Last Updated on August 3, 2022 by admin
What is SAP BW and BI
What is SAP BW: – SAP BW (Business Information warehouse) is also known as BI (Business Intelligence). The following SAP BW training tutorials guides about “What is SAP BW” and its importance in SAP systems.
it provides the information that enables the organization to plan, track, manages, measure and optimize the performance. SAP BW is an end to end data solutions of data warehousing that is used in the pre-existing SAP R/3 systems.
What is SAP BW Architecture
Bw architecture has three layers such as
1. Reporting Environment: – The top lever is a Reporting Environment, it can be BW Business Explorer (also called as BEx) or any other reporting tools. BEx contains two types of components such as
- BEx Analyzer
- BEx Browser
2. BW Server: – It is the middle layer of architecture, the important functions of this layer is to administrate the BW system, data storage and retrieving the data as per users request.
3. Bottom layer: – It consists the source system that can be a SAP system, BW systems and other systems.
Steps involved in BW/BI
Modelling: – It is a arranging and shaping the data that is achieved by the cleaning, transforming and storing the data from different systems into a common location.
Extraction: – It is the process of extraction of data from non SAP system or SAP systems to Business Intelligence Server.
Reporting: – The data that loaded in to BI server can be easily extracted and analysed for better management decision making.
SAP BW and BI Versions history
The first version of SAP product for reporting, analysis and data warehousing was launched in the year 1997 and called as Business warehouse information systems (BIW).
| Name | Version | Release |
| BIW | 1.2A | Oct-1998 |
| BIW | 1.2B | Sep-1999 |
| BIW | 2.0A | Feb-2000 |
| BIW | 2.0B | June-2000 |
| BIW | 2.1C | Nov-2000 |
| BW | 3.0A | Oct-2001 |
| BW | 3.0B | May-2002 |
| BW | 3.1 | Nov-2002 |
| BW | 3.1C | April-2004 |
| BW | 3.3 | April-2004 |
| BW | 3.5 | April-2004 |
| BI | 7 | June-2005 |
| BW | 7.3 | May-2011 |
SAP BW is built on the basis of 3 tier architecture and codes in the SAP ABAP language. IDOCs/ALE (Application Link Enabling) and BAPI (Business Application Programming Interface) are used to link SAP BW with SAP R/3 system or non SAP systems.
Types of Applications
- Online Analytical processing (OLAP)
- Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)
Now you are come to know what is SAP BW and BI and its importances.