In this post I want to describe the concept of performing calculations in the write back badi instead of default.lgf. Let's assume that we have some default.lgf with a number of *WHEN/ENDWHEN loops doing some calculations like price*quantity, price*quantity*(1-discount), etc. If you have a lot of formulas the calculation time can be significant and users will have to wait saving data in the input form.

Difference between default.lgf and write back badi:

Default.lgf

Benefits:

Easy to maintain

Easy to copy data to another model using *DESTINATION_APP

All checks are done automatically (security, work status, write to calculated members etc...)

Issues:

Execution speed (even with ABAP calculation engine for BPC 10).

Unnecessary calculations can be performed (default.lgf scope is a combination of all members of sent data!)

Hard to generate multiple records triggered by single member change (example - single price for the whole year in some member, update all months amount)

Write back badi:

Benefits:

High execution speed.

Only sent data will trigger the calculation (write back badi receives the table with sent data, not the scope).

Easy to generate multiple records having single value sent.

Issues:

Hard to maintain (ABAP developer required).

Write access have to be checked before calculations.

Special code have to be added to write to the different cube.

Write back badi sample logic:

1. All data sent by user from a single EPM/EVDRE report will be passed to write back badi as a table (including parent values).

2. Only members used in formulas will be processed by badi calculations, the rest will be processed by default.

3. Initial write to the cube with create_write_back and write_back will be done inside badi to ensure that the sent values are stored (removing rejected records from calculation process).

4. Reference data (data for members used in the formulas but not existing in the sent records table) have to be read from cube.

5. Number of functions have to be defined - each representing the ABAP code of the formulas required.

6. Table with original records saved in the cube and reference data records have to be processed by the functions from previous point.

7. Calculated records have to be added to original ct_data to have correct messages.

8. If write to other cube is required then it have to be implemented with create_write_back and write_back.

9. At the end of badi ct_data will contain original records and calculated records. This table will be written to the cube generating correct messages.

B.R. Vadim

I guess most of you encountered some BPC web issue, such as the top bar is loaded, but the middle area is blank. Or the left navigation bar is loaded, but when you click one of sub menus, nothing appears.  Sometimes, this happens because of one bug. See note 1804221 - Web Home Page doesn't load correctly after upgrading SP.  Also, you may fix the issue by clearing IE cache, etc.

However, the issue may still unsolved ever you tried all you could think of. If so, this issue may be caused by something wrong in the server. Bundle version inconsistence may be one of the reasons on the server side. You can find detailed information on KBA 2013954 - Synchronize bundle version to fix BPC web issue - BPC NW 10.0   

Below are a KBA summary related to BPC web issues. Hopefully it's useful to fix your web issue.

1918631 BPC web page loads with blank screen after upgrade

1820505 Blank screen when logging onto BPC Web Page

1700829 Getting a blank page when accessing BPC 10 NW Web Admin page in the Browser

1959434 BPC NW:  Web page shows blank screen after upgrade

1286984 Task Pane blank when you open BPC Admin through web.

1941579 Getting blank screen when accessing BPC web after installation - BPC 10 NW

1775045 It is blank under Start Page - BPC 10.0 NW

1681147 Logon BPC WEB with Blank Page

1786470 Logon BPC WEB with Blank Page

1973644 BPC Web Blank

As all of you probably know, BPC NW on HANA has been available for about two years now. Initially, the focus of BPC on HANA was on accelerating the reporting, which yielded some impressive resultswhen compared to BPC NW on a classic database.

It was, however, always clear, that it was necessary to accelerate the calculations in order to deliver on the vision of true agile planning & closing processes.   This would enable customers to react faster to changing business conditions. This becomes even more important as Big Data enters the space promising great benefits to our existing planning processes. Consequently, recent BPC service packs have brought significant enhancements with the acceleration of allocations and dimension formulas through HANA. In every project, however, there will still be the need for at last one complex, sophisticated calculation that is at the heart of the process and is only possible to be implemented with custom logic.

Customer Situation

At a customer project we had exactly that situation in which we had several complex calculations that would need to be run in default logic. One example being  the detailed labor calculations with a large number of job families with different rates, overtime factors and a large number of drivers like shifts per day, coverage per operation, etc. To complicate it further, all drivers and rates were planned at different levels in the hierarchy (e.g. some of them for each job family, others at groups of job families).

Since there were still uncertainties about the functional details of the calculation, we decided on an agile approach, going through several iterations while closely working with the end users for validation. For this, it was decided to use Script Logic since it was fast to write and easy to adapt throughout the iterations. Of course we always anticipated that ultimately the Script Logic would have difficulties fulfilling the performance requirements, but once we had a calculation in place and the results would fit the user’s expectations, the Script would still serve as a very detailed specification for the subsequent optimization tasks.

Once we got to this point, the most common approach would have been to re-implement the calculation logic in a custom BAdI in ABAP, which would read the data from the cube, loop over it, query additional reference data, calculate the result and save it back to the cube in the end.

However, since we were using BPC on HANA we wondered whether we could achieve the same by implementing and executing the calculation directly in HANA thereby leveraging HANA’s massive parallelization and optimization and at the same time avoid bringing the data first up to the ABAP layer and then the result back down into the database.

Custom Native HANA Calculations with BPC

The good news is that since BPC 10.0 SP11 there’s an option to create a native HANA data model (SAP Note 1902743), originally meant to improve the write-back performance and internally used for example for the allocations. As a side effect, the native HANA model also provides us with the ability to directly interact with the BPC data model in the HANA database:

• Queries are possible on the BPC-generated OLAP views for each cube ($BPC$V$OLAP_*)
• Write-back is possible using a BPC-generated table for each cube that is periodically merged back into the OLAP cube. $BPC$P$* is the table, while $BPC$V$OLAP_*P provides an OLAP view on top. The write-back data is stored as a delta to the main cube.

