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Procedure documentationTutorial Part 1: Creating a BW Query

 

This tutorial explains the creation of tiles and dashboards in Dashboard Builder. In this step, you create a BW query that you use to provide values for various tiles. The query is to output telephone costs broken down by the different branches of a fictitious company, based on test data.

To use this test data, you require the following information:

  • The required test data can be accessed through the InfoProvider 0CCM_GD (Generated Data). Note the information on the test data under Tutorial: Using BW Queries as a Data Source.

  • The telephone costs are in the key figure 0CCM_COST (Costs).

  • The subsidiary that incurred the costs is in the dimension Start of the navigation path [0CCM_GD1] Source Next navigation step [0CCM_SRCL] Source End of the navigation path.

Prerequisites

This procedure is part of a tutorial on Dashboard Builder, in which, in Dashboard Builder, you create tiles and drilldown views that use BW queries as their data source (see Tutorial: Using BW Queries as a Data Source).

Procedure

To create the desired BW query, proceed as follows:

  1. Start the BEx Query Designer, and enter the BW system or the BW client that is assigned to your SAP Solution Manager system.

  2. To create a new query, choose the New Query (New Query) pushbutton. Enter 0CCM_GD (Generated Data) as the InfoProvider. This InfoCube provides the test data that you want to display in the query.

  3. Activate the display of the technical names by choosing the Technical Names (Technical Names) pushbutton.

  4. The available data exists in various temporal resolutions in the data model of the InfoProvider 0CCM_GD. The characteristics Date Granularity (0SMD_GRDA) and Time Granularity (0SMD_GRTI) are available for this purpose. You restrict these characteristics to the desired temporal resolution of the data. You can do this when creating the query (in the Filter group box) or later on in Dashboard Builder. In this tutorial, you restrict the granularity when defining the query.

    Switch to the Filter view, and drag the following characteristics from the Dimensions pool to the Characteristic Restrictions subscreen:

    • Start of the navigation path Dimensions Next navigation step [[0CCM_GD4] Granularity Next navigation step [0SMD_GRDA] Date Granularity End of the navigation path

      Restrict this value by choosing the Restrict... entry from the context menu for the value, and in the window that then appears, in the Show dropdown list box, choose the entry Single Values, and from the list, move the value [DAY] DAY into the selection.

    • Start of the navigation path Dimensions Next navigation step [0CCM_GD4] Granularity Next navigation step [0SMD_GRTI] Time Granularity End of the navigation path

      Restrict this value by choosing the Restrict... entry from the context menu for the value, and in the window that then appears, in the Show dropdown list box, choose the entry Single Values, and from the list, move the value [DAY] DAY into the selection.

  5. In the InfoProvider 0CCM_GD, you can use values of the characteristic profile (0CCM_PRFL) to specify whether the values generated should always be identical or should be generated randomly. With the profile SAND100, the current date is used as the initial value for the random number generation, which means that – if you call the query on a particular day – the same value is always displayed for a particular metric (such as the costs for telephone calls from one subsidiary at a particular time), meaning that the displayed values are consistent across multiple calls.

    To select this profile value, drag the characteristic Start of the navigation path Dimensions Next navigation step [0CCM_GD5] Profile Next navigation step [0CCM_PRFL] Profile End of the navigation path to the Characteristic Restrictions subscreen.

    Restrict this value by choosing the Restrict... entry from the context menu for the value, and in the window that then appears, in the Show dropdown list box, choose the entry Single Values, and move the value SAND100 into the selection.

  6. Switch to the view Rows/Columns.

  7. You want to display values for particular days or months in Dashboard Builder. So that you are able to filter to such a time range in Dashboard Builder, this must first be a free characteristic from the query's perspective. For this purpose, drag the following characteristics to the Free Characteristics subscreen:

    • Start of the navigation path Dimensions Next navigation step [0CCM_GDT] Time Next navigation step [0CALDAY] Calendar Day End of the navigation path

    • Start of the navigation path Dimensions Next navigation step [0CCM_GDT] Time Next navigation step [0CALMONTH] Calendar Year/Month End of the navigation path

  8. In the query, you want to display the telephone costs for the individual branches. Therefore, drag the corresponding key figure 0CCM_COST (Costs) into the subscreen Columns and the dimension Start of the navigation path [0CCM_GD1] Source Next navigation step [0CCM_SRCL] Source End of the navigation path into the subscreen Rows.

  9. Save the query with the technical name ZTUT_DASHBOARDBUILDER_1 and the description Costs per Subsidiary.

Result

You have created a BW query to supply tiles with data in Dashboard Builder. When creating the corresponding tiles (see Tutorial Part 2: Creating a Simple Tile), you will enter this query.

Note Note

If you create your own queries, check whether they display the expected behavior before using them in Dashboard Builder. You can use the transaction RSRT (Query Monitor) to do this.

End of the note.