Hierarchies in BW 3.0 - Transcript

7/29/2019 Hierarchies in BW 3.0 - Transcript

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Moderator: Margaret Anderson

May 16, 2002/10:00 a.m. CDT

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SAP PORTALS

May 16, 2002

10:00 a.m. CDT

Coordinator Good morning and welcome to the Hierarchies MBW conference call. All

participants will be able to listen only until the question and answer

session begins. At the request of SAP Portals, this conference is being

recorded. Should you have any objections, you may disconnect at this

time. I would like introduce todays moderator, Mr. Schubert. Sir, you

may begin when ready.

L. Schubert Good morning, everybody. My name is Lothar Schubert. Im with SAP

Portals America in the BW Regional Implementation Group. I have the

honor actually to introduce todays speaker for the conference call, Mr.

Joachim Mette from the European Implementation Group. Hes director

of the implementation group. He will talk today about hierarchies in the

business information warehouse.

As I mentioned, Joachim is director for BW RIG and hes for 12 years in the BW in the

SAP arena and has been with BW since the very beginning. Hes very

knowledgeable. Theres going to be a presentation about 20 to 30 minutes

and then we will have enough time hopefully for questions and answers.

The PowerPoint hopefully you have downloaded already. Its available on


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the marketplace on the Web in the BW arena. At this time, I want to hand

over to Joachim

J. Mette Thank you, Lothar. Hello, everyone. Todays call will be about

hierarchies in BW. The presentation is actually called Hierarchies in BW

3OB. But everything I want to mention today is also available when you

have the 30A version with the portal package seven. So all the technology

from the hierarchies, BW 30B is equaled or to support packet seven in

30A.

The best thing is if you have the online version of the PowerPoint presentation maybe to

have a look at the slide show mode because there is some animated slides,

and its probably better to have this kind of view when we go through the

presentation. So the agenda for today is that we have a quick look into the

upload of flexible hierarchies. Next, then into the hierarchy maintenance,

what is new there. Of course, if we have maintained the hierarchies,

uploaded the hierarchies, we also wanted to use the hierarchies.

Most of the time hierarchies are used of course in the reporting

environment. So well have a look at the functionality available there.

Then theres a special feature available in the OLAP processor which is

called the elimination of internal business volume where we need all of the

hierarchies, and this will close todays call.


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So lets start with the flat file upload off of the flexible hierarchies. So be careful when

we are talking or when you can read now flexible hierarchies here on the

slide. This is not a new term at all for our hierarchies. This just means

that we have a different upload methodology for the hierarchies. Thats

what we call the flexible upload. In the slides, its called flexible

hierarchies, but we are just talking or using the hierarchies in the same

way as in the past.

What does it mean flexible hierarchies? This means that we have now a hierarchy head

and hierarchy nodes and that we have different attributes on the hierarchy

head and we can have different attributes on the hierarchy nodes. You will

see in a couple of minutes an example for this. We can extract now into

the PSA and what is also new that we have the transfer rules for the

hierarchies and for the hierarchy attributes available. In the past we didnt

have these transfer rules.

When we have a look at slide number five, you can see that we choose now the different

transfer methods. Therefore, the hierarchy upload, especially from the flat

file to into the transfer rule dialogue. So we can either use CI Doc or we

can use the PSA. Be careful. Only if we use the PSA tracing area as a

transfer method, then we can only use the new functionality of the upload

of this flexible hierarchy. So its not supported for VI Docs.


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What does it mean when we go while the transfer method PSA as it described on slide

number six? This means that for a data source itself, the system will

generate up to five PSA tables. This means one for the hierarchy head,

which is hierarchy attributes, one for the text of the hierarchy head. So

you give your hierarchy a name, and of course the name could be language

dependent, therefore, we need multiple table entries here. Hierarchy

nodes, these are different nodes attributes, and of course the text of the

different text nodes, also language dependent.

If you switch on the interval on your metadata from your info object in the test strips

hierarchy, then it will also generate a special PSA table for storing the

intervals during the upload. As you can see here already, we need five

different tables to support this. That is also the reason why we can not use

CI Docs here because we have different type of data available and

different numbers of records, and therefore we need different segments

and since this is only supported here by a CPSA.

