AUTOMATION OF BW QUERIES USING WEB BROWSER

In the fiercely increasing competition amongst corporations it has become mandatory to make quick and sound crucial business decisions based on analysis of business critical data. This is the point where SAP BW comes into play. BW Queries are the core of the reporting and analysis functionality in SAP BW. They provide a flexible and intuitive platform for data analysis that can be developed using the SAP Business Explorer (BEx) Query Designer.


AUTOMATION OF BW QUERIES – OVERVIEW


The Automation of queries in SAP BW is require where the data from BW is extracted by reporting analyst using the BW queries and send to business frequently on a regular basis for their analysis for example monthly or weekly.


Queries using web browser can be configured to be run:
Only Once: We can schedule the BW queries to be run on a specific day or time to be refreshed and sent to the email id of the recipients.
Scheduled Basis: We can schedule the BW queries to be run on a regular basis i.e. every day, specific day of a week or monthly basis.


This document outlines a set of guidelines to automate a query for a given scenario.


PROCEDURE TO AUTOMATE THE QUERIES USING WEB BROWSER:


Step 1: Log in SAP BW using the User Name and Password. Enter the RRMX as transaction code into the transaction window and hit the Enter. New Excel window will open with the additional BEx (Business Explorer) tool bar.

Step 2: Open a query which you want to automate through BEx and refresh the same.

Step 3: Launch the query in web browser.

Tool Button –> Launch in Web Browser –> Query (Default View)

When you click on the Query (Default View) it will pop up the message box asking the user name and password.

While you enter the user name and password it will populate the query in web browser.

Step 4: Modify the output structure of the query according to your requirement using the Variable screen at the left side of the window

Applying filters


If you want to apply any filter on the query then you can do that using filter icon against the characteristics. (Ex. If you have to produce the report for particular business unit only then click on the filter icon in front of Master Cost Centers it will pop up another window. Select the Business unit as per your requirement and click on transfer at the bottom left.)

If you want to set the properties of any characteristic then right click on that it will pop up window and select the properties. It will pop up another properties window that will allow you to change the properties of the characteristics.

Step 5: Information Broadcasting: When you are done with the formatting of the query click on the Information Broadcasting and mention the email addresses of the recipients whom the report needs to be sent then click on Create new Setting with the Wizard.

Step 6: Select on the check box as Zip File, it will create the Zip file for the report then click on continue at the bottom.

Step 7: Enter the subject line for the report and enter the E-mail content in the content window and continue at the bottom.

Step 8: Insert the technical name and description for the automated report.

Step 9: Schedule the report: Select the Create New Scheduling and Periodic All and enter the date which you want to schedule the report for and the schedule as weekly or monthly. Mention the date and time on which you want the report to be sent in front of Next Start at and click on the transfer below.

If you want to execute the report at the time of creation then click on the Execute button at the bottom otherwise close that. Now the report is scheduled for the period you mentioned this will automatically refresh the query in the same format you created on the scheduled date and E-mail this report to the recipients with the report attached in Zip format.
MODIFICATION IN SCHEDULE OF AUTOMATED QUERIES:-
If you want to make changes in the schedule then select the query and click on the Schedule button at the bottom it will pop up the window just create the new schedule and delete the old as well and click on transfer.

The BEx Web query automation is a standalone, comfortable Web application for data analysis that the user can call up using an URL or as an iView in the Enterprise Portal. The Open a query which you want to automate through BEx and offers a wide range of functions for data analysis via various tab pages and the associated view-specific toolbars.
SAP query automation is an information modeling tool which can be used to analyze business data. To help analyze data in a more user friendly manner, SAP BW used to describe any kind of numeric information from a business process level. There are various ways to describe key figures in SAP BW.
Essentially, a query is a database research action with interesting additional functionality like currency scenarios, complex calculation options, and analysis functions. However, analyses born out of queries can be applied flexibly to a multitude of areas in a multidimensional dataset of an SAP BW Info Provider. This is enabled by combining analytical functionality with the provided drilldowns and filter options. Therefore, one query or few queries can often map an entire analytical application.

