SAP BW Connector for BIRT Technical Overview How to Easily Access Data from SAP Cubes Using BIRT www.yash.com 2011 Copyright YASH Technologies. All rights reserved. www.yash.com 2013 Copyright YASH Technologies. All rights reserved.
In 2004, Actuate Corporation founded the Eclipse BIRT Project with the cooperation of the Eclipse Foundation, and continues to co-lead what has become the most successful open-source Business Intelligence (BI) toolset in existence today. BIRT has become the foundation of many enterprise-level BI deployments, and is an integral component of infrastructures everywhere. As open source has continued to gain momentum and acceptance, BIRT has become an industry leader, due to its ease of use and flexibility. Actuate BIRT/Eclipse BIRT, which runs on the Eclipse IDE, provides a set of reporting and data visualization tools and technologies used by developers to build rich information applications. It includes the basic tools required for reporting: the ability to design reports, and to display report data. The technology underlining these elements are complete, equipping developers with everything they need to access data sources, transform data, apply business logic to data, and once the data has been filtered and formatted, present the results to users. BIRT includes the following functions and features: Multiple Development and Design Tools Extensible Data Access Data Customization Programmability Flexible Data Presentation Component Reuse/ Libraries Easy Integration Internationalization With such compelling benefits, BIRT has become top of mind for many companies. Although Actuate BIRT/Eclipse BIRT Designer supports connecting to a variety of databases, like JDBC, Oracle, SQL Server, MS Access, Web services Data Source, Flat files, XML Data Source, it does not provide connectivity to the SAP BW system. YASH Technologies has meticulously designed and developed an SAP BW Connector for BIRT to connect seamlessly to the SAP BW system. The Business Case for a Connector SAP Business Warehouse has the ability to store a wealth of information. However, many times the data is not easily accessible or in a comprehensible format. In order to speed benefit realization from their SAP BW investments, a Connector is required to communicate with SAP BW system, which can be seamlessly integrated with Actuate BIRT Report Designer or Eclipse BIRT Report Designer, and provide an easy-to-use graphical user interface and high performing results. SAP BW Connector for BIRT is an innovative plug-in, developed by YASH Technologies, that allows Actuate BIRT/ Eclipse BIRT report designers to connect and access SAP BW system to further construct new functions. This solution delivers greater business value to BIRT users by leveraging the extensible and rich reporting features of open source BIRT or Actuate BIRT to design and develop reports against SAP Cubes. ODA Framework The Open Data Access (ODA) component is an open and flexible data access framework that provides a common way for a consumer application to allow applications to access data from both standard and custom data sources. It enables data connectivity between data consumers and data source providers through published run-time interfaces. The ODA framework is intended to provide an abstraction for scalable data retrieval from heterogeneous data sources. It serves a different purpose than other standard data-centric frameworks, such as JDBC and SDO, which focus mainly on data updates.
Three Approaches Used to Access SAP BW SAP BW system can be accessed using three different approaches, as shown in the following diagram: Data objects Business Explorer Virtual objects Multi-Provider InfoProvider OLAP Processor MDX Processor XML/ A OLE DB for OLAP Third Party Enterprise Portal Infoset BAPI OLE DB for OLAP OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) is implemented in SAP's Business Information Warehouse, to provide the ability to query data from an OLAP server. ODBO is a set of COM (Component Object Model) objects and interfaces that extends OLE DB to provide access to multi-dimensional data structures. It is designed to facilitate communication between providers and consumers of multi- dimensional data. In other words, this interface provides thirdparty vendors or customer developers an industry standard method of accessing BW data via their front-end presentation tool. OLE DB is based on COM protocol. It is available since SAP BW 1.2B, which requires client side driver installation and runs on Windows platform. OLAP BAPIs (Business Application Programming interface) In SAP BW 3.5 and higher (NetWeaver BI 7.0), OLAP BAPI is a set of interfaces for object oriented programming methods that enable a programmer to integrate third party software into the SAP R/3 product. For specific business tasks such as uploading transactional data, BAPIs are called and stored as RFC modules. OLAP BAPI uses the Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) query language to query multidimensional objects such as cubes and return multidimensional cellsets that contain the cube data. XML for Analysis (XMLA) XML for Analysis (XMLA) is a specification for a set of XML message interfaces that use the industry standard Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to define data access interaction between a client application and an analytical data provider working over the Internet. Using a standard API, XMLA provides open access to multidimensional data from varied data sources, any client platform to any server platform, through web services that are supported by multiple vendors. It is a SOAP-based interface for exposing OLAP and Data Mining data sources as Web services.