What is also new is if you use foreign characteristics in hierarchies, and I refer now to

slide seven already. You now have to maintain these external

characteristics in the info object maintenance. Theres a new button in the

info object maintenance. If you press this button, you will get a pop up

where you can choose the different info objects. What does it mean? In


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the past, you could add hierarchy nodes in the maintenance, in the manual

maintenance of your hierarchy. Say you want to have, for example, a

reference to the info object country if you are maybe in a customer

hierarchy. This means youve got the text description out of a different

info object, and in my example now, out of the country.

So youve created a hierarchy node with a reference to a different info object. But we are

not able to upload such a hierarchy. We could maintain it only manually,

more or less. There was no support from the metadata that you can do

something like this. You just did it manually, and the system created this

hierarchy for you. Now we have a stronger relationship here to our

metadata and therefore, you have to maintain these info objects, where

you want to have different hierarchy nodes from reference characteristics

now in the info object maintenance.

What is also new and this is described on slide number eight, we support now the transfer

rule for the hierarchy head so that we have the use of the hierarchy heads,

which is the hierarchy names, the dates to, etc., and that we also could

maintain, for example, the start level. This is of course only global ones

for the hierarchies that you can upload, and thats why we store it on the

head. On the different nodes here, we can have the attributes and of

course the referred info object available.


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This is so far for the upload, but many customers are also using the manual maintenance

for their hierarchies to create new hierarchies, and we have added a lot or

many new functions into the manual hierarchy maintenance. Thats also

described on slide number ten that we support, for example, the drag and

drop, and therefore the insert of a node as a child or as a neighbor for the

target node, and the task we always insert the info object at the end. Most

of the time, you just want to have it in a different sequence.

We also support now the multiple selections that you can use either the shift key or the

control key to mark different objects, and just drag and drop it to a

different sub node or move it around in the hierarchy. Thats mainly the

functionality probably used by, for example, Windows Explorer, the file

manager where you also can select multiple entries and move it from one

folder to the other. You can see also on slide number ten on the screen

shot that we show now more information like the info object, the node

name, and if its for example time dependent. We show also the valid

from and the valid to date.

We added also a node surge in the tree because thats very useful if you have a very, very

huge hierarchy and we also support now the printing for the hierarchies.

We added all of the activation buttons. If you coded in the past, you

always had to go out and activate it from outside. Now also you can

directly activate your hierarchy within the hierarchy maintenance


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transactions.

You can maintain node attributes directly in the hierarchy maintenance, for example, the

plus/minus sign reversal. This functionality offers plus/minus sign

reversal, its very useful, but for the OLAP reporting that you can show

your values just with the different sign. Revenues and cost in the R3

system for most kinds of reporting are just shown with the wrong sign, at

least for the managers. You can just do an optical sign reversal along your

hierarchy and just show your values with a different sign in front. Of

course, you can adjust the column widths just with a simple clicking on

the columns headers, so if you need more information to be shown during

the maintenance session.

There is some other functionality available so you can directly jump into the master data

maintenance. Im referring now to slide number 11. You can directly

jump into the info object maintenance for the beta characteristics, and of

course you can go out directly from the hierarchy maintenance to the

monitor and have a look at the last loaded request.

If you entered an interval into your hierarchy, you can content enable or the system will

true automatically so that the interval descriptions from the two value of

the interval. Very nice function is also available now that we can have

several moot nodes in your hierarchy. This is also shown on the screen


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shot where I have Europe in my sales hierarchy and US on the same level.

So there is no top node available.

During reporting, now you have two possibilities either to show a grand total of these

two, which is the yellow line, the overall results. In this example, its

6,818 pieces. Or for each info object, like this organization, you can say

that you want to suppress this grand total. This can be set up by each

query on the properties of each individual info object and of course can be

changed during run time of the query so you can display it or hide it.

We also support now the subtree upload. In the past in this, we had only the subtree

insert. This was available. This will support pack 16 of BW20C and the

according, of course, for 21C. There was no update possible so far. Thats

something what we have added in BW 30A. You can also see a short

screen shot on slide number 12 here. From this cache you can choose the

update method, either full update subtree or update subtree.

