Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise Data

belindacur_at_yahoo.com (Belinda) wrote in message news:<41af5e48.0402190341.5dfae7f4_at_posting.google.com>...

Hello -

Figured I throw in my 2 cents. I started my career doing SAP implementations, then moved into OLAP (Oracle Express) and data warehousing, then SAP BW, then Oracle Relational, and my current contract is on SAP BW. So I've had some varied experience...

First let me say this....I wanted to try working with SAP BW 3.0 because it looked like there were a lot of improvements. But now having worked with it, I still don't like it compared to Oracle (for instance.)

SAP BW was built on top of the existing R/3 basis layer. Probably a smart move for SAP at the time. They could leverage their existing infrastructure that abstracted the app server from the db, many existing basis management features, the ABAP language was there for development/customization, a horizontal scaling strategy via multiple app servers, intra-instance communication protocols were there, etc. I good idea in concept, maybe a great business decision...when performance is bad, you need to buy more app servers. But a bad idea technically, the SAP infrastructure was built for OLTP not OLAP.

I don't know the details of how BW is working under the covers, but I'm sure a lot of it is procedural ABAP code being generated based on user point and clicks. When you are working with bulk data, and trying to do ad-hoc reporting, procedural code abstracted from the db server isn't the best thru-put for these types of queries.

Some of the nice things BW gives you are the scheduling and monitoring features, the correction and transport system, the built-in extraction from R/3, and the business content, (but I haven't used the business content that much to tell you the truth), speed of development if you are doing something that FITS WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK (cubes) and is fairly standard, currency and language translation features built in, and new delta tracking features.

But this doesn't compare to the frustrating issues... 1.) ODS layer is not a true/flexible DW layer. It is simple relational tables with primary keys with options for secondary indexes. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to create a more normalized data warehouse layer with more complex constraints and relationships between entities.
2.) Ever try adding a column to a table? I think you have to dump the data and reload. So you'll need to write an ABAP program to reload probably or create a new one time load into the new structure from the old one.
3.) What if you need to investigate data issues? Ever try ad-hoc analysis? I haven't found an easy method for joining 2 tables in SAP with my own custom query. I use SE16 to look at individual tables and then dump them and load into MS-Access if I need to do real data quality investigation.
4.) All aggregates for a cube are stored in one physical table. Kind of a weird architecture.
5.) Bex is a cumbersome reporting tool.
6.) Very proprietary. In Oracle, if I create a data warehouse, I could create my own front-end using just JDBC access into the database if I wanted to. No way could I do that with BW.

There are probably more....but I need to get back to work. :)

