SAP Business One 9.0 B1A & B1H overview per Clienti - Luglio 2013
1. SAP Business One Analytics powered by SAP HANA
SAP Business One Version on HANA
Overview per Clienti
Massimo Sala
SAP Business One Global Solution Expert
Notes:Customers running B1 on MSSQL will continue to use analyticsFor B1 8.82 on HANA, License server & server tools need to be installed on a windows machineRSP will not be available for B1 8.82 on HANA B1A in ramp up today (July 2012), B1 One Box ramp up starts September 14, 2012
First, the information explosion. Massive amounts of it are being created every year, and how fast your business reacts to important information determines whether you succeed or fail.This is a big problem and it’s getting bigger. IDC estimates that worldwide digital content added up to 487 billion gigabytes in 2009. They predict this will double in 18 months, and every 18 months thereafter. In a Sloan Management survey in 2010 60% of executives said their companies have more data than they know how to use effectively. With data doubling every 18 months, that percentage is going to keep growing.
At the same time, the consumerization trend is driving up expectations as to what enterprise IT can help the business to do. People want instant access to information – ‘in the moment’’ - whether that is a moment of risk or a moment of opportunity. If the moment has passed and your business has not taken the right action, it has failed. People want instant answers. They want them to be right. They want them anywhere, any time.
This puts IT in a tough place. IT cannot deliver what the business needs. Why? Because the cost of managing that data explosion is too high. Because there is no practical way to instantly analyze everything that’s going on relative to the business. IT can deliver some of the information. The most critical slice of information can be delivered in near real time. But it’s not enough. Data is growing. Demand is increasing.We must find a way to deal with this – a way to process and analyze massive amounts of data in real time.
That is the role of SAP HANA. Using groundbreaking in-memory hardware and software we can manage data at massive scale, analyze it at amazing speed, and give the business not only instant access to real time transactional information and analysis but also more flexibility. Flexibility to analyze new types of data in different ways, without creating custom data warehouses and data marts. Even the flexibility to build new applications which were not possible before.
Business users of all levels are empowered to conduct immediate ad hoc data analyses and transaction processing using massive amounts of real time data for expanded business insight.It frees up IT resources and lowers the cost of operations.
Business users of all levels are empowered to conduct immediate ad hoc data analyses and transaction processing using massive amounts of real time data for expanded business insight.It frees up IT resources and lowers the cost of operations.
SAP Business One Analytics powered by SAP HANA delivers in-memory technology and analytics innovations without disruption to daily business. This of course provides benefits to both existing and new customers. The ground breaking in-memory technology is available inside a seamless user experience. Transactions and Master Data are replicated real-time from the SAP Business One database server to the SAP Business One analytics server. The data is stored in a columnar data base using the in-memory technology. On top of the transactional data in the SAP HANA database, there is a semantic layer containing views and cubes models enabling interactive analysis. The new technology provides superior performance. In addition to the new technology, SAP provides new analytics content which can be consumed through Crystal reports, dashboards, and MS Excel pivot tables via the SAP Business One cockpit and menus. The HANA Studio allows you to extend the semantic layer and develop new analytics.
This is the architecture of B1A solution. On the left we see our SAP Business One system loaded on a SQL server database.To the right we see the new Linux box with the SAP HANA database, replication server and web application server.We create master data and cube definitions in HANA database. The transactional data will be replicated from the source database. On top of master and transactional data, are new views or cubes, which will be consumed by the analytic service and service in web app server. The Dashboard and search service will access these services to show the analysis result to the end users. For the Crystal reports, we use an ODBC driver. This requires Crystal Reports 2008 sp5+LAFix5.0.9_ADAPT01612553. ODBO is used for interactive analysis in MS Excel pivot tables. ODBO is the MDX protocol used to communicate with MS Excel.The replication services use JDBC to communicate between the HANA server and the SQL database.
The last step is to activate B1A for users in the SAP Business One client. This is done after you have installed and configured B1A.The checkbox is found on the Services tab in General Settings. Choose Administration > System Initialization >General Settings > Services tab.Once this box is checked, the user has all the functionalities of enterprise search, new analytics content for the dashboards and Crystal reports, and the new ad hoc reporting capabilities in MS Excel.
We will look at administration tasks: initialization, replication, back up and restore.
The administrative console is a web portal. The format for the address is http://IPAddress:8080/Enablement/ where you would replace the words IPAddress with the appropriate IPAddress.The user must specify the user name and password. The user name for the administrator in the administration console is set to admin. The password is defined in the installation.