These two resources allowed us to come up with an approach to implement our calculations using native HANA SQLScript that is triggered through an ABAP BAdI, which in turn is (as usual) triggered via Script Logic. The ABAP BAdI is also able to pass the calculation context (e.g. Entity, Category, Time) to the HANA procedure in order to limit the calculation’s data range.

The HANA procedure queries the data through a calculation view that unions data from the BPC cube’s OLAP View as well as the Delta-Table, which includes the write-back data that hasn’t been merged back into the main table yet. The calculation is then performed using SQLScript relying either directly on SQL statements or the procedural features, such as loops.

At the end, the procedure calculates a delta between the result data and the current cube data and writes it back into the BPC-generated write-back table.

Of course, relying on the BPC-generated data model in HANA comes with the downside that it is sensitive to technical name changes as well as that it effectively circumvents the BPC write-back security. The first point is being addressed in the design through the use of the calculation views as an additional abstraction layer and could be completely solved by enabling the technical name stabilization for the BPC model. With regards to security, it has to be noted that the calculation (including write-back) is restricted to the context the current user has been working on and he is authorized to. If this is still a concern, it would always be possible to not write back the data directly, but return it to the ABAP BAdI, which could then write it through the proper BPC processes including security checks.

Benefits & Conclusion

By leveraging native HANA features for calculations, the approach provides additional performance benefits over the use of ABAP. We’ve used HANA as our primary calculation tool and have implemented different kinds of calculations, such as:

• Data transformation and data movements from one cube to another
• Driver-based calculations as in the case of the labour mentioned above
• Carry-forward calculations, where the opening balance of one month is determined by the closing balance of the previous month

None of our calculations ran more than 1-2 seconds for query, calculation and write-back of one Entity generating hundreds of thousands of records. And that is before any additional optimization on the SQL statements. Of course the Script Logic and ABAP layer generate a small overhead, but that would be given even in the case of implementing the logic in ABAP. We’ve seen tremendous performance benefits when comparing with our initial script logic implementation where one batch job ran in 5 seconds instead of 6 minutes including any overhead.

Other than performance, an additional benefit is that it allows leveraging advanced HANA functionality, such as predictive algorithms or Smart Data Access to other data sources within our BPC planning processes. This combined with the performance improvements will be extremely interesting especially for Big Data scenarios. And even though the approach can really be used to speed-up any long-running and complex calculation, it will position BPC on HANA as the planning tool of choice for these kinds of projects.

I’m planning to write a follow-up to this to include more technical information and also show a few code snippets we used. In the meantime, I’d be really interested to hear your opinion on this!

_____________________________________

Obviously, everything we do here is not officially supported by SAP. Hence, just like most ABAP functionalities that we commonly use to interact with BPC, it has to be checked as part of regression testing for every BPC update.

Hi Folks,

Some of us working on BPC, and some people showing interest to learn BPC, Their are some reasons.

Their are so many reporting tools in market but what is specific reasons behind selecting BPC. I  know some of them if any one add something please feel free to add point to this blog.

Business Challenges

• Reduce planning and budgetingcycles

• Improve forecast accuracy

• Accelerate and automate the financial close

• Lower compliance and auditing costs

Key Features

• Intuitive interfaces – Leverage Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint and Web-based interfaces.

• Business process flows – Enable consistency and visibility

• Top-down and bottom-up budgeting  – Align budgets with targets

• Automated consolidation capabilities  – Speed the financial close

• Management and statutory consolidations – View financial data based on reporting requirements

• Compliance and auditing – Comply with regulations and standards such as GAAP and International Financial Reporting Standards

• What-if analysis and scenario planning – Model different scenarios to assess potential outcomes

• Variance reporting – Compare plans versus actual results and determine causes of variances

Business Benefits 

• Reduced planning and consolidation cycle times thanks to more reliable, timely financial data

• More accurate plans, budgets, and forecasts due to collaboration and accountability

• Increased stakeholder confidence with a fast and accurate financial close

• Minimized compliance risk with accurate reporting that meets statutory requirements

• Improved data quality through a central data repository

Hope this helps,

Saida Reddy G

Hi every one,

There are so many planning areas and planning type here I mention some of them, I think these may be helpful for you.

The planning horizon determines the time frame for planning.  Planning horizons are divided into short-, medium-, and long-term planning.

Short-Term Planning

The planning time frame in
short-term planning is usually a year or less. You use this type of planning when the business has clear-cut short-term goals, such as cutting costs,
increasing labor productivity by freezing new hires, and effectively training the workforce. Short-term planning is also suitable in situations where the industry
in which the business is operating is constantly changing and where it’s difficult to make reliable long-term projections.

  Medium-Term Planning

Medium-term planning
usually covers a period of one to three years and is applicable if the business can reasonably plan the outlook for this time period. You might
develop a medium-term plan to increase market share in a particular segment of the business, for example.

Long-Term Planning

Planning is considered
long term when the duration of the plan exceeds three years. This type of planning usually involves the investment of a large amount of capital to
achieve company objectives. This is also applicable for businesses where projects have a long gestation period. In these types of industries, there is a
long time gap between initial investment and final realization of sales and profits; this is true for companies in the utility, steel, and biotechnology
industries, for example.

Planning Types

The planning type, which is based on the planning horizon and the granularity of the planning process, provides more clarity to the process by clearly differentiating the objective of the plan. We’ll discuss each of the planning types next.

Operative Planning

Operative planning is typically used for the short term and is generally conducted at a company’s operational level.This type of planning usually has an immediate objective in mind (e.g., to improve productivity by controlling variable costs). Operative plans rely on a bottom-up planning approach, in which the planners involved in executing the
plan are also involved in the creation of the plan. Employees at the bottom level of the hierarchy may be part of the planning process to make it
successful. Upon completion of the plan, they send the plan to their supervisors, and after approval by the supervisors, plan implementation begins.

  Bottom-up
planning processes are very helpful for achieving employee commitment to the planning process. Involving employees in the planning process increases the
probability that the plan will be successful.

