Points to be considered while integrating BW Bex queries with BO Hi All, 

There are lot and lot of SAP BW-BO integration projects happening around the world. As consultants, we always face some or the other issues while integrating these tools. 

Here, I am trying to share some points that I have observed while integrating the BW Bex queries with BO Webi.Environment: BW7.3SP4 and BO4.0SP41) Before delivering a query, ensure that “Allow external access to this query” option is checked in. Otherwise, BO team won’t  be able to access the Bex query.

                 2) In performance point of view, it’s better to go with Read Mode option A. As BO team would be scheduling the Webi reports during night, it’s always better that they read all the data at once during that time.In case of where hierarchy elements are available, we can go ahead with the option H.

  

3) Avoid creating query elements with SUMGT, SUMCT, SUMRT etc in the calculations. It’s observed that when we allow the external access to such queries which have SUMCT, SUMGT etc, we cannot save the queries and they are throwing errors like “cannot be released for OLEDB for OLAP”.4) Avoid giving conditions like Top5 in BW queries. Conditions are not working properly in BO. They have the ranking option which is quite similar to conditions in BW.5) For performance improvements, try providing variables in BW queries itself, so that creating the variables (prompts) in BO can be avoided.The general rule is that any prompt

or filter should be defined in the BW query and not in the Web Intelligence query panel. This helps improving the webi report performance.6) For large sets of data, use “selection of structure members” option in RSRT query properties in BW side.Checking this property helps improve performance in situations where there are many Restricted Key Figures and other calculations in the Query Definition.Checking this ensures the structure elements are sent to the database for processing.

7) Wherever the requirement is to give multiple values in prompt, it’s better to provide the option “Several Single Values”.

Avoid providing selection option.BO recognizes this as an interval. It will show the display screen as below in BO(with Start value and End value),which would cause lot of confusions to the BO Consultants.

8) Calculated Key Figures containing mathematical functions should be avoided. It’s giving some errors in BO.

9) In case if you are forced to give exception aggregation in query, kindly inform the BO team about the reference characteristic that is used for exception aggregation. In case if they ignore the reference characteristic, they are getting the #UNAVAILABLE error.10) In case if you have more elements in the query designer which were used only for the calculation purpose, keep them “always hide”.

Elements having the property Hide (can be show) is visible in the BO environment. If we give that option for the case like below, where we have 2 elements with the same text like “CMBO VALUE”, it will be shown as “CMBO Value” and “CMBO Value1” in BO side. 

11) Whenever the BW query is delivered to the BO Team, kindly ensure that you give a screenshot of the BEx query output. If possible, a screenshot showing the data in the underlying infoprovider also (with the same filter that was given in Bex).This will serve 3 purposes:               1)  We have evidence that the Query was working fine at the time of delivery.2)  The screen shot can be used as a test case.3)  BO team doesn’t have to spend their time in finding actual filter values which has data in the underlying dataprovider.12) Never create Text Variables with Replacement Path in BW, as it won’t work as expected in the BO side..As a test scenario, the following text variables were created in BW:

Default value for variable is current Cal month which is 01.2013. As expected, entry when changed in the BW variable will make the corresponding changes in the output column headings aswell.But when the same query was taken to BO, the default value 01.2013 is coming along with text of the measure(Left pane). Even after refreshing the Webi document, the default value is not changing in the column headers and the data is also not populating correctly.The following result appeared in BO, even after the prompt was changed to 10.2011 after editing the default value 01.2013

               13) When we build the corresponding Query for a dashboard requirement like the following,

                 For bringing the region here, we would have used the BW object 0CUST_SALES__0SALES_OFF whose actual text would have been something like sales office.But while creating the query, ensure that you change the text from sales office to Region(as mentioned in the dashboard requirement document) so that the BO consultant doesn’t have any confusion while creating/merging in WEBI.

                 14) Try to restrict the query result set by applying the global filters wherever possible so that huge number of records are not passed to BO level.15) Use most of the chars in Free characteristics instead of placing them in Rows/columns.(Any ways its not going to affect ur webi output as characteristic in rows/freechar doesnot make any difference as far as webi report is concerned and everything would be shown in the same pane in BO environment).16) Make it a habit to use the technical name of the BEx variable instead of the text in the UserResponse function(for prompts).It would be helpful if you need it to work in a multi

language environment. Example,for the same technical name, the prompt text is "Date" in English and "Datum" in German.7) Performance Hints:a) If a Bex query contains Hierarchies, don't forget "supress unassigned nodes" in RSH1(Tcode) in BW side.b) In BO side, enable "Query Stripping" in webi Query Panel and in report design mode - Document Properties.This feature optimizes the query to fetch only data which will be dragged on to the report for user display thus increases the performance and faster display of the report for the userI will certainly add more points to this post in future....  Above mentioned are just a very few points...You also would have faced many limitations like this.I humbly request you to share some of your project experience here, so that this would act as an help document to all our friends who are new to such integration projects..... New releases like SP5 with designer studio would certainly washout many of the existing limitations pertaining to this integration and it  will also enhance the power of BO dashboarding where the source would be SAP BW..... PS: Please find below the link to my document which walks you through the new features introduced in BW7.3

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-30461Thanks and Regards,Prabhith