What is the idea behind these subtrees is that you have a root node maintained in BW and

the underneath lying hierarchy maybe comes from different systems. I

have added an example on slide number 13, where we have hierarchy

maintained in BW, which is the world, in the US and Asia and in Europe.

Thats something that you would maintain in BW. So you have the top

level, which is the world, and on the next level of your hierarchy, you just


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maintain three nodes in BW. For example now, you have three different

source systems. From one source system you get the US hierarchy, from

the next source system you get the Asia hierarchy and from the third

source system you will get the Europe hierarchy.

Of course, you get not only the hierarchy data, the master data, you get of course of the

transactional data uploaded in your info cube. During reporting, of course,

you want to see the constant update view over the world. Of course, you

do not want to maintain the hierarchy for the world including US, Asia,

Europe manually. So the idea is now that you just create the hierarchy

world, US, Asia, Europe in BW and that you upload these subtrees from

the different source systems. So the first one of course is in the U.S., the

second one is the Asia, and then you get the Europe.

Lets say that something gets changed in Europe, so you have a different hierarchy, and

now of course you want to replace the Europe hierarchy and thats

something what we support now with the BW 3.0 update functionality. So

you can update a substructure of the tree.

So lets have a quick look in the reporting area for the hierarchies, which is slide number

15, what we support now. We have added a lot of functionality in the

reporting for the BW 3.0 release in the hierarchy area. For example, the

first screen shot shows you two hierarchies. One is on the same


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organization, and the second is on the calendar year/month. You can see

that I have my note Canada and in my second column, I have the year

1999 and I have opened 1999 for the first quarter. You can see January,

February and March information.

You can see that for Toronto and Vancouver, which are two leads here in my hierarchy, I

have a different drill-down date on the second column for calendar

year/month. So we are now able to have multiple hierarchies in our lead

column. Of course, this could be not only two like here shown on this

slide, I could have many. I can mix it also with non-hierarchical info

objects here in my drill down. For example, I could have now another

column added, which maybe says actual object seeker or something like

this.

You could have in the first column a hierarchical info object in the next column and non-

hierarchical info object, and in the third one, again, a hierarchical info

object displayed here. So we are very flexible to show the different

possibilities. So you can have any amount of structure characteristics.

You have active presentation hierarchies and characteristics without active

presentation hierarchies, just on the different axis.

The second example is also here. I moved the year. We see quarters and the periods over

the columns. But we can have all of the same functionality across the


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columns. This is also not restricted now to one hierarchy as shown here

on the slide. You can have many hierarchies across your column structure.

So the message is that the characteristics with and without the hierarchies

can be freely combined in any way and on any axis.

We have added another functionality. Thats what we call the universal presentation

hierarchy. This is displayed on slide number 16. We show here in this

small example a very basic query with a drill down by division and

material. So what we can do now during the run time of our query to

display these two characteristics, which is division and materials as an

example in a hierarchy.

So to do so, we used the context sensitive menu. Here we call the query properties. In

the query properties dialogue, we have an area which is called data

formatting. You will see the displays of rows are vertical and expand too,

and I can say to which level of the hierarchy I want to get my multi-

dimensional view displayed. In this example, here you can see in the drop

down box, I can see the division and the material because I have two info

objects in my drill down characteristics. When I apply the function, you

can see now that we have a hierarchy on the division electronic parts and

we have the high tech. Now I can individually expand and collapse the

hierarchy by division, and I can see the different materials behind. So on

the fly, we generate internally a hierarchy across these info objects.


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Of course, you can set this up directly all in the query builder. So if you want to have

your initial few like this, you can have it. Of course, its the end user that

would like this kind of view. He can go to the query properties and

remove the setting so that he has again, these two info objects and two

lead columns separately displayed.

We also added another feature across the structures, which is shown on slide number 17.

We have created contribution match and scheme where we have

contribution match one and contribution match two. What we can do now

is just move the different key features, which are now the member key in

my example of the structures underneath my contribution match one. This

is now a just for display purposes.

