This page provides information, about the new functionalities provided with SAP Business Warehouse 7.4 in general and the new functionalities of SAP BW powered by SAP HANA provided with SAP Business Warehouse 7.4 - SP 05

SAP BW 7.4 on SAP HANA / The In-Memory Data Fabric

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Read this bog by Roland Kramer.

Overview SAP BW 7.4 SP05 on SAP HANA and further Roadmap

SAP BW on SAP HANA continues to be the cornerstone of SAP’s strategic vision for enterprise data warehousing providing organizations a solid data foundation to capture, store, transform and manage data in a scalable, enterprise-ready data warehouse. And as new challenges arise in the market (exploding data volumes, new data sources, the need for real-time information access, etc), SAP BW on HANA continues to evolve in order to meet the growing challenges imposed on IT by these ever changing market forces. The release of SAP BW running on SAP HANA is a great example of how SAP BW has evolved to ensure organizations continue to leverage their investment in SAP BW to meet these new challenge.

See this presentation to learn what SAP is doing next to evolve SAP BW on SAP HANA with the SAP BW 7.4., SP 05 on HANA

Key Features

Enhanced Data Modeling
- Common Eclipse based Modeling Tools
- BW/HANA Smart Data Access providing the logical EDW
- Easy integration of external data models with Open ODS Layer
- Further reduce data layers in BW via Operational Data Provisioning
- New Composite Provider
Push down further processing logic to HANA
- BW Analytic Manager
- HANA Analysis Processes
- BW Transformations
- PAK (Planning Application Kit) – Pushing down more planning semantics
Converged planning solutions (i.e. BPC unified)

SP5 and above is highly recommended for running SAP BW 7.4 on SAP HANA!

Background

Initially, when SAP NetWeaver 7.4 got released in early 2013, it was meant to be the foundation for taking SAP's Business Suite on to the HANA platform. At that time it was made transparent that BW – as part of SAP NetWeaver 7.4 – would be ready to run to support such a scenario as an embedded component for the Business Suite. However, for a stand-alone SAP BW as an EDW application on SAP HANA it has been recommended to wait for SAP NW 7.4 SP5 or above. SAP BW 7.4 SP4 (and below) is to a large extent identical with SAP BW 7.3 and 7.31. However, SAP BW 7.4 SP5 and above holds a significant set of new features– and thus new code – especially in the context of SAP HANA.

Recommendation

As outlined since the advent of SAP NetWeaver 7.4, it is highly recommended to run SAP BW 7.4 on SP5 or above, preferably SP6 which is available at the time of writing – more details on the availbility of higher SPs can be foundhere. The reasons are the following:

A significant set of new features.
Many OSS notes and their underlying corrections are based on SP5 as the minimum SP level. A downport of such corrections is not viable due to the significant differences between SP4 and SP5 (and above).
At the time of writing, there are 100+ customers on SAP BW 7.4 SP5 or above. Experience so far is
excellent. SAP's own productive SAP BW 7.4 system has been updated to SP6 recently w/o hick-ups and even ahead of schedule.

Please see OSS note 1600929 ("SAP BW powered by SAP HANA DB: Information") for further details. Especially note that it is required to run SAP BW 7.4 SP5 and above on top of SAP HANA SP7. Future SPs of SAP BW 7.4 might require higher versions of SAP HANA.

Further Recommendations

Check the presentationUpgrade to SAP BW 7.40 for SAP BW specific upgrade steps
For EDW use case scenarios: Start only with SAP BW 7.4 SP05 or higher
If you plan to upgrade your ERP to EhP7 (based on NetWeaver 7.40) first, you have to upgrade your corresponding BW System at least to 7.30 or higher (e.g.7.31) first, to stay compatible with the ERP Backend, check the Information attached to the following SAP Notes
- Note 1388258 - Version Interoperability within the SAP Business Suite
- Note 1951805 - Adjusted Version Interoperability for Business Suite 7i2013

        from the ERP perspective the BW 7.30 functionality is sufficient, nevertheless we recommend to go at least to
        SAP BW 7.31 due to various reasons like Add-On compability, Gateway availablility, shorter SP cycles. See details
        Upgrade to BW 7.3x => Page 8

If you are running SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite on SAP NetWeaver 7.4, please be aware of the following:
- SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite 4.1 Support Pack 1 or BusinessObjects BI Suite 4.0 Support Pack 6 is mandatory! Lower SP levels do not incorporate the enhancements delivered with SAP NetWeaver 7.4
- See more in the SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite release restriction e.g. SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite 4.1 Support Pack 1 Release Restrictions
If you are still running BEx Query Designer 3.x on your SAP BW 7.40 system, please note the following::
- The BEx tools from SAP BW 3.5 are not fully supported with SAP BW 7.40.
- the Analytic Engine of SAP BW 7.4 can still execute queries which were defined with the BEx Query Desginer 3.5
- the workbooks created with the BEx Analyzer 3.x or BEx WEB Application Designer 3.x need to be migrated
- You can find a list of obsolete functions and proposed workarounds in the SAP Help Library
- The detailed maintenance strategy for the SAP BW 3.5 front-end add-ons is described in SAP Note 1932461
- If the SEM add-on is applied on the NetWeaver system, you can change the modeling in the Solution Manager for better handling at any time, see the blog "Good News - Easier Modeling of the SEM Add-On in Solution Manager"
- SAP strongly advises you to read the available documentation thoroughly in order to benefit from the support SAP offers now and in the future, and to make it easier for the customer to make the transition away from the obsolete reporting tools.
- More information can also be found on the SAP BEx Spaceand SAP Note 1729988