use of ODS

[Former Member]

In what situation should we use ODS instead of and infocube? All help is appreciated

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ravi1,

ODS instead of Info Cube?

You only have one good reason to choose ODS over InfoCube and that is the <b>UPDATE</b> capability of ODS over Info Cube. When BW detects that the incoming data already exist in the ODS based on primary key, it will overwrite it and depending on the settings for keyfigures, it will either replace or add up existing and incoming keyfigure values....

To prevent duplication of records before inserting to the CUBE, you would normally use an ODS...

Regards,

--Jkyle

[Former Member]

ravi1,

just think of an ODS as a standard SAP table, more or less.

if i could just add to what Gokul has mentioned - by saying that you want to use the ODS for additional datastaging, this is when you need data in BW which you will process further for, say, infocubes (such as in the case of purchasing documents - we keep the PO document and line item numbers in the ODS, but summarize them without these two when it goes into the cube).

as for the overwriting feature, think of transactional data. whatever we transact, we modify the relevant records in place - not create new ones.

hope this helps. don't forget to give out points if we've helped. 😃

ryan.

[Former Member]

There could be many reasons

- when you want to laod document level record and reporting performance is not important

- when you need use the overwrite feature in update rules

- when you have large number of characteristics and key figures all of which are not used in reports, but you do want them to be pulled to BW

- when you want an additional datastaging which can help in creating more update rules at different levels

for more n more details

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_bw33/helpdata/en/f9/45503c242b4a67e10000000a114084/content.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_bw33/helpdata/en/bd/c627c88f9e11d4b2c90050da4c74dc/content.htm