Be careful. This is a different kind of hierarchies. Thats why I used on

the title here hierarchies in quotation marks. This is not a hierarchy which

gets maintained in the hierarchy maintenance. This is something what we

do directly here in the query builder.

We used just the right mouse click on the member of the structure in ways

that we want to append it. Then it just gets moved underneath and what

happens during run time of reporting, you can see that my query comes up

here only with a line for contribution match one. I can expand my


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hierarchy to see the detailed information. Of course, I can expand and

collapse each node individually, and we can have multiple levels here so

theres no restriction to have it also here, only by two or three levels here.

It depends on your business requirements how deep you want to set up

your hierarchy here.

Again, be careful that we do not do any calculations here that we do not calculate

between the net revenue material direct costs and variable production cost

to calculate the contribution margin. The contribution margin one, for

example, you can see on the left-hand side is a calculated key figure that is

just used with drag and drop, and brought over to our structure. So theres

no calculation here in between as long, as this hierarchy is just for display

purposes. Every node can be expanded or collapsed individually.

So in general, its also very useful to know that after refreshing a query in the solution

workbook or after calling up a Web application, the system will reproduce

a hierarchy expand status as it was in solutions saved or in direct

reporting, of course, you can use our book mark functionality and the user

will exactly get the same few as before. Maybe the ones of you who have

used hierarchies in BW 2.01, every time and youve saved, for example, a

workbook with a certain drill-down stage and you made a refresh later on,

you always came back to the initial stage. Now with BW 3.0, the system

will really keep your settings, your drill down state, your collapse and


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expand state of the hierarchies.

Also for the Web reporting, we have added a new item, which is the hierarchical context

menu. So when you go to the verification designer, you will find in the

items list a new object, which is a hierarchical context menu. Just drag

and drop it over to your work area, go to the properties. You have to

specify your characteristics, your hierarchy name and if its reversal

dependent or state dependent, of course. Then you have also to set up

your properties. Here on the slide is also a quick example, like here in the

region where you can drill down along the hierarchy, and the user can

make his selections either by a hierarchy node or by the leads. I think

thats a very useful for the end user. It sets the filters across the hierarchy.

Lets have a look at another area, the elimination of internal business volume. What we

have added also in BW 3.0, a functionality which maybe some of you will

know from the R3 system, there is implemented in the report writer and

also in the drill-down reporting, be careful when you read here all the

elimination. This is not a combination function. Its really an elimination

function. This means we eliminate records during the reporting time. I

will come back to the difference in a second between elimination and

combination.

The elimination functionality supports the accounting principals of multi-entity


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combination for multiple simultaneous hierarchies. So what is a pre-

requisite for this? You need always to info objects, what we call a sender

and a receiver. They must share the master data. Normally, you want to

eliminate internal business volume across senders, across profit senders,

company codes, business area, these kinds of things. This means you need

either receiving cost sender and a cost sender, which is also very often the

receiving is called the partner cost sender. All of the business content is

already this kind of information available, for example, in controlling what

is in the info cubes.

So both of them needs sharing of a master data though they must have the same

hierarchies as the master data enabled in the background. Thats what we

normally get when you use the reference functionality when you create an

info object. Now, we need a special key figure for doing the elimination

process. Thats what we call a reference key figure.

When you create a new info object, a key figure and you say new, then we

have added a new entry here in the pop up, which is now called reference

key figure. If you do so, you will get in the info object maintenance for

the key figure a new tab strip which is then called elimination. Here, you

have to be across each info object. For example here the profit sender and

the partner profit sender. These are the two info objects for business

content. You want to eliminate along these two info objects.


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What you can do now, is you can see it already here on the screen shot, is you can add

multiple info objects. This works also multi-dimensional, not only across

two info objects. You could have all the countries, for example, added and

the partner country. If you add multiple info objects here, then all the

regular buttons will get active whether you want to have if pairs combined

with and, or whether you want to have it combine with the or statement.

So both characteristics along the hierarchy have to be set for just one or

the other.

