Blogs How to configure the SQL BW connector

Frederic Vanborre Business Card Company: SAP Posted on May. 18, 2009 09:33 AM in Enterprise Data Warehousing/Business Warehouse, Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects), SAP NetWeaver Platform
Subscribe Print Permalink Share

Introduction
In my last post, I discussed about the new Data Federator SQL connector for SAP BW. The performances, the architecture and its relational capabilities are extremely well aligned with the Universes (Business Objects semantic layer) and our ad-hoc Web Intelligence reporting tools. In this post, I will explain the step required to create a DF project pointing to an SAP BW Infoprovider (Infocube, Multiprovider or a DSO), generate the associated relational Universe and how to create a WebI report using this Universe.

Data Federator project

Open Data Federator Designer and create a DF project (Webinar in our case). In this project, click on "Add datasource"

And select the SAP BW source

Enter your SAP BW instance connection parameters

Then click on "Get gateway parameters" button, to retrieve the SAP gateway parameters. Once the gateway parameters have been retrieved, you can click on the "target" icon to list the Infoproviders available in your BW instance. Select the one you want to connect to (I0D_DX_C03 InfoCube in my case)

At this stage, the Infoprovider is exposed as a star schema containing 3 type of tables:

The fact table, prefixed by "I" Master Data tables, prefixed by "D" (Dimension) Text tables, prefixed by "T" (Text) Click on "Make final" to finalize the connection

Now, the Webinar DF project has to be deployed in the Data Federator Query Server. The DF Query Server is the component in charge of the queries optimizations and executions. To do that, you have to deploy the current project into a DF Query Server catalog.

Click on "Deploy" in project toolbar Enter a name for the deployed project In the "Deployment address" section, reuse 'sysadmin' for password Keep the default values for other parameters Click on "OK"

At this stage, the Webinar project has been deployed in the Query Server /WB catalog and can be queried using SQL.

I assume that you configured the BOE JDBC driver to connect to the Data Federator Query Server and that you installed the Data Federator Universe strategy (datafederator.stg) in the <BOE_INSTALL_DIR>/win32_x86/dataAccess/connectionServer/jdbc folder. This configuration is fully documented in the Data Access and Data Federator installation guides.

Generate the business layer (Universe)

Open Universe Designer Start the "Quick Design Wizard" and check the "Click here to choose strategies" option

Define a new JDBC connection to to point to the Data Federator Query Server /WB catalog. Click on Next

Enter a connection name for example "SAPBW" Select Business Objects > Data Federator Server > JDBC Drivers Click on Next

Enter the Data Federator Query Server credentials for this connection. Note that:

The Query Server credentials (sysadmin/sysadmin) The hostname or the IP address of the machine running the DF Query Server (cdi in our case) The name of the catalog used during the DF project deployment post fixed by "/sources". For instance, "WB/sources" in our case

Test the connection by clicking on "Test Connection" Click on "Next" Click on "Finish" Enter a new Universe name and select the Universe Connection pointing to DF(SAPBW)

Select the "Data Federator Strategy" strategy for the objects and joins

Click on "Next" Select the generated Classes and Objects (select the root node of the tree view) then click on "Add >>"

Click on "Next"

Click on "Finish" to generate a relational SAP BW Universe automatically.

You end up with a ready to use Universe. The star schema is visible on the right as well as the aliases to avoid the join loops. The business layer (tree view on the left) has been generated for you leveraging the metadata stored in SAP BW.

Of course, you can customize the Universe if required then Export it to the CMS in order to create WebI documents. At this stage, you can start Web Intelligence to create your own queries and reports. In WebI start the Query Panel to define your query using the business objects available in the Universe we created. For instance, I created the following query to compare sales and billed plans.

By clicking on "SQL" icon of the Query Panel, you can have a look to the generated SQL

Click on "Run Query" to execute the query and create a default report layout. In my case, I updated the layout to create sections, breaks and add extra calculations including a ratio between billed and sales plan. In addition, I use the multi-block capability of WebI to associate graph with my table.

I hope this post give you a better understanding of the Data Federator BW connector and help your end users create advanced WebI reports including their own formulae.

Frederic Vanborre Explorer Senior Product Manager