Here is the homepage for the Administrative Console. Here you can see the server connections for the SQL server with the Tomcat Server and the HANA Database. This is where you would specify the connections.In this case, everything is fine. If there are errors, you will see an X that shows that there is a problem with the connection. If you have made a mistake previously in the installation, you can change the SQL server address and/or the HANA database address here. This is useful if you need to change an address in the future.On the top of the screen you can see the database. You can choose between different companies and change the corresponding settings.
There are approximately 1200 tables in each company database storing company data. Of those 1200, 950 will be replicated to HANA database for analytics purposes. These exclude history tables.All of the user defined tables and user defined fields will be migrated to HANA database.Out of the 360 Business Objects, the 31 most commonly used business objects relevant for B1A enterprise search are replicated, as are the 40 business objects relevant for B1A predefined OLAP cubes.Note that you can defined user defined tables and fields which are replicated to the HANA database, however, user defined objects are not replicated.182 Stored Procedures are migrated to NewDBIn total, B1 has 250+ SP, SPs related to upgrade and archiving are not yet migratedDashboard and CR report developed for Hybrid solution are also ported to One-box solution
The replication service copies the new changes from MS SQL Server to SAP HANA database, including the table structure changes on the user-defined tables and user-defined fields. The replication service uses the Change Tracking feature in MS SQL Server 2008 and later versions. All previous versions of MS SQL do not have this feature; that is why it must be MS SQL Server 2008 or later. We use the native SQL server features for tracking changes.For more information see this website:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc280462.aspx“Change tracking in SQL Server 2008 enables applications to obtain only changes that have been made to the user tables, along with the information about those changes. With change tracking integrated into SQL Server, complicated custom change tracking solutions no longer have to be developed.Change tracking is an important building block for applications that synchronize and replicate data in scenarios in which end-to-end replication solutions do not work and a custom solution is required. For example, a scenario that requires synchronizing data with data stores that are not SQL Server databases or in which the store schemas are very different.”
Attribute view is simply used for the structure of the attributes. As we saw previously, attributes give context to the data. Attributes are usually modeled using attribute views. We can think of them as master data tables, like the BP table which contains business partner information or item table which contains information about items. Attribute views do not contain any transactional data.Attribute views can be linked to transactional tables in analytical views.Sometimes a measure, such as a weight, can be defined as an attribute. An example could be the weight of an item in attribute view for items.Here we see the attribute view is composed of tables connected by table references. In every attribute view there is a key attribute which defines the key for those attributes.
An analytic view can be regarded as an cube as in OLAP and used for multi-dimensional queries. You can think of them as a fact table joined against modeled attribute views. Analytic views only maintain data tables/views and relationships between them. They do not store data. The query calculations will be done at runtime.This is the fastest model in SAP HANA. In an ideal situation, it is best to use analytic view for our models.
The third type of view is the calculation view.Basically, the calculation view is to support additional operations, e.g. the union operation to analytic views, since analytical views cannot support union operations.So, SAP provides the capability of unions or joins between other views by using the calculation view. For example, an analytical view might represent a transaction, whereas a calculation view is able to model a more complex business requirement like union of transactions from different tables. Like the analytic view, the calculation view can also be regarded as a cube during the multi-dimensional query.Calculation views can be created upon the result of the normal SQL script query. In most of complicated cases, we use calculation view for the final solution.You can see from the example on this slide, this calculation view is built upon the a script.These three views (Attribute, Analytic and Calculation views) are provided to customers to build their own models in the semantic layer. Additionally, procedures can be used to build queries that can accept parameters during runtime.
Procedures created inside packages are used for querying data with or without parameters. A procedure in a package is read-only and cannot write to the HANA database. The output of the procedure will be a table.
The migratedSales Analysis dashboard is based on a cube containing the measures:MeasuresRevenueGross Profit LC Gross Profit PercentageTotal LCTotal SCCost LC (COGS )Dimensions available for filters include:Customer group / CustomersItem group / itemSales EmployeesCalendar (year, quarter, month)Territory (hierarchy)Country (default bill to address)
The delivery analysis provides metrics on whether orders are delivered in a timely fashion. You can see the average number of days for delayed orders and a list of orders that are long overdue.
The service call dashboard has been migrated to HANA.
The purchase quotation dashboard gives you the ability to quickly see the status of all your purchase quotations. A graph shows the split between those with a response, without a response and those overdue. You can filter by the dimensions of vendors/vendor groups, items/item groups or calendar dates. A detailed is available showing quotations with contact information.
The Sales Employee Performance dashboard allows you to view monthly sales by sales employees. You can compare target and actuals for all employees or for individuals.
The Payment Collection Analysis dashboard allows you to view the status of customer payments by sales orders. You can view the time elapsed from order to payment for sales orders and see a graph of average order-to-payment days. Another graph allows you see a monthly view of amounts paid compared to amounts outstanding.