A simple example for the elimination is shown on the next slide where I have just simply

added ten data records. I trust you know the very simple example with the

profit sender and the partner profit center. Ive got ten records and you

can see for record number four and record number nine, there is no partner

profit center. Thats something what we would probably call the external

revenue to third parties. You can see my very basic hierarchy. I just have

three nodes plus the top level and the different profit centers assigned to

the nodes.

When we create now a query, we have, of course, the basic key figure, which is called

then the revenue, which is stored in the info cube. You can see this totals

up to 1,930. This is just the grand total along the hierarchy as before and

now with my reference key figure, which is shown in the second column,


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the records along the hierarchy gets eliminated. The grand total is now

only 180. This is very simple to explain because record number four and

record number nine, this is the external revenue. So there is no partner,

and this will just give us the 100 from record number four and the 80 from

record number nine, which totals up to 180.

So lets have a look on the 100 from the PC 0181, which was the record number one.

The partner is a PC 0102. So when we look at the hierarchy, this means

there was a posting from one profit center to another profit center which

belongs to the same father node, to the next top-level node, which is a PC

01. So on the level of the PC 01, this revenue gets eliminated. This

means that we have a zero value shown here on the level of PC 01. But if

you go into the detail, you can see that we had the 100 but on the higher

level, it just gets eliminated. Thats now why when I came back and say

what is the differentiation between the elimination and the combination

you can see we just eliminate the record. We set it back to zero.

In the combination module, you would be able also to maintain percentage shares since

they this kind of combination only 80% would be eliminated and 20%

maybe should be the rest. So we do this here on what we call the

management level that we just eliminate across this hierarchy. You can

have a further look into the different records and have a look at the

different examples and see for example why we have on PC 02 only a 680.


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What happens with the PC 02 01 records as profit sender because we had,

for example, a wrong posting probably which is record number six which

got posted from one profit sender to the next one, which probably maybe

wasnt in a location cycle. Thats something that could happen. Here, we

have the rest of 200 left on the profit sender. This gets eliminated, for

example, along the hierarchy to PC 02.

Before I close and we come to the QA session, I just want to add that we have also added

some other smaller functions across the hierarchies in the system, which I

havent put on the slides. For example on the aggregates, we have now or

we support now also on the aggregate hierarchy level where the structure

is time-dependent, thats the new functionality. In the past, we didnt

support time-dependent objects and aggregates. Now we do.

Also for authorities or selections, we support now also in the variables just multiple

hierarchy nodes where you can select multiple hierarchy nodes when you

execute, for example, a query. In the past, a variable or if you use the user

exit variable, you can bring over only one hierarchy node. Now we

support multiple hierarchy nodes. Thats very useful if you write your

own user exits for example, that you can now return a table and not only

single value use.


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Okay. We have 20 minutes left for today. I think we could start with the Q&A session

for today.

Coordinator Thank you. We are now ready to begin the question and answer session.

Our first question comes from Muhammad Husan.

M. Husan Hi. This is Husan from Shohans. I was wondering, my question is

related to the structure of the hierarchy tables. Is there any structural

changes of the tables that exist today in 21C? For example, we have

HIJMK for hierarchy. Is there any additional table or any changes of the

existing tables in order to support the new functionality?

J. Mette Yes. The new fields will be added to the tables.

M. Husan Okay. But the tables still are going to be the old tables, like HIJMK

tables.

J. Mette Yes.

M. Husan Okay. Thank you.

J. Mette But we have added just the new fields, like for the reversal signs. So if

you switch on in the maintenance for the info object, for example, the plus


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minus change field, then we just add these fields as attributes to the

different tables.

M. Husan Okay. Thank you.

J. Mette Youre welcome.

Coordinator Our next question comes from Vil Woo.

V. WooHi. I have a question regarding the flat file for the hierarchy. Does that current 20B flat

file has to be including the node ID, parent ID, child ID and next ID? For

the 30B, do we still require that node ID?

J. Mette Yes, you do.

V. WooOkay. So maintain those IDs, parent ID, child ID, those can be very tedious.

J. Mette Yes.

V. WooOkay.

J. Mette Thats true.


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V. WooSo theres no improvement on that side.

