Open Analysis Interfaces (SAP Library - Enterprise Reporting, Query, and Analysis)

Open Analysis Interfaces

Purpose

SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence provides an open architecture in many areas: You can extract data from different systems into a BI system and you can evaluate this data in your reporting using various front-end tools.

The Business Explorer, the front-end component in BI, provides flexible reporting and analysis tools to support strategic analysis and decision making in your organization.

For more information, see:

· Query Design: BEx Query Designer

· Web Application Design: BEx Web Application Designer

· Structure link Analysis & Reporting: BEx Web Applications

· Structure link BEx Mobile Intelligence

· Structure link Analysis & Reporting: BEx Analyzer

· Structure link Formatted Reporting: Crystal Reports-Integration

· Structure link Collaboration & Distribution: Integration in Enterprise Portal

The following interfaces are available to connect third-party front-end tools to BW:

· OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO)

· OLAP BAPI (Business Application Programming interface)

· XML for Analysis (XML/A)

All these interfaces are based on MDX (Multi-Dimensional Expressions). For more information, see MDX as Basis for the Interfaces.

Integration

The following graphic illustrates the integration of the interfaces in BI:

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

Third-party front-end tools can send query requests to the MDX processor in the BI system via the available interfaces. This processor sends on the request to the OLAP processor. The OLAP processor accesses InfoProviders. These InfoProviders either contain the data objects themselves (InfoProviders of type target, such as InfoCube, DataStore object and InfoObject), or reporting-relevant views of data objects (MultiProviders, VirtualProviders, InfoSet).

Features

The following table gives an overview of the available interfaces:

OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO)	OLAP BAPI	XML for Analysis (XML/A)
Technical Basis
· COM (Component Object Model) protocol · MDX is query request language	· RFC (Remote Function Call) protocol · MDX is query request language	· XML is exchange format · HTTP-/SOAP protocol · MDX is query request language
Prerequisites
Driver installed on client system	Access library available from all SAP platforms
Platform Independence
Only MS Windows platforms	All platforms supported by SAP	All platforms
Unicode Capability
Unicode not enabled	The caller specifies the required Codepage when establishing the RFC connection.	Fully Unicode enabled, by default UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format, 8 bit display).
Availability
As of SAP BW 1.2B	As of SAP BW 2.0A	As of SAP BW 3.0A

The following overview illustrates the options discussed above which are available for accessing BI data using a particular interface.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

Constraints

Platform Independence

The platform determines which interface is used: OLE DB for OLAP requires MS Windows, OLAP BAPI requires an SAP platform. XML for Analysis is platform independent.

Unicode Capability

Note that the OLE DB for OLAP interface does not support Unicode. The OLAP BAPI interface does support Unicode; XML for Analysis supports Unicode UTF-8.