BW Data Slice (SAP Library - Technical Content)

BW Data Slice

Definition

Technical InfoCubes containing information about the data in other InfoCubes.

Use

You use the BW data slice to get an overview of the combinations of characteristics that have been requested for a particular InfoCube, and to find out about the number of records that have been loaded.

Structure

Various technical InfoCubes belong to the BW data slice:

The BW Data Slice InfoCube contains information about which combinations of characteristics in an InfoCube are loaded with which data request. This InfoCube is filled with the selection conditions from the corresponding InfoPackage.

Note

The BW Data Slice InfoCube does not tell you which combinations of characteristics have actually been loaded. This information is available from the InfoCube directly.

For more information see Managing InfoCubes and InfoCube Content.

The selection conditions have to be normalized before they can be used in reporting, but they are not always normalized when they are added to the InfoPackage. The system therefore normalizes the selection conditions when it extracts them into the technical InfoCube.

Example

If you do not specify a selection for an InfoObject or for a field, meaning that the selection field remains empty, the system requests from the source system all of the available data for the DataSource in the Business Information Warehouse.

In the technical InfoCube, the from-value of the corresponding field must be <blank> and the to-value must be a <maximum characteristic value>. The system

transfers the smallest and the largest characteristic values from the master data table if an InfoObject can be assigned to a field in the transfer structure.
determines the smallest and largest suitable values if an InfoObject cannot be assigned to a field in the transfer structure.

The Requests in InfoCube InfoCube does not contain any combinations of characteristics. This means that for this InfoCube you are able to create queries that show the number of data records for the current InfoCube and for each individual request (without referring to the combination of characteristics). This technical InfoCube is updated in parallel using its own update rules.

Note

The request is also a technical InfoObject (data request 0TCTREQUID) with a range of navigation attributes, such as DataSources and source systems. It has to be loaded during the extraction of master data in order to be able to fill the attributes.