J. Mette No.

V. WooOkay.

J. Mette Unfortunately not. But I will write it down and talk to the developer.

V. WooOkay. Thank you.

Coordinator Our next question comes from Jacque Ree Labella.

J. Labella Hi. I have two questions. Do you have that flat file requirement for

hierarchies for 3.0? Because for the existing 2.1 CNY environment, we

have to specific what is a parent ID, what is a child ID and node ID. In the

new 3.0 environment, it is supporting the multiple source systems. How

can I remember what is the node ID from that previous source system?

J. Mette Sorry, I didnt get exactly your question.

J. Labella Okay. The first question is I want to know the flat file requirement of the

hierarchy load?


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J. Mette When you go into the transfer structure maintenance, then you will see

what the structure is. The structure is dependent now off your hierarchy

properties whether you say intervals are allows, whether its time

dependent and what kind of attributes you set to your hierarchy.

J. Labella Okay. Then what type of articles can we specify for the nodes?

M Any info object.

J. Labella Is it like regular data, metadata?

J. Mette Its actually, yes. We have the special for the reverse sign for the nodes.

You can really display a value of 100S, a value of -100. This is a special

of what we offer as well.

J. Labella Thank you.


Coordinator Our next question comes from Tao Fan.

T. Fan Yes. Hi. My name is Tao Fan. Im with Shohans. My question is primarily regarding

security on hierarchy. Were required to secure nodes of the hierarchy and


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also save a snap shot each month of our current hierarchy. What is the

best strategy to do this? I mean for example, do we use versioning,

hierarchy versioning or save each snapshot of the hierarchy with different

technical name without having to set up new security for each of the snap

shots?

J. Mette This means if a user uses the old hierarchy, he should already have the old

authorities.

T. Fan Correct. If we save a new hierarchy version, because we have to save a snap shot of the

hierarchy. So in order to do this, we have to define new authorization

definitions for hierarchies for every snap shot.

J. Mette Yes?

T. Fan Is there a better strategy to do this without having to do this maintenance every month?

J. Mette You cannot avoid the maintenance because either you have the different

hierarchies, thats what you said, or you use this kind of versioning. This

means anyway, you will have a different hierarchy because you have to

assign a different name to the object so that you can have two, or you need

the same name or the new user versions. Therefore, although the authority

object is either on a different name here or its a different version. So you


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need this kind of a relation, but I dont know where do you get the

information? Do you extract from R3, for example, like a cost sender

hierarchy?

T. Fan Yes. Its on cost sender hierarchy.

J. Mette Okay, because what we support in BW 3.0 although in respect of the

authorities is that you can upload authorities into an ODS object. This

would mean that you could upload your cost sender hierarchy into an ODS

object as well. Then we have a functionality that the system automatically

generates the according profiles for the end users along the hierarchy. A

very typical example is that you have along the cost senders whos

responsible. You have something like a responsible officer or something

like this or a responsible person for a cost sender.

Now with the new functionality, you can have it also on the hierarchy nodes. You can

generate out of the ODS directly the authority object, which means you

could extract this information out of ODS and generate every month

automatically the authorization profiles for the different users then either

version dependent or via a different hierarchy name.

T. Fan Which strategy would you recommend? Using versioning where we actually give it a

new version number and then same the hierarchy with the same technical


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name or give a brand new technical name for each?

J. Mette I think maybe for the end user, maybe the versioning, if you do it like 12

months. Lets say you extracted every month a new hierarchy and just call

the version number one, January and version number two, February and so

on. This may be easier for the end user. That doesnt have to care about

the hierarchy names. He just chose the version number six and he knows

that this is a hierarchy. It may be easier for the end user.

From a technical perspective, its the same. I cannot see any difference.

L. Schubert In terms of the drag and drop, I think also we should stay open for a few

other questions. This question was addressed mostly. Also, I want to

mention actually in two weeks we will have a conference call about

authority maybe also some questions can be addressed there. Sorry for the

interruption.

T. Fan Okay. Thank you.


Coordinator Our next question comes from Rick Gardner.


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R. Gardner Hi. Ive got a question on universal conditional hierarchies. There in the

slide you said that you can link between divisional and material. Is it

restricted to two characteristic or you can expand to more than that?

