Clients in BW

Theclient is a technical, structural characteristic of the SAP system. It is not used in the same way by the Business Information Warehouse.

Restriction: In the Business Information Warehouse exactly one client (not 000) is created. For example, in a BW system, it is not possible to create a test client and a productive client as technically separate units with separate master records and an independent record of tables.

Use

In SAP NetWeaver BW master data IDs and dimension IDs are made up from number ranges. BW objects are client-independent and can be accessed and changed in all clients in the same way. However, as number range intervals are client-dependent and IDs have to be unique, IDs can only be determined within one client. This client is called the BW standard client.

The Myself system, a BW system that uses itself as the source system when transferring data and is, for example, used by the data mart interface, can only exist in one client; the BW standard client. This is because it is also used for generating the change log for ODS objects, that is, for generating client-independent BW objects.

For applications that draw on a BW system (APO, for example), accessing client-dependent data within the system using data extraction (InfoPackages) was previously only possible if the extraction process was started in every client that contained data and loaded using the Myself source system. SAP Note 522569 had to have been implemented.

Now you can define a separate source system for each client within the BW system and use this to make load access to other clients from the BW standard client possible. You must first enter the BW standard client and a valid user (the BW background user) with profile S_BI-WHM_RFC in the BW destination (this is that that has the same name as the logical name of the BW standard client).

However, working with BW functionality, and starting the Administrator Workbench in particular, is still only possible in the BW standard client.

Client-dependency through InfoObjects

You are, however, able to manage data from different customers separately in a BW system. SAP recommends that you define an InfoObject (a characteristic) with a master data table that contains exactly one value for each of the different clients, customers, business areas, or subsidiaries. Use this InfoObject in data targets that contain customer-specific data.

This means that from the point of view of the Business Information Warehouse, all data targets that follow the InfoSource in the data flow, that is InfoSources, InfoObjects, ODS object, and queries, are effectively client-dependent.