Tactical Planning

Tactical planning is associated with planning for the medium term and is generally conducted at a company’s division level. It’s suitable for projects that can be completed in fewer than three years. For example, you might start an initiative to improve the quality of a product, which may take two years to realize. Although the tactical plan
may be in consonance with the long-term plan, it may be developed at the middle management level.

     Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is associated with planning for the long term and is generally conducted at the organizational level. Company management usually plays a major role in this type of planning. Let’s say a company decides to finance research and development to develop a new line of products. The products may take more than three years to develop, so the company may want to develop a plan to finance the new program using
strategic planning. 

This top-down planning process usually begins at the company’s top level and trickles down to lower levels. The company’s top management agrees to the planning objective and process, which may be split into sub plans during the implementation process period and the lowest level of granularity. Operational planning has the shortest gestation period and the highest level of granularity.

the above pic showa the levels of planning in brief.

Regards,

Saida Reddy.G

Recently my team and I had some issues with the performance of some packages in our project. So I wanted to share with you my tiny little experience (we can read a lot of information, but a pratical example is always the best way to understand the impact).

Scenario: implementing the /CPMB/LOAD_INFOPROVIDER_UI between two BPC infocubes (from different environments), to transfer data.

I can tell you that after we implemented the Light Optimize process chain (/CPMB/LIGHT_OPTIMIZE) in the source infocube, the package execution time decreased from 5 hours to 15 minutes.

It is impressive the influence that this little "optimization" has on your BPC infocubes performance. So I gattered all the information I found, and wrote this blog.

Hope you enjoy it!

Characteristics

Light Optimization compresses and indexes the stored records and updates infocube statistics for system processing. It is one of the tasks that belong to the BW InfoCube performance maintenance tasks.

• Index rebuild;
• Rebuilds statistics;
• This process deletes the infocube indexes and moves records from the F to the E fact tables;
• Multiple records in the cube will be collapsed to one record with zero value;
• It is possible to supress  zeros with a manual option (To supress records with zero values please refer to Problem removing zeros in a model - BPC 10 NW);
  

Recommendations

• When to Run?

          From SAP 1508929 “There is no rule of thumb for how often to run optimizations. The need can vary depending on the characteristics of your hardware environment and your application.” There is no set recommendation as to the frequency, however it is generally recommended that these under some specific circunstances:

• When a new model/application sets and applications are created run a Full Optimization;
• Whenever a huge set of data is loaded into input schedules/reports;

• Schedule the process chain during the night

• Altough it is claimed that the execution of this process chain should not affect the normal read/write behavior of the infocube, we have had some cases where the custom logic process chain, failed during the Ligh Optimize execution;

• Models with more than 12 dimensions are not recommended.
  • In this cases you should perform a Full Optimize instead (be careful because full optimize will "destroy" your infoprovider and than rebuilt it and that can cause name change. Altough, now it is possible to perform a full optimize without any risk;

• By SAP:

FAQ's and Note's

You might have some problems during the configuration of this process chain if the model/application has too many records (in our case we only scheduled this process chain after 1 year and half).

1. Symptom: Dump Time Out

Implement the SAP Note1947726 - UJ0_EXCEPTION during a Light Optimize with large number of request

After a new execution of the process chain, you can always use the following note, to be sure that the Light Optimization was sucessuful: 1626814 - How to determine if a BPC Lite Optimization was successful

Also related: Optimizing Performance

You can try to prevent or analyze some performance issues. Please read the following documentation, provided by our forum:

Business Planning and Consolidation 5.x Performance Tuning Guide(PDF 458 KB)

This guide is an update to a previously posted document regarding BPC 5.x performance tuning guide.

Performance Analysis and Tuning Guide for SBO Planning and Consolidation version for Netweaver 7.x(PDF 1 MB)

This guide describes different aspect of performance relevant topics in the context of customer defined functions of SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation version for Netweaver application. It highlights some of the design aspects that can influence the performance of a specific application as well as providing general guidelines, recommendations and best practices.

Thank you for your attention!

Happy  learning

Best regards,

Raquel Oliveira

Hi Every one,

We have so many reporting tools and consolidation process are available in the market, But many of people are interested in SAP BPC. here I mention some of the advantages performing consolidation through SAP BPC

Legal and management consolidation

The application provides a systematic process to perform legal consolidation. You can also perform management consolidation using different sets of data to highlight different scenarios for management, as well as parallel consolidations with different categories of data and using different accounting principles.

Accuracy

The design of the application’s system for consolidation enables the consolidation process to run in a controlled manner, with the ability to perform checks and balances along the way. This mitigates any errors during the process and ensures the completeness and accuracy of the data.

Multiple source systems

You can compile financial data from various source systems into a single system for the purpose of consolidation.

Reporting

You can generate reports based on consolidated data, which you can then use as a tool for measuring the organization’s performance. The reports allow you to view key metrics such as return on equity, ROI, and so on.

Validation of data

You can analyze different sources of data used to generate the consolidated data to ensure that the data is valid and reliable. You can also reconcile the data in the application with the source system, facilitating reliability.

Collaboration

The application supports the extensive collaboration needed to gather data from multiple sources. This helps with the consolidation of data from diverse sources.

The main business benefits of SAP BPC include reduced planning and consolidation cycle times, accurate reporting that meets statutory requirements, and minimized compliance risk due to quality of data.

Last week SAP announced the general availability of SAP BPC10.1. Looking at the features and series of videos released by Pras, it makes lot of sense for SAP to take "best of both worlds" and come up with a product that caters to the requirements of both business and IT. The next obvious question that comes to our mind is "Will it make sense to migrate to 10.1 "?  "What additional features that we get ? etc. In this blog, i try to answers the questions from developers point of view and will translate its benefit for business. This is my first in series of blogs, where i will compare some basic features offered in SAP BPC 10.1  Vs older Versions and why SAP BPC unified model is way forward for all future BPC  NW implementations . To start with, i'm trying to compare features offered by script logic Vs FOX.

