups. I agree, this function hides behind a dropdown list and we can easily miss it. In this post I want to highlight the functionality behind the hiding Rule Groups dropdown list.

Cache your SAP data on Mobile easily with SAP SDK for Xamarin

10. October 2014 in Mobile, BI Professionals, DW Developers by sapbwmentor

Overview

I am currently working on my next Pluralsight course about SAP Business Warehouse, SAP Mobile Platform and Xamarin integration and I am refactoring my example ProjectRanker app so that it can use OData with JSON for getting the information from the server. This post is about the introduction of the Xamarin SAP SDK component and it's important Caching functionality.

Sales Planning with FOX or with Inverse Formula in SAP BW Integrated Planning

17. September 2014 in Planning, Integrated Planning Developers by sapbwmentor

Integrated Planning

Introduction

Working with Integrated Planning is about supporting the planning process with a common plan database and with planning functions that accelerates the work of the planners. Until now we had many options to define planning functions and for the complex ones we could use Formula Extensions - shortly FOX - or ABAP. Starting the version SAP Netweaver 7.3 we have another tool in our toolbox, called Inverse Formula that we can define in the Query Designer.

My native app development impressions with Xamarin and SAP Business Warehouse 7.4 integration

13. June 2014 in Data Warehousing, Modeling, BI Professionals, DW Developers by sapbwmentor

Mobile challenges : Project Ranker app

I am working now on my new course for Pluralsight about building native mobile apps integrated with SAP and you can see on the pictures below the ready prototypes. The app itself shows a list of projects ranked by their cash-flow in different statuses, like Idea, In progress or Completed. 

These are the challenges that might occur during a mobile project:

  • Multiple target platforms: Android, iOS, Windows Phone
  • Multiple screen sizes: smartphone or tablet
  • Performance issues: limited resources in network, phone
  • Mobile platform choice: Native, HTML5 or Hybrid ?
  • Data Quality: data is in different systems 
  • Data Access: how to make the information accessible ?
  • Cost: different technologies increase the time and money of a project

Setup your SAP Business Warehouse 7.4 on HANA in less than 1 hour

30. May 2014 in Data Warehousing, Administrators, Analysts, BI Professionals, DW Developers, Integrated Planning Developers by sapbwmentor

Hard to Learn SAP? 

As an SAP trainer I received a lot of feedback from my students in the past. Most of them said that “Learning SAP is not so easy!”. 

The question is „Why is hard to learn SAP?”. Based on my experiences, I found that the answer lies in the availability of the SAP Systems. You could not just download and install an SAP development environment and use it within 10 minutes, as the way you do it like in C#.