Introducing Siebel Street

I would like to welcome you to Hexaware’s Siebel blog– “Siebel Street”. Hexaware’s Siebel practice has been doing wonderful things and we would like to share some of them with you through Siebel Street. In this first post I will introduce the Siebel CRM and describe its capabilities. I will end with giving a sneek peek at some of the forthcoming posts in this blog.

Siebel has been the market leader in the CRM space for more than a decade. It started with a sales-force automation software and then expanded into marketing and customer service applications. It was taken over by Oracle in 2005. Today, Siebel CRM is at the forefront of Oracle’s CRM product strategy. Siebel’s CRM Suite caters to clients in the BFSI, Telecom, Pharmaceuticals , Retail , HI-tech Manufacturing and Transportation verticals among others. Siebel’s Technical architecture provides a top-notch user interface, strong integration, diversified industry-wide applications, easy upgrades and reliable customer support.

Most customers need to change the Siebel application by modifying delivered functionality or by implementing new modules. The customizations in the Siebel applications are implemented using Configuration, Scripting and Workflows. Siebel also provides excellent data management capabilities. Siebel EAI integrates third party applications/objects with Siebel and Siebel EIM populates external data in interface tables and user data in base tables. Siebel Analytics is the business Intelligence application from Siebel Systems. It has been rebranded as OBIEE and will form the centerpiece of Oracle’s BI Strategy.

In Siebel Street, contributors from Hexaware’s Siebel practice will blog about their experience with Siebel CRM and Siebel Analytics/ OBI-EE. We will describe the business and technical challenges, their resolutions and the benefits of our approach. We are working on the entire range of tools available on Siebel. Our team consists of experts in EIM, Config, Integration, ETL, Analytics, Administration and Testing. We will share our project experiences in these areas in the forthcoming posts.

In this month we will post on DAC, escripting etc. Watch this space..

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How to unleash the best of Oracle Features… Part I

In this series, I will cover some of the Oracle features that can be easily implemented to optimize our PeopleSoft environment.

Resumable Space

In todayworld, we will hardly find a database that is not monitored for space usage. But there is still a possibility for our process failing because it ran out of space in the UNDO tablespace or user defined tablespace or the DBA was too late to allocate the required space. Majority of PeopleSoft processes have restart capability. However, there might be instances where you just cannot afford to let the process fail and restart from the last commit/rollback step, example – data conversion during cutover.

The Resumable Space feature provides the facility to suspend transactions when they hit the space errors. The transaction will resume when the error is corrected.

Below are the steps to implement this feature for a SQR process.
1. Modify the SQR to include the following procedure which will be called at the start of the process.

begin-procedure SetResumable          ! Set RESUMABLE in current session

begin-SQL
ALTER SESSION ENABLE RESUMABLE;
end-SQL

end-procedure

2. Create an AFTER SUSPEND trigger to monitor any transactions which have been suspended

CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER resumable_alert_notifier
AFTER SUSPEND
ON DATABASE

BEGIN

– LOG ERROR
INSERT INTO RESUMABLE_ERR_LOG (
SELECT SQL_TEXT, ERROR_MSG, SUSPEND_TIME
FROM USER_RESUMABLE
WHERE SESSION_ID = (SELECT DISTINCT(SID) FROM V$MYSTAT));
– Send Email notification using UTL_SMTP
– Code not shown

END;

You can determine the best strategy (notification or timeout or abort or log error) when transaction is suspended by coding in the AFTER SUSPEND trigger.

Summary
Resumable Space is a cool feature and I recommend it be considered for implementation in your production environment to avoid business critical processes from failing when it encounters space issues. As with any implementation the mantra is “Understand > Plan > Implement in non-production db > Test > Test > Test > implement in production > relax”.
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