Script Logic for BPC classic models are used to manipulate transaction data in models and generate/change/delete records from Models. However, SAP BPC Script is not matured to handle complex calculations. There are many limitations in logic scripts. Although,SAP NW do have the option of outsourcing the whole logic to ABAP through BADI. However, this makes script as an interface between front end( Input forms, DM packages) and BADI. Truly, with customization using BADI the application becomes IT driven rather than business driven.

On the other hand with SAP BPC 10.1 unified model, FOX will come back. From its SEM-BPS days FOX has been very effective in manipulating transactions data. With advent of BI-IP, FOX was enhanced to add multiple features which not only handles complex scenarios but also reduces development time. There are scenarios where we need to call a Function Module to manipulate data, but those scenarios are rare.  Most of the calculation can easily be handled with FOX without the need to call a function module.

The table below compares features of Script Vs Fox. As shown in table, it can be safely concluded that FOX scripting has many features which makes it superior as compared to BPC logic Scripts. For instance, complex mathematical operations, flexible loop and condition statements, messages etc. On the other hand, BPC logic scripts do provide features like standard functions allocation etc which are missing in FOX. There are some functionality that are missing in both FOX and script but would be nice to have like "Date" functions.

Based on above features, lets try to plot complexity Vs Flexibility graph. The graph compares the complexity Vs Flexibility matrix for each of the features listed in table. More features better the scripting language.If you look closely at the plot,you will realize that the number of features FOX offers is far more than that of script logic. In addition, the number of features in 2nd quadrant(high flexibility and low complexity) is more for fox as compared to script logic.

There are some features for FOX which needs to move from 4th quadrant( 14,15 )  into 2nd or 3rd quadrant.This will make FOX a great scripting language without dependence on Function Modules for complex scenarios.

Obviously it will make more sense from developers point of view to write logic in FOX rather than in scripts. But whats there for business ? They don't care if the logic is written in script/ABAP/FOX until you hit performance. Performance wise, i'm not sure which once will be faster. I'm assuming same as both work on similar concept.  However there are indirect cost that business has to understand. Addressing complex scenarios using BADI/ABAP increases time line as well complexity of the project. In addition,supporting the application with lots of customization in BADI/ABAP itself becomes a challenge thus increasing the resolution time.

At the end as far as scripting is concerned, going the unified way and using fox will be a win-win situation for both sides.

Thanks

Prat

SAP BPC 10.1 Unified is available to customers. I am running a project based on Unified environment and facing this new world. For those who are familiar with BPC 7 to 10, everything is very different. Some things are cool, but others demand change the way we were used to think. In my opinion, it is possible to say that BPC 10.1 is in fact a new version of BW-IP (integrated planning), because all IP features are present in this version, while (almost all) the functionalities of BPC are not.

First of all, just a few functionalities are administered through BPC Admin on web. All modeling, calculations, security tasks are done in SAP BW or SAP Query Designer.

In Unified, you have to use InfoObjects as dimensions and Cubes, Multiproviders or DSOs as models, so you don´t have dimensions and models. Specially about the infoobjects, we don´t have a interface to maintain members, other than RSDMD transaction in SAP BW. This transaction opens in web browser, but it is not so good as we had in classic environment. Hierarchy can be edited just in SAP BW through SAP GUI. This is good, but in planning process this should be done by the user in a friendly interface, while now it have to be done by IT directly in SAP BW.

The possibility to use multiproviders is very good, because it makes easier to combine planning data and actual data from SAP ECC and eliminates loading data to SAP BPC. Specially, planning on DSO is very useful because it does not generate delta values, it just updates values on key figures. Key figure models are another great improvement.

In other hand, once you create a data provider (cube, dso ou multiprovider), you have to create a aggregation level (same as in BW-IP). To create a report, you have to create a query over the aggregation level in SAP Query Designer. And then you can create reports in EPM AddIn. Using queries brings some possibilities that don´t exists before, but adds steps to development, making it more complex and hard to maintain.

Another change is that packages are not present. Now you have planning functions (another feature of BW IP) to make calculations. Planning functions can be build with SQL Script directly on Hana, which is, in fact, the greater improvement of this version. The performance is fantastic.

(HANA SQL Script can be used in SAP BPC Classic too and, in my opinion, works better than Unified, making Classic almost perfect).

Well, these are my first impressions about this new version. I will appreciate the comments. Let´s talk...

Samuel

I see a lot of people encountered error "Error obtaining concurrency lock (foreign_lock)" when running data package, even when sending data from EPM Add-in.  By searching SAP KBA/Note, you may get solution that increase value of RECLEVEL_NR to make it larger than another parameter PACKAGE_SIZE. Actually, this is wrong, make it even worse. (Therefore, this kba is not visible to customer, but you still can find it by Google. On other websites, see http://www.saptechies.com/runlogic-error-obtaining-concurrency-lock-foreignlock-bpc-n/ ).

Now, let's see what RECLEVEL_NR means. Below is the description from BPC admin guide.

See what you found, the default value is 10. Not like what is mentioned in that KBA - it should be bigger than PACKAGE_SIZE(which is wrong). According to the description, the record-based locking will be performed if the number of the records is less or equal to the value you set. If you change RECLEVEL_NR larger(e.g. 42000) than package_size(which has default value 40000) , every time the data generated by your package or EPM Add-in nearly reaches to 42000, 42000 records locking will be performed on your BI server. If your BI server is not strong enough, the locking may fail to implement the lock.  As a result, you will see error "Error obtaining concurrency lock (foreign_lock)".

So next time you see this error, you can try to change the value of RECLEVEL_NR to default value 10. To change the value, you can follow the steps below.

1. Logon ABAP server.
2. Execute transaction SPRO ->SAP reference IMG ->Planning and consolidation ->Configuration parameters ->Set model parameters
3. Find Environment/Model.
4. Edit parameter RECLEVEL_NR

If this error still persists, this error may be caused by product bugs. You can try to apply notes.

