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BW310 Lesson: SAP Business Information Warehouse
Source Sy stems
A s ource system is a system that provides the SAP BW system with data. SAP BW
distinguishes between four kinds of source systems:
• mySAP Business Suite components: SAP BW is fully integrated into the
mySAP Business Suite . It functions as a central data warehousing tool.
Predefined extraction structures and programs are de livered by SAP. These
allow source data from mySAP Business Suite components to be loaded
directly into the SAP BW system.
Complex organizational structures in which data from individual systems
is collected, create a need for a system architecture consisting of several
BW systems. These temporarily s tore data in the detailed form of an
organizational unit, before they can then be transferred to a central SAP BW
for carrying out comprehensive reporting.
• You can send data from SAP and non-SAP sources to SAP BW using SAP
Exchange Infrastructure (SAP XI). In SAP BW the data is placed in the
delta queue and is available there for further integration and consolidation.
Data transfer using SAP XI is SOAP-based. SAP XI is based on general
standards so as to enable external systems to be integrated. At the center of
the infrastructure is an XML-based communication that uses HTTP (Hyper
Text Transfer Protocol). The application-specific contents are transferred in
messages in user-defined XML (eXtensible Markup Language) schema from
the sender to the receiver using the Integration Server.
• Non-SAP systems: A big advantage of SAP BW lies in the fact that is has
an open architecture vis-a-vis external OLTP providers and other legacy
systems. Particularly in a heteroge nous system landscape, it is thus possible
to use SAP BW as a consolidated data basis for reporting that covers the
entire organization. SAP delivers various tools which allow these interfaces
to be implemented quickly and efficiently. These are looked at next.
• Data providers: As well being able to obtain data from a variety of
available systems, SAP BW can a lso be supplied with target-orientated data
from providers. For example, the organizations AC Nielsen US or Dun &
Bradstreet provide market research data, which can be loaded into SAP BW
for benchmarking and then measured against your own operative data. The
interface for the transfer of data supplied by the data providers is already
available in SAP BW. This means the d ata import can run smoothly.
• Databases: SAP BW allows data to be loaded from external relational
database systems. A DataSource is generated based on the external table
structure, enabling table content to be loaded quickly and consistently into
SAP BW.
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