J. Mette Yes, you can expand it to more than that. I tried to make this an easy

example to follow up. No, you can have it by as many as you like. There

is no limitation. I think the limitation at the end is the user in front of the

system, but he has to understand the result of the query.

R. Gardner But itsquery when it redoes that because its on the fly.

J. Mette Of course, but the advantage of having it in compared to have three levels

further down that your result area on the screen is reduced. The amount of

data in the OLAP processor will be the same as you do a three level or

three characteristics drill down, but what comes to the front end is then of

course only a restricted few. For example, in my example on the slide

number 16, I opened only the division high tech, and I showed the

material. So I get only these four materials returned. I do not get the

materials for the electronic parts returned. So I see only a subset of the

results. Therefore the performance is, again, a bit better because I do not

send so much data back from the server to the front end.

R. Gardner Okay. Thank you.


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Coordinator Our next question comes from Vermand Bapella.

V. Bapella Does the elimination of development business volume forspecific to

2.0B?

J. Mette No, thats only 3.0.

V. Bapella Okay, because have a requirement here to eliminate the internal company

transactions and were trying to figure out a way to do that in the

hierarchies using specifically the 2.0B, but we couldnt find a way and we

want your position on that.

J. Mette Thats why we have implemented. I mean you could do it if you have a

hierarchy, which you will never change when you just add some dummy

postings in to your systems. But then you are never allowed to change

your hierarchy again.

In this functionality, what we have added now in 3.0 allows you to also

change on the fly the hierarchy in your query, and you will get different

results because the OLAP processor takes care of the elimination process.


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So if you just have two alternative hierarchies or as the question was

before, every month below the different hierarchy you just want to see the

data, if its one or the other hierarchy. Of course, you had changes in your

hierarchy structure, then the OLAP processor will take care of.

If you have a fixed hierarchy structure, you could add some dummy postings to eliminate.

But I think theres not a feasible way to do it. I think you need a flexible

way because no company structure will be fixed for, or no cost sender

structure, profit sender structure will be very fixed for a very long time.

Unfortunately, we do not know of any better solution in 2.0 or in 2.1.

V. Bapella Okay. Thank you.


Coordinator Our next question comes from Tim McVickor.

Anile Hi, this is Anile speaking for Tim McVickor. I have a question with respect to

calculations that we are finding difficult to do for hierarchies. To give you

an example, we have three nodes which are sales, cost of sales and

expenses. In column A, we get the respective totals for each of these

nodes. But in column B, we want to express both our cost of sales and

expenses as the percentage of total value of sales. We are unable to do


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that. We are having to make really heavy use of Visual Basic code in our

person calculations the total of sales. Is there any way out in 3.0 for

this?

J. Mette Yes. In 3.0, we support the subtle calculation. So we, like you are

probably using Excel, yes, we can add cells and make references and

create formulas on cells.

Anile Oh, great. I think that addresses my question. Thank you.

J. Mette Yes. So you could mark the sales cell you want to have the percentage

on this level calculated.

Anile Okay. It doesnt matter that the dynamics should there be additional sub nodes that are

coming under the sales? The cell position might keep changing on the

Excel spreadsheet. So do I have to keep referencing the new cell every

time the calculation?

J. Mette That means the cell calculation is only available if you have two fractures

so that we can have a reference point to do the calculation. But what I

showed before that we have now on the structures all of this display

hierarchies thing, what I showed in my example with the contribution

match one and contribution match two. So you can always switch over


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this type the end user hierarchy, and then you can do all of the cell

calculations.

Anile Okay, thank you.


Coordinator Our next question comes from Kevin Bandise.

K. Bandise I have a question about the subtree update. Can we use that to basically

make a delta load for hierarchies?

J. Mette Yes. If the source system really brings you, yes. Whatever your source

system whether the flat file or whether its, yes.

K. Bandise We have like 30,000 nodes cost-center hierarchy and we want to do just a

delta upload to use the subtree update to speed it up.

J. Mette Yes, but then who determines what the delta is? The extractor as of today

doesnt know what has changed.

