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Projects are the largest structural unit used by the Eclipse Workbench. They are displayed in the Project Explorer view. A BW project manages the connection to a BW back end system in the Eclipse-based IDE. It provides a framework for accessing and modeling BW metadata objects and functions in the Eclipse-based IDE.

A BW project always represents a real system logon to one single BW system and also offers a user-specific view of BW metadata objects (for example, DataSources, InfoProviders, InfoObjects or queries) contained in the BW system.

The specification for a BW project contains the following items:

  • Project name
  • System data – including system ID, client, user and password
  • Default language - project-specific preference for predefining the original language of the objects that are created

As with all other project types in Eclipse, BW projects also form part of a user-specific workspace and thus define the starting point for all modeling activities in the Eclipse-based IDE. Several BW projects can be contained in a workspace. This means that the BW modeler can work on multiple BW systems in one and the same IDE session, without having to leave the immediate work environment. A BW modeler can also structure and organize the modeling activities in multiple BW projects connecting to one and the same BW system.

BW projects can only be processed if there is a system connection (to the BW back end). It is therefore not possible to have read or write access to the content of a BW project in offline mode.

BW projects and their structures are displayed in the Project Explorer view together with other projects of different project types (ABAP projects for example).

The structure of a BW project contains a list of BW metadata objects that are itemized under one of the following nodes:

  • Favorites – Favorites that are stored in the associated BW back end system
  • BW Repository – BW metadata objects like InfoProviders, InfoObjects and queries that are sorted according to InfoAreas or semantic folders for object types
  • DataSources – DataSources that are sorted according to source system type, source system and application component

You can also assign the underlying SAP HANA database of the BW system, thus enabling consumption of SAP HANA views (information models) in BW metadata objects. The BW project structure then contains a further node, SAP HANA System Library, which lists the SAP HANA views.