Note 1923357 - DM packages failed due to concurrency lock

Note 1748701 - Deadlock RSPCSYNCLOG/RSPCLOGCHAIN for parallel InfoPackages.

There are two KBAs as well regarding this error.

1960682    RUN_LOGIC : Error obtaining concurrency lock (foreign_lock) - BPC NW

2015143 - Error obtaining concurrency lock (foreign_lock) - the latest version in BPC 10.0 NW

Disclaimer:

The views expressed in this article is that of mine. It has nothing to do with SAP or SAP BPC product road map.

Since its inception from outlook soft, SAP BPC has evolved into matured EPM software. From its humble beginning of Outlooksoft to its current state of SAP BPC 10.1 on HANA, it has travelled a long distance. In its current form SAP BPC includes a redesigned, highly-intuitive HTML 5 web user interface and best-in-class integration into SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse with the ability to build planning models directly on existing objects. In addition, SAP EPM Unwired 3.0 gives it a mobile edge. With features from like this, many renowned market research institutes like Gartner has positioned SAP EPM suites into "Leaders" quadrant.

However, as they say, change is only the constant thing; SAP has to build a robust strategy to keep the “Leaders” tag intact. This brings to the context of this blog - What will be the next logical step for SAP BPC?

According to Christopher Iervolino, a research director at Stamford, CT based Gartner and co-author of the 2014 CPM Suites Magic Quadrant “Cloud and analytics as forces driving innovation in corporate performance management (CPM) suites”.  I believe adding an analytics component to existing features of SAP BPC will give SAP BPC suits an edge over its competitors. So what can be done to add analytics to SAP BPC?

Last Year SAP bought KXEN and launched SAP predictive analytics as next business driven big data solution.  SAP Predictive analytics has all the basic features of a big data solution like clustering, built-in algorithm, visualization, sharing etc. Both are two separate products but it makes more sense to merge features of both into one. To substantiate this let's look at one real life scenario:

In our current project, we have to develop a BPC sales forecasting solution based on external economic factors. To illustrate this further, client’s business is spread across multiple regions and sales in these regions are affected by external factors like manufacturing output, GDP etc. Business wanted to know which of these external factors are influencing their sales number in that particular region ? What is the correlation between these factors?  They wanted to build the forecast model taking into account these external factors. Forecast as % of actuals are thing of past. With global economy, external factors play a major role. Considering external factors will not only help predict sales forecast number more accurately but also help take better business decision . In addition, business can address some of these factors to increase their sales number.

Working on this we considered multiple external factors that can influence sales in a particular region. Building a relation and testing the correlation between the factor and sales was cumbersome and time consuming. Once factors were determined, we used it to forecast the sales number.  The whole exercise that we did for months could have been easily done using SAP PA. It is not only built to handle large sets of data but also has built in algorithm which helps to predict numbers more accurately.  Visualization is another must have feature for a forecasting solution and SAP PA has a strong visualization feature that it can boast of. In addition, having open source R as part of SAP PA makes it much more powerful. R has been the backbone of many statistical forecasting methodology . Existing BPC lacks these features. They may have some built in trending and forecasting function or you can write your own, but think about a script which can utilize features of R?  Having all these features in a forecasting tool will make it much more robust and powerful.

Thus at the end, i would like to reiterate the next logical step for BPC is to have Predictive analytics features built into it so as to maintain the "leaders" tag in global EPM world.

When using BPC application, customers sometimes run into issues. It is understandable that every customer wants to get his issues
resolved as soon as possible.I am a support engineer in BPC product support team.I would share some hints regarding this and hope it helps.

Hint1:Always search for SAP KBAs and Notes.

SAP notes are the fixes from the development organization.
SAP KBAs(Knowledge base article) are the documented solutions to all the known
issues.

The error you get is very likely a known issue.Searching for KBA and notes is always the quickest way to resolve this kind of issues.If you can’t find a KBA suitable, please try changing the key words you use and search several times more.As a SAP support engineer, my experience is that quite a few customers’ issues would have been resolved at the early stage before they create incidents to SAP support if they did more careful search.

Hint2:For consulting issues,search on SAP BPC sdn.

As you know,SAP BPC sdn (this place) is the place where many experienced SAP consultants exchange ideas. It is a good resource
you can find help from and there are a lot of useful contents available. It is especially helpful for consulting issues. To search these contents,you can use
Google because they are visible to public.

According to service contract signed by SAP and customers,consulting issues are out of the scope of SAP product support.So SAP
support won’t process incidents regarding consulting issues.Refer to SAP note 83020.

Typical consulting issues are :How to achieve particular business requirement;errors related to customized BADI,Excel macro,script
logic,process chain and other non-standard feature;Error got when following SAP how to guide provided on SDN;Performance tuning.

Hint3:Do some pre-analysis before creating an oss incidents.

If you do some pre-analysis and provide the results to SAP product support in the OSS incident, it would greatly speed up SAP
support engineers’ investigation and shorten the resolution time.For BPC,typical pre-analysis include:

1, Do some cross-checking to narrow down the issue.

If you get an error with one reporting
template,check in another template to see if it is template specific; Check in
another model or environment as well; Check by another User ID to understand if
it is caused by the user’s authentication or client machine.

2, If you get an error in BPC front end, check if an ABAP dump is generated at the same time by T-code ST22.ABAP dump sometimes
helps us to understand the root cause of the error and help to find a quick work around.I will explain this in detail by another blog.

3, If you get a problem with EPM Addin report,you can create a similar web report to check if this issue is from EPM Addin or backend.If it is from backend,it is normally caused by BW OLAP.You can get MDX query and execute it in T-code ‘MDXTEST’ to check if it works.Regarding how to
get MDX,please refer to SAP note 1449668 and 1742110.

