How To Get User Friendly Data Representation With SAP BI Architecture

Business Intelligence is basically a SAP product and it focuses on data representation in a user friendly manner. This serves the purpose of analysis as well as taking business decision in an informed manner in business. It is therefore necessary to understand the architecture of SAP BI.

Persistent Staging Area

In SAP BI architecture, the data that is extracted from source system would first enter into the PSA (Persistent Staging Area). Data that enters in this manner is raw and is entered in unchanged form. After consolidating, the data is cleansed only in some next layer. Basically this staging area is one of the temporary table and they can connect to the work area as well as the fact tables.

Data Warehouse Layer

The next layer in the SAP BI architecture is that of Data Warehouse or DWH layer. In this layer, the data can be stored for much longer period. Entire data history is stored in this layer and the storage is at direct levels.

Operational Data Store Layer

In the architecture, the data is stored continuously from source systems and the storage includes all changes that were affected to the data. Such data stored in the operational data sore layer can be uploaded to the DWH layer. This layer also helps in data retrieval when either DWH or Data Mart layers are lost. Operational data is usually stored in flat file format.

Architected Data Mart Layer

In this layer aggregated or summarized data is stored for long time. In SAP BI training process the data from DWH layer is loaded in this layer that helps analysis and reporting on data. This is the layer where data manipulation using different business logic is carried out.  The structure of the layer is made with on central fact table that is surrounded by dimensions tables. Such specific architecture of SAP BI system helps intelligent implementation of different business intelligence operations effectively.

Key Components of the System

In the DW level, the basic components of learning SAP BI are Data ETL, aggregation, BI accelerators, warehouse DGMT, summarized and dimensional data, granular volatile data as well as Master Data. Components in BI services are OLAP services including RRI, hierarchy, and currency unit; planning, analysis process designer, data mining, metadata repository services, exchanges, and searches.  Similarly there are different BI suites that are created using these components.

Tasks Accomplished by Different Components

Different components in the system are there for accomplishment of different tasks. For intake; the data warehousing level is there to extract, transform, as well as load data from the source systems. The BI platform layer consists of all the BI services that helps carry out complex analytical processes of tasks as well as the functions. The analytic engine is incorporated in this layer. Data is requested using the BEx analysis navigational method and is processed by the analytical engine.  On the other hand the BI suites contain tools that help in creating reports for the purpose of analysis helping out flexible reporting as well as analysis.

Effective Tools in the Architecture

Tools that help effective performance by the process include the Microsoft Excel bases BEx analyzer as well as the web analyzer, web application designer, and BEx report designer. They help in developing pivot tables and customer defined contents including formatted web output.

The 3-Tier Catch Architecture

SAP BI tutorial will teach you that ithas three-tier architecture with Database Server, Application Server, and Presentation Architecture functioning as the three tiers in the system. In database server the data is stored physically and stores ODS, PSA, metadata, and Infocube. The application server retrieves the data stored in the database server.  Presentation server manages reporting as well as data access.

How it Works

In the SAP BI system, the data is extracted from source system and staged in the persistent storage area or PSA. They are thereafter cleansed and retained in Data store object. They can be viewed in different dimensions in Infocube. Business Explorer makes data available displayed using the OLAP processor.

Data can also be accessed to SAP Data Marts using the open hub sources.