Dave

> If there is anybody out there still looking for a comparison of SAP BW
> to SQL Server I would like to let you know we were one of the large
> SAP BW sites and having been acutely frustrated with BW we converted
> to SQL Server OLAP Services. There is a interesting Whitepaper on the
> Microsoft SAP Congress web site created by SAP themselves where they
> have benchmarked a SQL Server and OLAP Services running on a 8 way NT
> box outperformed SAP BW systems ruuning on 24 way UNIX databases-what
> better testimony than from SAP themselves. Further, SAP's findings
> were the BW cubes moved to SQL Server OLAP services were 10 times
> smaller this shows the appalling BW technology. If you have trouble
> finding this benchmark paper let me know.
>
> After seeing the results of a pilot migration we migrated our entire
> SAP BW applications to SQL server OLAP services at that Oracle 9i OLAP
> was still not in General availability but if you are thinking of a
> alternative now worthwhile to evaluate Oracle 9i OLAP & SQL Server
> OLAP services to the white elephant SAP BW. You will discover after
> this how many more less than average intelligence customers with less
> than average commonsense are running this SAP white elephant called
> SAP BW paying fortune to SAP.
>
> Nigel Pendse as published a very interesting article on SAP BW a
> worthwhile article to read if you are already being bled dry by SAP.
>
> Belinda
>
>
>
> From: Amanda Jones (amandajonesbc_at_lycos.com)
> Subject: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise
> Data Warehouse & OLAP application
>
>
> View this article only
> Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace,
> comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse
> Date: 2003-01-11 01:37:30 PST
>
>
> Hello All
>
> My company as asked me to prepare and evaluate between alternative
> solutions for data warehousing and one of our major source system to
> the data warehouse is SAP R/3 but of course we have other source
> systems apart from SAP.
>
> I am wondering how good is SAP Business Warehouse - BW 30B the latest
> version of SAP BW as a solution. I have personally talked to quite a
> few customers using SAP BW I could not get a good feedback about the
> product from SAP customers. Some of the customers indicated following
> issues with SAP BW:
> -difficult to use
> -went through long implementation cycles
> -performance was poor and scalability issues
> -maintaining the application was expensive since SAP BW and ABAP
> consultants are needed for ongoing maintenance.
>
> Apart from it we figured out SAP BW 30B does not have any ETL tool in
> it with ETL being 70-80% of the data warehousing effort I am bit
> sceptical how BW can run without a proper ETL tool. The part that
> caused us most concern was the language to extract, transform and load
> in SAP BW was ABAP and ABAP is proprietary which would cause us a
> major steep cost of ownership even for initial implementation to
> ongoing maintenance since our SAP project was not easy to implement
> and ABAP programmers are not available for less that $1000/day. So we
> would need expensive ABAP programmers to develop extractors for SAP
> R/3.
>
> Next configuring SAP BW needed specialist SAP BW consultants and we
> found out good SAP BW consultants were hard to get and getting
> consulting help from SAP would cost us - $2000/day. Apart from this
> the reporting layer in SAP BW was Microsoft Excel and any programming
> of the reporting was all done in ABAP again and for projecting reports
> Crystal reports was available but we had to buy a seperate license for
> Crystal reports and indications was in addition to SAP BW we had to
> buy a CPU based license for Crystal in addition. Since, we have
> non-SAP data sources to integrate into the data warehouse we were told
> we need a ETL tool like Ascential and we are to buy a seperate license
> to buy Ascential
> ETL tool once more CPU based licensing. Apart from buying a ETL tool
> like Ascential customers who had to build ETL to SAP BW have built
> part of the ETL process the extraction layer in Ascential and the
> transform and load part was written in ABAP for performance and that
> was the only solution for doing transforms and loads was to use ABAP
> programming.
>
> So in all staffing requirements we found for SAP BW to implement a
> enterprise data warehouse was we need :
> Read the rest of this message... (146 more lines)
>
> Message 2 in thread
> From: Nigel Pendse (nigelp_at_nospam.compuserve.com)
> Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a
> Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application
>
>
> View this article only
> Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace,
> comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse
> Date: 2003-01-11 02:18:11 PST
>
>
>
> "Amanda Jones" <amandajonesbc_at_lycos.com> wrote in message
> news:d42580f.0301110137.5d6bdcca_at_posting.google.com...
> > Hello All
> >
> > My company as asked me to prepare and evaluate between alternative
> > solutions for data warehousing and one of our major source system to
> > the data warehouse is SAP R/3 but of course we have other source