4, If a script logic you have developed doesn’t work as expected, please don’t create an incident to SAP support saying that the whole logic doesn’t work. As explained earlier, this kind of problems are normally considered as consulting issue because customer should be responsible for the scripts they developed.But if you think the problem is from the syntax of the script,please narrow down the problem to a particular block and provide it as an example to SAP support.At the same time, provide the input data/out
data result to explain the problem.

5,Configurations of BPC consolidation is complicated.
If you run into a problem with BPC consolidation,please check your
configurations according to my previous post below:

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-56719

If you still think your configurations are correct and it is a problem caused by the software ,please provide following detailed
information to SAP support:

->The screenshot of the source data before running
consolidation.

->The screenshot of the EXACT business rule you
configured for the source data to be consolidated.

->The output after executing the consolidation.
Especially, explain why you think the result is not correct (This is because
according to my experience,some customers just have misunderstanding of how BPC
consolidation works and the output result it should be).

->If possible attach some screenshots to explain
the ownership data have been maintained correctly.

Hint4,Open remote connections immediately after you create an OSS incidents.

Remote connections enable SAP support engineers to login to customers’ system and investigate the root cause quickly. They are very important for the investigation of the issues.

As a SAP support engineer, a very common situation I face is :Customer run into a critical problem and create a very high incident to
SAP but spending quite a lot of time at opening remote connection. This should be avoided.

Especially take note of the following:

->BPC have both front end and back end .If the problem is purely related to back end ,you only need to open R/3 connection to
your SAP BI system according to SAP note 812732.

->If the problem is related to front end ,besides R/3 connection,you need to open Http based tools connection(Refer to
SAP note 1787981) or WTS connection to a client machine with EPM Addin installed(Refer to SAP note 605795).

->Don’t forget to provide user credentials in secure area for SAP to login. Especially take note of the authentications of
the user ID you provide, for example, if the user ID has been provided required SAP BI authentication to do investigation and BPC authority to reproduce the issue(correct data access profile and task profile).

Hint4,select appropriate priority when you create an OSS incident.

Especially,take note of the priority of ‘Very high’.SAP cares much about customer’s business operation by SAP systems and we always
spend resource as much as we can to help customers on the most critical issues
to minimize the impact to customers.So for Very High incident,SAP provide 24*7 support.

Please use ‘very high’ priority in case it is really the most critical situation such as:

1, a production down issue

2, the imminent go-live or upgrade is jeopardized.

3,The core business processes of the customer are seriously affected.

And no work around is available.

To ensure prompt processing of incidents with the
priority "very high", customer should:

->Remote access to the relevant system must be ensured.

->A contact person must be designated for opening the system who must be available and can
provide the required logon data.

->A contact person must be available to provide information about the problem.

->The problem should be described in as much detail as possible: The incident should contain
instructions about how to simulate the problem.

->To ensure 24/7 processing, the incident must be written in English.

Please note,if the conditions mentioned above are not satisfied,SAP support engineer will downgrade the priority.

These are some points come to my mind now,I will keep updating the blog and provide more hints in the future

Hello Followers,

     Since the release of BPC 10.1, we have seen several incidents where the Web Administration links were not working. The main root cause is the installed BPC version is inconsistent with installed SAP UI5 version.

     Below are some steps that can help check the system if you are facing such behavior:

• Ensure BPC and SAP UI5 are on compatible versions. Below you can find a table with the relation between BPC and SAP UI5 versions.

• Delete redundant EPM folder. On SAP Note 2053377 you can find detailed steps on how to do so.

Kind Regards,

Petry

Did you get the buzz yet?  I think this question is passé.  Pras introduced the product with a great blog and by now it is clear that BPC 10.1 NW is going to be the next step in SAP BPC product development.With general availability of BPC 10.1, it has been made clear what to expect in coming days. However, advent of embedded model has made life a bit confused for both consultant as well as companies who are not not clear which way to go about ?  Most of the companies are in "wait & watch" mode as 10.1 embedded is not still there. It will require few quarters and service packs for 10.1 embedded to have the edge over other options. This is also to do with SAP strategy to charge for additional license  for add on features.As explained in Uwe Fischer’s blog separate license is required to make use of additional features in embedded model. This makes the decision much more difficult.The million dollar question is :- Which option to select ?

In this blog, I will try to list out the criteria based on which, we can decide which option to choose? The list may not be complete, but i have tried my best to cover all corners.At present there are following options to choose from:

• BPC 10.1 Classic ( without HANA)
• BPC 10.1 Classic( with HANA)
• BPC 10.1 embedded( unified will be called as embedded)
• Both Classic & Embedded in one server
• BI-IP PAK

In the figure below, i have tried to create a Venn diagram to list out all the basic features which  overlap among each other. As you can see, at present HANA is the only option which is common among the products available. The idea is to move  all standalone features from individual nodes into the common node.

Based on above features, i will try to list down each scenario and try to figure out which option is best suited for business. As you can see below, for each criteria i have reasoned the best and worst case scenario . For instance, for any consolidation related scenario, BPC 10.1 classic is best option to choose. Further, for  BPS/IP migration, moving to 10.1 unified model is much more efficient  as compared to other options available.

The list is not complete and and there are scenarios which are not yet listed.  Typical BPC implementation will have multiple scenarios and  consultants have to look at combination of scenarios to conclude which option to go for.

Based on above list, we can safely conclude that at present BPC 10.1 is an extension of BI-IP PAK. Current version of BPC 10.1 embedded alone is not enough to replace BPC NW . The best bet is to go for mix of both embedded and classic version.  Going forward, embedded will have full features of BPC ( including consolidations) and that's when true value of 10.1 will be unleashed.

Prat

Hello!!!

We have a few documented BW 740 issues that can affect BPC. Check the list below, with the observed behavior in BPCand the related BW note to fix it.

• NW 740 SP05 ( and corresponding SPs
  of other NW releases):

1. With DB6 Database, Environmentshell activation and any other model/cube may fail with DB2 error: "SQL1754N The index table space or long table space is not in the same database partition group as the primary table space". DB6 Note 2035350 solves this issue, but can only be implemented as of BW740 SP07.

