Process documentation Maintaining the SAPBWKEY for Static Geo-Characteristics Locate the document in its SAP Library structure

Purpose

During runtime, BW data is combined with a corresponding shapefile. This enables the BW data to be displayed in geographical form (country, region, and so on) using color shading, bar charts, or pie charts. The SAPBWKEY ensures that the BW data is assigned to the appropriate shapefile.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

Note

In the standard shapefiles delivered with the ESRI BW map CD, the SAPBWKEY column is already filled with the two-character SAP country keys (DE, EN, and so on). You can use these shapefiles without having to maintain the SAPBWKEY beforehand.

Prerequisites

You have marked the geo-relevant characteristic as geo-relevant in the InfoObject maintenance.

Note

Before you are able to follow the example that explains how you maintain the SAPBWKEY for static geo-characteristics, you have to make sure that the SAP DemoContent is active in your BW system.

Note

You can use the ArcView GIS from ESRI to maintain the SAPBWKEY, or you can use other software (MS Excel or FoxPro, for example) that has functions for displaying and editing dBase files.

Process

For static geo-characteristics (such as Country or Region) that represent the geographical drilldown data for a country or a region, you have to maintain the SAPBWKEY for the individual country or region in the attribute table of the shapefile. The attribute table is a database table stored in dBase format. Once you have maintained the SAPBWKEY, you load the shapefiles (.shp, .dbf, .shx) into BW. The shapefiles are stored in the Business Document Service (BDS), a component of the BW server.

The following section uses the example of the 0D_COUNTRY characteristic to describe how you maintain the SAPBWKEY for static geo-characteristics. You use the CNTRY200 shapefile from the ESRI BW map data CD. The CD contains the borders of all the countries in the world. The maintenance of the SAPBWKEY for static geo-characteristics consists of the following steps.

  1. Creating a local copy of the shapefile from the BW data CD (.shp,.shx,.dbf).
  2. Downloading BW master data into a dBase (.dbf) file.
  3. Opening the dBase attributes table for the shapefile (.dbf) in Excel, and maintaining the SAPBWKEY column.
  4. Uploading the edited shapefile into BW.

Note

In this example scenario using the 0D_COUNTRY characteristic, the SAPBWKEY column is already maintained in the attribute table and corresponds with the SAP country keys in the master data table. If you maintain a shapefile where the SAPBWKEY has not been maintained, or where the SAPBWKEY is filled with values that do not correspond to BW master data, proceed as described in the steps above.

Result

You are now able to use the characteristic as a static geo-characteristic in the BEx Web Publisher. Every user that works with a query containing this static geo-characteristic, is able to attach a map to the query and analyze the data directly on the map.