K. Bandise Okay.


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J. Mette You must know that you test to replace a certain subtree.

K. Bandise Oh, the extractor has to tell it exactly which nodes to be updated? It cant

look at the before and after?

J. Mette It doesnt do it right now.

K. Bandise I guess you would need like the extractor to collect cost sender updates in

the delta queue, something like that.

J. Mette Yes. Thats what we would need, but thats not available right now.

K. Bandise 4.0.

J. Mette You have to tell the system that this certain subtree has changed and that

you just want to upload this one.

K. Bandise Thank you.


Coordinator Our next question comes from Jay Robel.


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J. Robel Yes. I have a question. Since hierarchy nodes now have to be defined by

an info object, could you use a hierarchy on two different info objects?

For example, if I had a three level hierarchy sales or division material and

I dont have material in my queue, could I still use it on division? In the

past, youve always had to make duplicate hierarchies, one at the higher

level and one all the way down to material level.

J. Mette Im not quite sure.

J. Robel Basically, you always had to have the lowest info object in the queue or

the hierarchy doesnt work.

J. Mette Yes, thats still valid that we define the hierarchy on this object, yes.

J. Robel Okay, but now the nodes are also info objects up above. So you cant use

just the top half of the hierarchy.

J. Mette But what we do is the hierarchy itself still belongs to one info object.

J. Robel Okay.

J. Mette We do the same in 3.0 as in 1.2. or 2.0. Nothing has changed. But we can

just reference on another info object and get the text for a node out of it.


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For example, you have info objects like material group, and you have

some material in the two info objects and you create now a manual

hierarchy. Okay, I have material group number eight, and now you have

two options when you maintain your hierarchy. You create a folder in

your hierarchy maintenance. Either you just create a text folder and you

type in the test for the material group A manually, or you reference on the

material group info object: please fetch the text from material group A out

of the material groups info object.

So when you get an upload of the text from material group, the text automatically gets

changed because its only a reference on the material group text. So you

do not have to change your hierarchy if something gets changed. But

thats something which was available in 1.2 or 2.0, 2.1. So nothing has

changed there. The only thing that weve changed now is that you have to

tell the system in the info object maintenance using this button that

material group can be used as a node. So we have a stronger metadata

support here. But the end user just cannot do any wild things any more.

So we just have it a bit more controlled using metadata.

J. Robel Thank you.



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Coordinator Our next question comes from Sirham Mivalla.

S. Mivalla Hi. My question is concerning the performance when we are using several

hierarchies in the past. I was just wanted to know how the performance

will be? Is it just similar to that? Is it there a marginal difference or is it a

considerable difference? Any tests are done on this performance issue?

J. Mette Yes, we have done some tests. The entire hierarchy usage in the old

processor was completely rewritten in 3.0 and also in the object-oriented

version. We cannot see any major problems so far during our tests using

multiple hierarchies.

S. Mivalla Okay.

L. Schubert Maybe one last question now.

Coordinator Our next question comes from Kevin Cook.

K. Cook I have a question about hierarchies and reporting. Has the limitation of

not being able to exclude the hierarchy node in nodes or restricting

hierarchy been removed in 3.0?

J. Mette No. Youve got me on the wrong side. As far as I know, its still on the


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list for 3.0B, but unfortunately 3.0B development is done because we are

already in the first customer shipment. There is no functionality to

exclude hierarchy nodes so far.

K. Cook Okay. Thank you.

L. Schubert Okay. I think this brings us to the end of this session. There might be a

few other questions, but unfortunately were out of time now. So thank

you to Joachim for really a very interesting in depth presentation and QA

session. Thank you very much to all listeners and to all the folks who had

questions here, very good questions. The transcript, the call transcript will

uploaded to SAPnet. It will be published within a week or so. So you will

find it there where you also found the presentation for this session.

Just let me introduce the next call. The next session will be on Thursday May 30th, which

is in two weeks. The topic will be authorizations in BW 3.0 presented by

Debbie Borden from SV Portals America. So thank you very much, and

good bye.

Coordinator Thank you for joining todays conference call. All participants may

disconnect at this time.


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