Advantages of Using XMLA SAP BW Connector for BIRT uses the XMLA approach for the following reasons: XMLA is platform independent. XMLA is a standard that allows client applications to talk to multi-dimensional or OLAP data sources. The query language used is MDX, which is the most commonly used multi-dimensional expression language today. XMLA's web-based architecture uses standard Internet Protocols, such as HTTP, XML, and SOAP, The result is technology independent implementations of XMLA providers that work with any tool, application programming language, hardware, platform, or device. With XMLA, users can protect their technology and tool investments because XMLA-based deployments will interoperate. The standard's flexibility will also allow location independent applications to be shared within or between organizations. XMLA is designed for thin client/zero footprint architecture. It requires fewer round trips between a client and a server, moving analytical applications away from traditional client/server roots towards flexible web-based architecture. The result is faster response times and less intensive demand on resources. Developers can leverage existing skills, as well as eliminate the need to program multiple APIs and query languages. Technical Architecture SAP BW Connector for BIRT connects seamlessly to the SAP BW server using an interface that integrates with the BIRT designer through XMLA web services and enables access to all the available cubes in the server and respective BEx queries that could be used as data sets for the BIRT reports. This seamless integration between BIRT and SAP BW Server through SAP BW Connector for BIRT enables report developers to easily access SAP cubes, eliminating complexity, allowing developers to focus on the design and rendering of data for reports. SAP BW Connector SAP BW for BIRT Connection class Login Information Validity Status Valid Login Information SAPBWService Class MDX Query Data SAP BW Database CustomDataSet WizardPage Class Metadata MDX Query Data Resultset Class Metadata/ Data/ ResultSet Query Class Metadata/ Data/ ResultSet BIRT Reports
Hardware and Software Requirements Operating Systems Windows 7 Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2003 Windows Vista Windows XP Professional Minimum Hardware Requirements Processor: Pentium 1 GHz or above Advantages of SAP BW Connector for BIRT Platform independence Simplified connectivity Retrieve data from SAP OLAP data sources through web services Create, access, and customize MDX query using GUI BEx query and report parameter handling Utilize features such as Slicing, Filtering, Order By, and MDX Cross Join Supports localization RAM: 512 MB (1GB recommended) Software Requirements Actuate BIRT Report Designer Professional 11 or above Eclipse BIRT Designer Version 2.6.3 or above Actuate iserver 11 or above About YASH Technologies YASH Technologies focuses on customer success. As a leading technology services and outsourcing partner for medium and large global customers, we leverage technology and our flexible delivery models to drive performance and business value throughout a customer s enterprise. YASH s comprehensive service approach incorporates a holistic view of our customers that extends beyond delivery. This approach integrates enterprise solutions and services, proprietary best practice offerings, strategic application and maintenance outsourcing, as well as consulting and integration services. YASH is a SEI CMMI (Level 3) and an ISO 9001:2008 certified company with U.S. and India headquarters and regional sales and development offices spread across five continents. For more information, please visit us www.yash.com or email at info@yash.com. YASH Technologies www.yash.com/contactus Global Presence: Americas EU ASIA AUS California Iowa Massachusetts Missouri New Jersey Texas Brazil London Germany Finland Solna Sydney Bangalore Gurgaon NCR Hyderabad Indore Mumbai Pune World HQ: 605-17th Avenue East Moline IL 61244 USA Toll Free: 877-766-8934 Tel: 309-755-0433 Fax: 309-796-1242 EU: The Mille-II Floor 1000-Great West Road Brentford London TW89HH UK Tel: 44-20-8261-4408 Fax: 44-20-8261-4418 India: 201-205 Bansi Trade Center 581/5 MG Road Indore MP 452001 India Tel: 91-731-426-1100 Fax: 91-731-426-1234 SAP BW Connector-0113 2013 YASH Technologies. All rights reserved. Referred products/ a services may be registered trademarks of belonging companies.