SAP BI (Business Intelligence) is a leading data warehousing and reporting tool. It helps convert raw data into information and insights that help improve business margins. This course is geared to make you a BI expert!
SAP Business Intelligence (BI) means analyzing and reporting of data from different heterogeneous data sources. SAP Business Warehouse (BW) integrates data from different sources, transforms and consolidates the data, does data cleansing, and storing of data as well. It also includes data modeling, administration and staging area.
The data in SAP BW is managed with the help of a centralized tool known as SAP BI Administration Workbench. The BI platform provides infrastructure and functions which include −
» OLAP Processor
» Metadata Repository,
» Process designer and other functions.
The Business Explorer (BEx) is a reporting and analysis tool that supports query, analysis and reporting functions in BI. Using BEx, you can analyze historical and current data to different degree of analysis.
SAP BW is known as an open, standard tool which allows you to extract the data from different systems and then send it to the BI system. It also evaluates the data with different reporting tools and you can distribute this to other systems.
The following diagram shows an open, broad and standard based Architecture of Business Intelligence.
» Architecture of Business Intelligence
» BI stands for Business Intelligence
» BW stands for Business Warehouse
In 1997, SAP had first introduced a product for reporting, analysis and data warehousing and it was named as Business Warehouse Information System (BIW).
Later, the name was changed from SAP BIW to SAP Business Warehouse (BW). After SAP acquired Business Objects, the name of the product has been changed to SAP BI.