> > systems apart from SAP.
> <snip>
>
> > Precisely I am wondering why not Oracle 9i OLAP or SQL Server 2000 or
> > Oracle/SQL Server with Hyperion Essbase/Cognos. Some of the SAP BW
> > consultants claim SAP BW is better than Business Objects, Cognos or
> > Hyperion. Can you please throw some light and compare SAP BW to
> > 9iOLAP/MicrsoftOLAP2000/Essbase/BO/Cognos & Acta/Informatica and if
> > any of you are using any of these alternative solutions can you please
> > provide your experiences with these alternatives to SAP BW like Acta
> > with Essbase/Oracle/Cognos or SQL Server and if there are any resource
> > on the net which outline how to evaluate a data warehouse.
>
> The OLAP Survey 2 also confirmed the low success rates of SAP BW
> users.
> Using an index based on eight separate benefits, SAP BW users reported
> the
> lowest scores among the nine products which had enough respondents to
> report. They also had the second lowest achievement of business goals
> among
> the same group. They also had an above-average rate of reporting
> technical
> problems (worse than any of the other products on your list).
>
> But, bizarrely, they also had the greatest loyalty -- presumably, many
> SAP
> R/3 sites have a fanatical loyalty to the vendor (after having
> invested so
> much), and despite the poor experiences of BW, are reluctant to
> consider
> third party alternatives, even though *all* the third party
> alternatives
> perform better.
>
> The same survey found that SAP BW users were the least likely to have
> performed a competitive product evaluation of all (only 24% of the BW
> sites
> surveyed had done this, against an average of 50%). This suggests that
> if
> people actually take the trouble to do what you're doing, they soon
> discover
> better alternatives and are able to achieve better results, more
> quickly and
> at lower cost. Largely, it's people who just assume BW "must be good
> because
> it's from SAP" who buy it, and then find it doesn't deliver. Of
> course, that
> same group probably don't realize how much better off they could have
> been
> if they'd bought something else.
>
> Because there are so many well-heeled R/3 sites, you'll find that all
> the
> independent BI vendors have put a lot of effort into ensuring that
> they can
> work well with R/3. Of the ones on your list, probably the only one
> not to
> consider at this stage is 9i OLAP, which is still somewhat unfinished.
> It
> may be good in a year or so, but currently has no apps available, and
> few
> tools. Consequently, there are currently very few deployments of it.
>
> Nigel Pendse
> OLAP Solutions
> http://www.olapreport.com
> http://www.survey.com/products/olap2/
> Message 3 in thread
> From: DA Morgan (damorgan_at_exesolutions.com)
> Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a
> Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application
>
>
> View this article only
> Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace,
> comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse
> Date: 2003-01-11 11:06:13 PST
>
>
> Amanda Jones wrote:
>
> > Hello All
> >
> > My company as asked me to prepare and evaluate between alternative
> > solutions for data warehousing and one of our major source system to
> > the data warehouse is SAP R/3 but of course we have other source
> > systems apart from SAP.
> >
> > I am wondering how good is SAP Business Warehouse - BW 30B the latest
> > version of SAP BW as a solution. I have personally talked to quite a
> > few customers using SAP BW I could not get a good feedback about the
> > product from SAP customers. Some of the customers indicated following
> > issues with SAP BW:
> > -difficult to use
> > -went through long implementation cycles
> > -performance was poor and scalability issues
> > -maintaining the application was expensive since SAP BW and ABAP
> > consultants are needed for ongoing maintenance.
> >
> > Apart from it we figured out SAP BW 30B does not have any ETL tool in
> > it with ETL being 70-80% of the data warehousing effort I am bit
> > sceptical how BW can run without a proper ETL tool. The part that
> > caused us most concern was the language to extract, transform and load
> > in SAP BW was ABAP and ABAP is proprietary which would cause us a
> > major steep cost of ownership even for initial implementation to
> > ongoing maintenance since our SAP project was not easy to implement
> > and ABAP programmers are not available for less that $1000/day. So we
> > would need expensive ABAP programmers to develop extractors for SAP
> > R/3.
> >
> > Next configuring SAP BW needed specialist SAP BW consultants and we
> > found out good SAP BW consultants were hard to get and getting
> > consulting help from SAP would cost us - $2000/day. Apart from this
> > the reporting layer in SAP BW was Microsoft Excel and any programming
> > of the reporting was all done in ABAP again and for projecting reports
> > Crystal reports was available but we had to buy a seperate license for
> > Crystal reports and indications was in addition to SAP BW we had to
> > buy a CPU based license for Crystal in addition. Since, we have
