Analytic Engine  

Purpose

The Analytic Engine provides OLAP functions and services, as well as services for BW Integrated Planning and analysis process design.

●      Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) formats information for large amounts of operative and historical data. The OLAP processor allows multi-dimensional analyses from various business perspectives. It includes the "aggregation" and "calculation" components.

●      You can use BW Integrated Planning to create planning applications. This can be used for various applications, ranging from simple, manual data entry to complex planning scenarios. Several solutions are available.

●      For ad-hoc analyses, we recommend using analytic indexes and CompositeProviders that are built from these indexes by JOIN or UNION. The data from these indexes is stored in the SAP HANA database or in the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator (SAP NW BWA). These can be created quickly and make it possible to run quick analyses using a generated TransientProvider, without the need to model the InfoProviders in Data Warehousing Workbench or to replicate data (see Analytic Index and Creating CompositeProviders). The BW workspaces provide a special work environment for the business user, where new CompositeProviders can be created quickly and easily (see BW Workspace).

●      Special analysis processes such as Data Mining can be implemented using Analysis Process Designer (APD). Using an analysis process, information can be combined in the BW system to create new information. This new information can be obtained using analytical processes, like data mining methods or simpler, customer-specific calculations and transformations.

OLAP, BW Integrated Planning and Analysis Process Design use the Analytic Engine’s generic services for "caching" and "security".

Integration

The graphic below illustrates the integration of Analytic Engine as part of Business Warehouse in the SAP NetWeaver architecture:

Using SAP In-Memory Computing Technology

SAP in-memory computing provides you with a particularly effective way of processing scenarios, especially when they are complicated and have unpredictable query types, large data volumes and high query frequency.

The following graphic provides an overview of the deployment scenarios: Which of the options offered by the platform can be applied depends on your system's overall architecture.

As far as functionality is concerned, there are very few differences between using a SAP HANA database and SAP NetWeaver BWA 7.2. The main difference is that the BW data needs to be indexed for the BWA. If you use the SAP HANA database on the other hand, the system generates, updates and deletes the logical indexes (CalculationScenarios) for the InfoProviders automatically.

You can decide yourself which operations the system will perform in the SAP HANA database or on data indexed in SAP NW BWA in SAP NetWeaver BWA. More information: Operations in SAP HANA / BWA.

You can use SAP BusinessObjects Explorer as a reporting tool on BWA-indexed data. This is not supported if using the SAP HANA database.

Integration with an SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator 7.20

If you use a database to persist data, you can enhance the performance of SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse by using a SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator (see Creating and Managing BWA Indexes in the BW System).

Integration of SAP NetWeaver BW with BWA 7.20 makes it possible in the Data Warehouse to index both InfoCube data and data in a DataStore object in the BWA (user either an InfoCube with data persistence in the BWA or a HybridProvider that supplied the InfoCube with the DSO data automatically). For an overview of the InfoProviders that can be indexed (InfoCubes –including InfoCubes belonging to HybridProviders and SPOs, VirtualProviders, hierarchies, master data, query snapshots) see Indexing BW Data in SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator.

Integration of SAP NetWeaver BW with BWA 7.20 makes it possible in the BW system to monitor both the BWA and BWA indexes, and to analyze the consistency of their databases.

Integration with SAP HANA Database (On Top Scenario)

If you use the SAP HANA database to persist data, you do not need a SAP NetWeaver BWA to enhance the performance.

Using aggregates does not make sense and is therefore not supported by the system (see Performance Optimization with Aggregates).

Once you have activated an InfoProvider, the system creates the logical indexes (CalculationScenarios). Once the changes arrive in the InfoProvider, the system updates the existing logical indexes. Once the InfoProvider is deleted, the system deletes the indexes. This affects the following InfoProvider types: Standard InfoCube, (with or without SAP HANA optimization, InfoObject as InfoProvider, analytic index, CompositeProvider and standard DataStore objects (with or without SAP HANA optimization) for which SIDs are created with the option “During Activation”.

For the purpose of CalculationScenarios, complicated calculations are performed on the database. These include:

●      Hierarchies

●      Selection conditions that do not apply globally (FEMS)

●      Top N and bottom N queries

●      MultiProviders

●      Selected exception aggregation including the currency translation required for it

If you are using SAP HANA as the database for your BW system, you can also create snapshot indexes (just like in SAP NW BWA) for VirtualProviders and query snapshots and use BW workspaces to your advantage (see Using the SAP HANA Database Instead of a SAP NW BWA).

SAP HANA models can be published as TransientProviders in SAP NetWeaver BW (see Publishing SAP HANA Models).

The SAP NetWeaver BW planning engine can either have read access to the SAP HANA database or can use internal routines in the SAP HANA database for SAP HANA-optimized planning using the ABAP Planning Applications Kit (see Planning Engine).

SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator Monitor (transaction RSDDBIAMON2) and the TREX administration tool (transaction TREXADMIN) cannot be used for monitoring. For monitoring in BW, use DBA Cockpit (transaction DBACOCKPIT) instead – see DBA Cockpit for SAP HANA. For monitoring in the SAP HANA database, use SAP HANA Studio.