• NW 740 SP06  ( and corresponding SPs of other NW releases):

1. There would be a dump if trying to delete an InfoObject. This means BPC dimensions cannot be deleted.  This occurs only on non-HANA databases. BW note 1956422 fixes this issue.

• NW 740 SP07 ( and corresponding SPs of other NW releases, this solutions should come with BW 740 SP09):
  
  1. Newly created planning cube would be in ‘data loading’ mode instead of the expected ‘planning’ mode. BW note 2043190 fixes this issue.
  
  2. BAPI_IOBJ_GETDETAIL does not clear tables. The symptom of this issue at BPC side is that customer would fail to copy environments or create new models, and at ABAP side there would be dumps complaining duplicate keys. BW note 2042254 fixes this issue
  
  3. Transaction data records are written to planning cube incorrectly with space on some of the characteristics ( by checking the data records with transaction LISTCUBE). The symptom of this issue at BPC side is that though BPC confirms that data records are written, BPC cannot read the written data records ( in other words it appears to BPC that the data records are not written). BW note 2035451 fixes this issue.

Best Regards,

Carlos

PROMPT(COMBOBOX... is a useful statement in DM advanced script to provide user selection of some text values that can be later used in script logic. With the help of this statement it's possible to limit user choice to only values hardcoded in this statement. One example can be restricted list of members to perform some calculations.

The syntax is:

PROMPT(COMBOBOX,%VARIABLE%,"Prompt text for user",(type of combobox),TEXT1,{TEXT1,TEXT2,TEXT3,TEXT4,TEXT5})

Where:

%VARIABLE% - to store the selection, can be passed to the script logic as $VARIABLE$ using:

INFO(%EQU%,=)

INFO(%TAB%,;)

TASK(/CPMB/DEFAULT_FORMULAS_LOGIC,EQU,%EQU%)

TASK(/CPMB/DEFAULT_FORMULAS_LOGIC,TAB,%TAB%)

TASK(/CPMB/DEFAULT_FORMULAS_LOGIC,REPLACEPARAM,VARIABLE%EQU%%VARIABLE%)

Or you can concatenate this variable to %SELECTION% to be sure that only fixed list of members for some dimension are allowed to select:

TASK(/CPMB/DEFAULT_FORMULAS_LOGIC,SELECTION,%SELECTION%DIMENSION:SOMEDIMENSION|%VARIABLE%|)

(type of combobox) - 0 or 1 - limit to list (different behavior in BPC 7.5 and 10 - see below)

TEXT1 - default selection (if empty - empty default selection)

{TEXT1,TEXT2,TEXT3,TEXT4,TEXT5} - list of values.

I have done some tests of the COMBOBOX parameters and found some differences between BPC 10 and 7.5:

For BPC 10:

1. PROMPT(COMBOBOX,%BU%,"Select BU to run earning calculations",0,,{A003,A004,A005,A006,A019})

Will provide a fixed list with Empty line at the end of list and with empty default selection. But you are forced to select some non-empty line ("Next" for empty value generates error). You are not able to enter list of values (not able to type in combobox field).

2. PROMPT(COMBOBOX,%BU%,"Select BU to run earning calculations",0,A003,{A003,A004,A005,A006,A019})

Will provide a fixed list without Empty line at the end of list and with A003 as a default selection. "Next" will be OK. You are not able to enter list of values (not able to type in combobox field).

3. PROMPT(COMBOBOX,%BU%,"Select BU to run earning calculations",1,,{A003,A004,A005,A006,A019})

Will provide a list with Empty line at the end of list and with empty default selection. But you are forced to select some non-empty line ("Next" for empty value generates error) or you can type some value - from the list or not from the list. You are able to enter list of values (it's allowed to type in combobox field).

4. PROMPT(COMBOBOX,%BU%,"Select BU to run earning calculations",1,A003,{A003,A004,A005,A006,A019})

Will provide a list without Empty line at the end of list and with A003 as a default selection. You are not able to clear default value and proceed ("Next" for empty value generates error) but you can type some value - from the list or not from the list. You are able to enter list of values (it's allowed to type in combobox field).

For BPC 7.5:

1. PROMPT(COMBOBOX,%BU%,"Select BU to run earning calculations",0,,{A003,A004,A005,A006,A019})

Will provide a list without Empty line at the end of list and with empty default selection. You are not forced to select some non-empty line ("Next" for empty value will pass without error) or you can type some value - from the list or not from the list. You are able to enter list of values (it's allowed to type in combobox field). Like option 3 for BPC 10.

2. PROMPT(COMBOBOX,%BU%,"Select BU to run earning calculations",0,A003,{A003,A004,A005,A006,A019})

Will provide a list without Empty line at the end of list and with A003 as a default selection. You are able to clear default value and proceed ("Next" for empty value will pass without error) or you can type some value - from the list or not from the list. You are able to enter list of values (it's allowed to type in combobox field). Like option 4 for BPC 10.

3. PROMPT(COMBOBOX,%BU%,"Select BU to run earning calculations",1,,{A003,A004,A005,A006,A019})

Will provide a fixed list without Empty line at the end of list and with empty default selection. But you are forced to select some value from the list ("Next" for empty value generates error) and if you type value missing in the list you will also have error. You are able to enter list of values but only from combobox lines (it's allowed to type in combobox field).

4. PROMPT(COMBOBOX,%BU%,"Select BU to run earning calculations",1,A003,{A003,A004,A005,A006,A019})

Will provide a fixed list without Empty line at the end of list and with A003 as a default selection. You are not able to clear default value and proceed ("Next" for empty value generates error) and if you type value missing in the list you will also have error. You are able to enter list of values but only from combobox lines (it's allowed to type in combobox field).

See the difference and use the required combobox type.