> > non-SAP data sources to integrate into the data warehouse we were told
> > we need a ETL tool like Ascential and we are to buy a seperate license
> > to buy Ascential
> > ETL tool once more CPU based licensing. Apart from buying a ETL tool
> > like Ascential customers who had to build ETL to SAP BW have built
> > part of the ETL process the extraction layer in Ascential and the
> > transform and load part was written in ABAP for performance and that
> > was the only solution for doing transforms and loads was to use ABAP
> > programming.
> >
>
> Read the rest of this message... (161 more lines)
>
> Message 4 in thread
> From: timgale (timgale_at_rogers.com)
> Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a
> Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application
>
>
> View this article only
> Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace,
> comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse
> Date: 2003-01-14 14:59:01 PST
>
>
>
> My background is a little different having been a Cognos reseller for
> the
> past 6 years. I am lead to believe by the guru's that be that Cognos
> has a
> few solutions for SAP and/or SAP BW...
>
> You can buy and use Cognos "headstarts" for SAP BW which will give
> users all
> the benefits of the Cognos client against SAP's Data Warehouse.
> However, I
> believe that the user can not perform OLAP disconnected.
>
> You can use Cognos against the info cubes in BW but you lose your ad
> hoc
> query and drill through capabilities. All you get is OLAP. Performance
> may
> also be an issue as PowerPlay is connecting through an odbc type
> interface
> (ODBO?) which is yet another point of failure. Also, you then are
> dependant
> on both vendors for connectivity through various releases.
>
> You can purchase analytical applications for SAP from Cognos which
> uses
> Cognos Decision Stream for ETL (solves your multiple data sources
> problem)
> and takes advantage of Decision Stream functionality for slowly
> changing
> dimensions, conforming dimensions, etc. Also, there is a TON of
> business
> content for Inventory, Procurement, Sales, AR, GL, and AP. It's an end
> to
> end Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence offering that is quick to
> implement. Having said all that, I've tried to convince many SAP shops
> of
> the above and they are extremely loyal to the ERP vendor. I'm not sure
> why.
> Typically an ERP vendor's sales force is plugged into the executive
> buyers
> which helps set an ERP agenda despite a favourable Cognos IT
> recommendation.
> Also note that Cognos was a licensed reseller for ACTA a few years ago
> so
> presumably they learned a thing or two about SAP data sources.
>
> Cognos resources are available in most major cities either from Cognos
> or
> through a systems integrator. Also, Cognos resources are available on
> a
> contract/permanent basis (at least in Toronto) through most agencies
> or on
> the open market.
>
> Personally, I think Cognos Analytical Applications are the best bet
> but I've
> been programmed to think that way:-)
>
> Hope that information is helpful.
>
> Cheers!
> Tim
>
>
>
> "Amanda Jones" <amandajonesbc_at_lycos.com> wrote in message
> news:d42580f.0301110137.5d6bdcca_at_posting.google.com...
> > Hello All
> >
> > My company as asked me to prepare and evaluate between alternative
> > solutions for data warehousing and one of our major source system to
> > the data warehouse is SAP R/3 but of course we have other source
>
> Read the rest of this message... (194 more lines)
>
> Message 5 in thread
> From: Ihre_Frage (Ihre_Frage_at_yahoo.de)
> Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a
> Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application
>
>
> View this article only
> Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace,
> comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse
> Date: 2003-01-16 09:25:31 PST
>
>
>
> Hello Amanda,
>
> having lately had a look on all major multidimensional and relational
> OLAP systems I can just agree to all the statements regarding BW:
>
> > > -difficult to use
> > > -went through long implementation cycles
> > > -performance was poor and scalability issues
> > > -maintaining the application was expensive since SAP BW and ABAP
> > > consultants are needed for ongoing maintenance.
>
> you stated. At the moment there are only three reasons to implement
> SAP BW: 1. Your source data originates from SAP R/3 (at least 85 %).
> 2. Your users only know SAP R/3 reporting and are not "spoiled" by
> front ends from Cognos, Hyperion, Oracle, etc. or there are mainly (3)
> users receiving reports delivered by SAP's Business Explorer Web
> Application Builder (which is quite good).
>
> Why 1? Because SAP BW offers predefined extractors to extract data
> from R/3. Be careful though since any additionaly created field in R/3
> won't be covered by the extractors and need to be created manually. If
> you won't employ BW there will be no way around an ETL tool and
> consultants who know exactly where and how they get the data from
> (using routines that use the R/3 application by creating ABAP code
> through the ETL tool). The question is where you want to put the
