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Basic definitions and uses of EP,XI and BI

Former Member
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Hi All,

i am working on SAPEP and know what it can do.but a bit confused about other two netweaver technologies XI and BI.

1. What is XI generally used for?what skills required for that?

2. What is BI generally used for?what skills required for that?

How similar and difficult they are compared to EP.

Thanks in Advance

Rani A

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

Former Member
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Hi,

1. XI: stands for Exchange Infrastructure. If you have ever worked with middleware such as WebMethods Integration Server, IBM MQ Series, Tibco, etc, you can compare XI with these products. Its purpose is to act as a Hub connected to different systems (SAP and non-SAP). All participating systems send messages (such as Purchase Order documents) to XI, rather than directly sending to the receiver. XI contains message structure definition to validate correctness , receivers for this message, and what other adhoc changes to be applied to this message before relaying it to the receiver.

2. BI: Business Intelligence - purley used for reporting purposes. You do not carry out your transactions in a BI system. You use R/3 for that. Then you collect data into your BI system to report on it.

Imagine your employer wishes to run a media campaign to sell its newest product across the globe. It would require collecting data from all subsidiaries, and then manipulating it to identify purchasing patterns across each continent. Lets say people in Asia tend to spend a certain amount on a certain category of products in a certain timeframe. A BI system is built from scratch to support such analysis of data. You can compare SAP BI with the products from SAS, Teradata, SPSS etc.

So they have a totally different purpose than EP. The level of difficulty is dependent upon the complexity of landscape. Each area requires its own skillset.

Regards

Former Member
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Hi Shehryar,

Nice to get inputs from you again.Its very helpful.But some words are high level and unable to pick them at the moment.Like to ask you some thing more.I am new to SAP and no earlier IT experience.

I have a good knowledge of ABAP but not experience.Currently working in EP from last 6 months moving towards techonology consultant experience day by day.I have hands on experience on EP but no java and other skills .not interested in portal development consultant also.

What i would like to know is which netweaver technology(either XI,BI or other) I can cover in near future by considering these factors in mind.

1.Basic knowledge of ABAP.

2.Little experience in EP.

3.which combination is good with EP,in terms of Good carrer and less coding skills.

what about BW?Is it something near to my field?

Waiting for your Reply.

Thanks In Advance

Rani A

Former Member
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Hi,

Actually EP/XI/BI, from their usage, are from different paradigms altogether. May be, as you move on, you get a chance to integrate BI reporting into EP. But as an EP consultant, very rarely you get a chance to work with XI, unless you have to do and end-to-end integration of R/3 -> XI -> BI -> EP

Your ABAP knowledge may not be relevant currently due to your EP technology focus. So try to expand upon your EP technology skills. When you get a chance, BI would definitely be handy.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Former Member
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Hi ,

But I have heard that we need to use ABAP to some extend in BW and XI.Is it true?

what programming language BI use generally.Is it ABAP or any other?

I would like to get more information about BI.Any docs or link .just to know some more basics about BI.Do you have any good doc for BI

Thanks and Regards

Rani A

Former Member
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When I said "Your ABAP knowledge may not be relevant currently due to your EP technology", I answered to your 3rd question above.

Again, are you intending to develop into a technical consultant or a development consultant? Having ABAP knowledge with BW is effective if you intend to develop some reports/conversion routines/etc. JAVA can also be used to develop reports that fetch data from BI component.

Similarly for XI, you can develop applications using ABAP and JAVA both, but do you intend to?

While knowing the programming language is a plus, there is quite a lot to do from administrative side itself. But if you do enjoy developing apps, do give it a try when you get time. It always helps.

For BI, I believe SDN is full of documents. The BI forums are also quite active and you can post your questions over there. Experts over there can answer your queries more appropriately.

Regards

Message was edited by:

Shehryar Khan

Former Member
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Hi Shehryar,

Being into a technical consultant is my focus and interest,but not a dev consultant(Java or ABAP).

I would like to focus on EP technology and after getting some confidence ,will try a bit of ABAP and BI concepts.

Thanks again for your support and suggestions.:-).full points too.

Many Regards

Rani A

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Message was edited by:

Rani Ahuja

Answers (0)