B.R. Vadim

Have you even encounter the issue that the description of the dimension after running UJA_REFRESH_DIM_CACHE? And this is most likely happens to the environment that you use UJBR to restore. Also, this only happens to BPC 10.0 SP12(800 SP12 or 801 SP05), BPC 10.1 SP01 or after applying note 1935532.

The reason is that UJBR only restores the descpriton of BPC cacahe table without restoring it into BW text table. That's why after you run UJA_REFRESH_DIM_CACHE, the description is gone as UJA_REFRESH_DIM_CACHE recreates the cache table according to the BW text table.

So what's the solution? The issue can be fixed by applying note 1984113.

Best Regards,

Charlie

Hello BPC Coleagues

     I will try to list here the most outstanding issues on BPC 10.1 version for NW, and by outstanding I mean issue that impact instalation/activation of the product and most common implementation scenarios.

     I don´t want this to become too extensive, so I will not add every single note of each SP. Suggestions are welcome but please don´t be upset if I decide to not list them here.

     The notes will be sorted by the first affected SP.

Thank you!

Most of you should know we can run BW MDX using transaction code MDXTEST or MDXTEST_OLD, but do you know how to run HANA MDX.

There are 3 ways to do that.

1. Execute transaction code UJHANAMDX.
2. Execute transaction code SE38->run report UJHANA_MDX_TEST.
3. Run it from HANA Studio. See note 1958603 for detailed information.

Be noted that 1st and 2nd one are available after CPMBPC 800 SP11 or 801 SP04 and BPC 10.1. You can also find this on 2086208 - How to run HANA MDX - BPC NW

By the way, it's really worth reading note 1958603 when you encounter any issue when enable HANA MDX. It lists all the HANA MDX related bug fix and performance improvement.

1958603 - Analyze HANA MDX problems in Planning and Consolidation 10.0 NW

Best Regards,

Charlie

Hello everyone in this example I am showing you how to set up a report which displays a calculated KPI and its elements (KPI A + KPI B = KPI C) determined by using VBA.

First open Excel and connect to BPC. By logging in keep the name of your connection in mind. We will need it later on.

After this fill the calculated KPI you want to be in the report in cell A1 (you can choose every cell you want, you only have to change the VBA code at line 19).

Now we create a new report with the organizational units dimension on the row axis and the KPI dimension on the column axis. Choose Context Member for the KPI dimension.

Now it is getting interesting. Go to VBA editor (Alt+F11) and create a new module. Copy and paste the following code in that module.

1. Set the context member (KPI) to the value in cell A1
2. Get numerator and denominator
3. Add KPI's to column axis

PrivateConst con As String = "TestConnection"
Sub Test()
Dim relkpi As Variant
Dim numerator, denominator, context_kpi As String
Dim epm_func As New EPMAddInAutomation 
'set context KPI
EPM_SetContext_Dimension      '1
'get numerator + denominator
relkpi = EPM_Get_Formula_Elements '2 
numerator = relkpi(1)
denominator = relkpi(2)
'numerator + denominator – kpis which will be added to report
EPM_Add_Member_ColumnAxis numerator, denominator '3
epm_func.Refresh
End Sub
Function EPM_SetContext_Dimension()
Dim client As Object
'fill in KPI at cell A1
set_con_kpis = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("TEST").Cells(1, 1)  
Set client = Application.COMAddIns("FPMXLClient.Connect").Object
'context member x-axis (ColumnAxis)
client.SetContextMember con, "KPIS", set_con_kpis     'connection, dimension name, dimension member
Set client = Nothing
End Function
Function EPM_Get_Formula_Elements() As Variant
Dim epm_func As New EPMAddInAutomation
Dim context_kpi, formula As String
Dim elements(1 To 2) As String
context_kpi = epm_func.GetContextMember(con, "KPIS")     'context member (kpi)
formula = epm_func.GetPropertyValue(con, context_kpi, "FORMULA")
elements(1) = Right(Left(formula, InStr(1, formula, "/", vbTextCompare) - 2), Len(Left(formula, InStr(1, formula, "/", vbTextCompare) - 2)) - 8)     'numerator 
elements(2) = Right(Left(formula, Len(formula) - 1), Len(formula) - InStr(1, formula, "/", vbTextCompare) - 9)     'denominator  
EPM_Get_Formula_Elements = elements
End Function
Function EPM_Add_Member_ColumnAxis(ByVal numerator As String, ByVal denominator As String)
Dim client As Object
Set client = Application.COMAddIns("FPMXLClient.Connect").Object
client.AddMemberToColumAxis ThisWorkbook.Sheets("TEST"), "000", numerator, 1     'worksheet, report id, member, dynamic relation
client.AddMemberToColumAxis ThisWorkbook.Sheets("TEST"), "000", denominator, 1
Set client = Nothing
End Function

List of supported dynamic relations values:

• Member = 1
• Children = 2
• Member and Children = 3
• Descendants = 4
• Member and Descendants = 5
• Leaves = 6
• Same Level = 7
• Siblings = 8
• Ascendants = 9
• Member and Ascendants = 10
• Member and Leaves = 11

For more information please have a look at
http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/boeo10/en/EPMofc_10_user_en.pdf

That's it.You now have a dynamically changing report for your calculated KPIs. For more complex calculation then C = A/B you need to change the string clipping in the EPM_Get_Formula_Elements function.

Besides don't forget to remove your KPIs before adding new ones otherwise your report never stops growing.

You can remove them manually by editing the report or you can do it in VBA (same logic as adding them):

Function EPM_Remove_Member_ColumnAxis(ByVal numerator As String, ByVal denominator As String)
Dim client As Object
Set client = Application.COMAddIns("FPMXLClient.Connect").Object
client.RemoveMemberFromColumnAxis ThisWorkbook.Sheets("TEST"), "000", numerator, 1
client.RemoveMemberFromColumnAxis ThisWorkbook.Sheets("TEST"), "000", denominator, 1
Set client = Nothing
End Function

 
Have fun coding!