A selection of calculation intensive reports were migrated to the HANA database. These include the Inventory Turnover Analysis, Monthly Customer Status, and Open Item List for Business Partners.
Demo some of the Crystal Reports for B1A.For example, show how quickly the open item list is updated.
Demo some of the Crystal Reports for B1A.For example, show how quickly the open item list is updated.
Demo some of the Crystal Reports for B1A.For example, show how quickly the open item list is updated.
The enterprise search provides the ability to do a hierarchical search in all SAP Business One modules. These are called repositories. You can do a full text search for all business object types. You can for example search by a document number. You can quickly and easy narrow down data you are viewing by using the options for business object types – such as choosing to view only open or closed documents or by narrowing the list by date range. The enterprise search links to all SAP Business One forms. It is compliant with the SAP Business One data ownership concept so you can restrict who sees which data. There is easy navigation with a business object map. You can find related documents for the objects found in the search. It also provides enhancements to reporting and printing.
There are 32 enabled Business Objects in Enterprise Search. The list covers the major business objects of SAP Business One and includes user-defined objects.
Demo:(In advance of doing a live demo, find or create a delivery with related A/R invoice. Note the customer reference number on the A/R invoice so that you can use it as search criteria in the demo.)Enter a customer reference number in the Enterprise Search and choose Search.The data appears. Choose Layout to open a panel on the left. Narrow the data down (using the left panel) to A/R invoices.De-select Closed so you only view Open invoices.Narrow range of dates.Choose Find Related to see related information.Drill down - Click on one of the documents (delivery) to open the document window.Note: a pre-recorded demo is available for this business scenario if you do not have a live system. In advance of your presentation, unhide the next slide. During your presentation you can then click on the graphic in the slide to run the demo.If you unhide this slide to use as a pre-recorded demo. This is the scenario to narrate as the demo runs:Jayson is an account representative of OEC Computers. He receives a call from a customer (customer reference No. 256789) who asks him when orders for this month will be delivered. Jayson uses enterprise search to search for the customer reference No. 256789 to find all related business objects. He filters the search results by A/R invoice and further narrows down by open invoices and recent month. Jayson views the invoices to find the information for the customer.
You can run ad hoc analyses using MS Excel Pivot tables against the OLAP cubes in the predefined semantic layer. These interactive analyses are available from the SAP Business One menu and cover areas in accounting and sales. The definition of the cubes behind these pivot tables is discussed in the lessons on the semantic layer.At this point, we will take a look at an interactive analysis used by a finance manager.
Interactive analysis is available on the menu within the SAP Business One client after the SAP HANA Installation and the activation in the SAP Business One client. For authorized users, it is one click on the menu to open the MS Excel pivot table.
Open interactive analysisSelect budget scenario nameChoose year (under Budget_Date)Choose Attributes of G/L accountChoose Budget Amount SC Then choose Actual Amount SC for comparisonThen choose the Future Amount SC and the Total Amount SCApply formatting as you like with the Excel featuresChoose Quarter then drag it over to columns Can scroll to the right to see the volume of informationFreeze panes on column A so you can scroll and still view the row titlesNarrow down by Quarter: Drag Quarter into the filter area, then at the top of column B you will see the drop down to filter to choose a quarterChoose 04 for the fourth quarter. Now see only the fourth quarter of each year.Can then narrow it down by year: Drag year into the filter area and choose 2010, then switch to 2011 so you can see how quickly data is refreshed.Note: a pre-recorded demo is available for this business scenario if you do not have a live system. In advance of your presentation, unhide the next slide. During your presentation you can then click on the graphic in the slide to run the demo.
Here is a list of the main components for SAP Business One , version for SAP HANA and the type of server used for those components.The Business One client is the same Business One client as always with the normal Business One system requirements. There is no difference when working with SAP HANA. The server side is different because the server is a Linux Server. However, some server components are not yet migrated to Linux, so you will still need a Windows server.SAP Business One 8.82, version for SAP HANA PL01 is currently synchronized with:SAP Business One 8.82 PL07 SAP HANA Platform Edition 1.0 SP04 Rev 36 SAP Business One, analytics powered by SAP HANA 1.0 PL03
Notes:Customers running B1 on MSSQL will continue to use analyticsFor B1 8.82 on HANA, License server & server tools need to be installed on a windows machineRSP will not be available for B1 8.82 on HANA B1A in ramp up today (July 2012), B1 One Box ramp up starts September 14, 2012
The enterprise search links to all SAP Business One forms. It is compliant with the SAP Business One data ownership concept so you can restrict who sees which data. There is easy navigation with a business object map. You can find related documents for the objects found in the search. It also provides enhancements to reporting and printing.