> effort: In data extraction from R/3 or in maintaining your warehouse
> application server, the latter called BW. The options you stated with
> the ETL tools and their analytical apps form one scenario. Using the
> ETL tool, filling a database and employing separate front end tools is
> another. You are also comparing multidimensional and relational
> databases: In my oppinion you should see if you need the first or the
> latter to meet your requirements. This depends largely on the data
> volumes you want to handle. Data volume, #users and your required
> performance influence the decision which system and what platform to
> use. "Neutral" warehouse vendors like SAS, IBM, Microsoft or Oracle
> could do. Some of them even have "ETL" functionality built in which is
> quite good, like SAS or Oracle.
>
> Regarding the front ends: There are indeed 3rd party front ends
> available for BW. The problem is just that the ODBO implementation is
> very often different from SAP's (although they have certified
> interfaces). OLAP BAPI gives less hazzles but only two vendors are
> certified. It is not correct though, that programming reports in BW
> needs any ABAP at all. There is a query builder you can use to create
> the report you want (in Excel or for the Web). The use of Business
> Explorer Analyzer is just not as comfortable than using Hyperions
> Excel Add-in or other vendors'.
>
> > > RDBMS and the way SAP BW implementes aggregates is not like Oracle's
>
> Read the rest of this message... (62 more lines)
>
> Message 6 in thread
> From: Andreas Wessner (canttell_at_yahoo.de)
> Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a
> Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application
>
>
> View this article only
> Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace,
> comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse
> Date: 2003-01-16 13:59:17 PST
>
>
>
> Amanda, Tim,
>
> > You can buy and use Cognos "headstarts" for SAP BW which will give users all
> > the benefits of the Cognos client against SAP's Data Warehouse. However, I
> > believe that the user can not perform OLAP disconnected.
>
> Headstart can be used to connect Impromptu against the physical tables
> of
> SAP BW. This means just database security, no application security.
> Powerplay facilitates the OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) interface SAP
> implements.
> Unfortunately in the past (BW 2.1 to 3.0A) SAP's ODBO interface
> experienced
> slight "improvements" by SAP resulting in 3rd party software (also
> Powerplay) not working with SAP BW any more. I wouldn't therefore
> recommend
> patching BW (and you have to apply many patches) without the 3rd party
> vendors' assurance that his software runs with the new SAP BW patch.
>
> You wonder why SAP customers are loyal? I assume that they think
> stucking
> with the "market leader" is a good thing - SAP products are self
> running
> although they are far from optimality. Secondly have you ever tried to
> image
> what you would tell your boss if you voted for a software costing your
> company a fortune and realizing half a year later that you made a
> mistake?
>
> Regards,
>
> A.
> Message 7 in thread
> From: Nigel Pendse (nigelp_at_nospam.compuserve.com)
> Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a
> Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application
>
>
> View this article only
> Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace,
> comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse
> Date: 2003-01-16 14:31:54 PST
>
>
> "Andreas Wessner" <canttell_at_yahoo.de> wrote in message
> news:b079vj$mgcun$2_at_ID-25239.news.dfncis.de...
> > You wonder why SAP customers are loyal? I assume that they think stucking
> > with the "market leader" is a good thing - SAP products are self running
> > although they are far from optimality. Secondly have you ever tried to image
> > what you would tell your boss if you voted for a software costing your
> > company a fortune and realizing half a year later that you made a mistake?
>
> Indeed so, but many sites assume that SAP BW must, by definition, be
> better
> integrated with R/3 than third party products are, which is not
> necessarily
> true. There's also a very long history of ERP vendors (or ledger
> vendors, as
> they used to be called) doing a poor job with end-user business
> applications. Companies like Hyperion, Cognos, Business Objects,
> Comshare,
> etc have long derived a significant part of their business from
> providing
> the flexible analysis and reporting that was promised but not
> delivered by
> the supplier of the ledgers. Oracle tried to overcome this by buying
> the
> Express business from IRI, and marketing OFA as the standard front-end
> for
> Oracle Financials, but this product has been fading.
>
> But, as you say, once a company has spent tens of millions to
> implement SAP,
> it's very hard for them to accept that they then need to buy a third
> party
> product from a smaller vendor to make the most of it.
>
> Nigel Pendse
> OLAP Solutions
> http://www.olapreport.com
Received on Wed Feb 25 2004 - 09:37:34 CST