TwinCubes in Business Process Analytics
TwinCubes are a type of data storage in BW with the following features:
Value Benchmarking and Value Trend Analysis (BP Analytics)
These functions can be used to analyze the number of documents and the document value.
Prerequisite: The ST-A/PI plug-in in the managed system and on SAP Solution Manager is ST-A/PI 01R or higher.
Simplified master data load (BP Analytics and BPO dashboards)
Automatic housekeeping (BP Analytics and BPO dashboards)
Automatic housekeeping is a periodic reorganization process that deletes history data automatically.
Improved performance (BP Analytics and BPO dashboards)
Prerequisites
You have activated TwinCubes in SAP Solution Manager Configuration.
Features
Data Storage and Lifetime
The BP Analytics TwinCubes data storage consists of ten cubes, in five aggregation levels:
Aggregation Level | Cubes | Lifetime (Default) | |
|---|---|---|---|
Hourly cubes (with data down to minutes) | Hourly cube 1 | Hourly cube 2 | 30 days |
Daily cubes (with data down to days) | Daily cube 1 | Daily cube 2 | 1 year |
Weekly cubes (with data down to weeks) | Weekly cube 1 | Weekly cube 2 | 5 years |
Monthly cubes (with data down to month) | Monthly cube 1 | Monthly cube 2 | 10 years |
Yearly cubes (with data down to years) | Yearly cube 1 | Yearly cube 2 | 30 years |
On every aggregation level, there are two cubes, to facilitate housekeeping: For every aggregation level, there is a lifetime default that can also be customized. The two cubes on each level are filled and dropped, according to this lifetime.
Example: When you start to use the TwinCubes, data is first written into cube 1, until the lifetime is reached. In this case, the lifetime of the hourly level is 30 days, so data is written into cube 1 (hourly cube) for 30 days. After the 30 days, cube 1 is locked, and data is written into cube 2. After another 30 days, the lifetime of cube 2 is also reached and cube 2 (hourly cube) is locked. Data in cube 1 is dropped (deleted) and, for the next 30 days, cube 1 is again filled with new data.
Lifetime
The other four aggregation levels are handled analogously, with the difference that the lifetime is usually longer. Deleting (dropping) whole cubes after a certain lifetime has the benefit that even cubes with a lot of data can be tidied up quickly.
You access the data from the different aggregation levels, as defined in the lifetime. You can change the lifetime of the different aggregation levels, if necessary.
Data Aggregation
In the TwinCubes, data is stored in different aggregation levels:
On the hourly level, every data collection is saved and can be accessed later on (similar to the InfoCube).
On the other levels, data collections are aggregated to days, weeks, months, and years.