Road to BW4/HANA - BW 7.4 on HANA to BW7.5 on HANA

[Former Member]

Introduction

This blog is about how we migrated from BW7.4 on HANA to BW4/HANA. It will commence in a number of blogs to keep the length down, and make it a little more manageable for reading.w



This blog is focuses on the second - "SAP BW 7.4 powered by SAP HANA", and first part of the third "SAP BW 7.5 powered by SAP HANA".

Background

We have a native HANA 1 revision 96 deployment and BW7.4 SP8 on HANA, each with their own separate HANA database instances. We wish to integrate data from two non-SAP sources with our native HANA deployment for management reporting.

The key here, is Management Reporting. If we only need operational reporting, then we would likely integrate the other two systems using HANA SDA, however, for our management, we are interested in historic data, and wish to keep our native HANA system separate.

We set out creating a proof of concept project for which we gave three months. We are currently 6 weeks in, and delayed 3 weeks due to BW4HANA not being able to utilize our existing BW license.

To assist with any issues, we successfully registered with SAP for the Early Adoption Care program. This gives us priority help if issues are discovered. I would recommend this to anyone considering BW4/HANA in the next half year.

My main focus is in the BW space. BASIS tasks, e.g the NetWeaver upgrade, was performed by my colleague Claire Richards, which I will not go into any detail here, but link to the blog she is writing simultaneously.

 

Step 1. SAP BW 7.3 powered by SAP HANA

As we are on 7.4, this is not applicable

Step 2. SAP BW 7.4 powered by SAP HANA

Our journey began with BW7.4 SP8 on HANA 1 revision 96




Already Unicode


In this step, Claire Richards, from our BASIS team performed two upgrades, a regular BW NetWeaver Upgrade to 7.5 SP5 and the underlying HANA database to revision 122 . It was not all plain sailing and can viewed here.

In our system we have the following content

SAP BI Technical Content


and a little of our own custom content that includes aDSOs, w/o DSOs, Direct Update DSOs, Data Archive Processes, SPOs, Composites, MultiProv, Cubes etc...


A few days later we were all patched to BW7.5 and HANA 1.122

Step 3a. SAP BW 7.5 powered by SAP HANA

Now I can log on to my BW7.5 system and have a look around

• NLS


• SE38: RS_B4HANA_CHECK_ENABLE


• Tx: RSB4HTRF


• SE38: RSO_CONVERT_IPRO_TO_HCPR


• HANA Database Size

NLS

We have Sybase NLS installed and working, so I was eager to test and check that all was still ok. Unfortunately it was not. We had three errors.

One, the connection to NLS had broken.

This was found to be, the upgrade process wrote over the kernel directory where the SAP NLS lib files were located. It was fixed by returning the lib files to the location.

Two, trying to create new Data Archive Processes (DAP).


This was fixed by simply setting the buffer cache, IQMC to 32, and IQTC to 24. This is a known issue, however, was not an problem in BW7.4.

Three creating new DAPs.

This was fixed by regenerating the license file, and reapplying it.

Now all DAPs were in good working order. I am able to reload old archives back into the system and create new ones.

SE38: RS_B4HANA_CHECK_ENABLE

This is a fundamental program in the process.

You can see the "Current Mode" is greyed out, and shows "Add-on not installed", which is correct.

There are two "New Mode" options which we can run the simulation for. BW7.5 operates in two modes, "Compatibility mode" where classic BW objects still run (cannot be created), and "B4H mode" where no classic objects are allowed.

Prior to the Starter Add-on, which is where we are, this program's "Execution Options" are only "Simulate new mode"



As you can see from below, no issues exist, but it does state that the software components needs to be manually checked. It does not go into anymore detail.



Now to check "B4H mode"



Seeing as I have not changed, or manually converted objects to the new B4H environment, we can see many issues.

Until all the unsupported objects are removed, BW will not be able to enter B4H mode.


There is not much automation to remove the issues above at the moment. However, you can still install the Starter Add-on. The issues above will still be there, as you will see from my next blog.

update: There now is a program RS_DELETE_D_VERSION_FOR_TLOGO implemented using the following notes, to help remove the unsupported objects in B4H.
Note 2384088 – BW4HANA: Delete BW Objects in D-version Before BW4HANA Upgrade
Note 2385887 – BW4HANA: Delete BW Objects in D-Version Before BW4HANA Upgrade (customer content)

Note: These objects are the "D" Delivered, version, and not the "A" Active, ones.

Roland from SAP, has recently documented other ways to help remove objects. See here On the Road to BW/4HANA – first stage accomplished

Tx: RSB4HTRF

I am hoping to use the conversion transaction RSB4HTRF to automate the conversion tasks to the new B4H permitted objects, e.g. CompositeProviders, aDSOs, etc.

I then ran RSB4HTRF and received the following error message "Action canceled. Not supported in BW4HANA edition"


This is due to not having the Starter Add-on installed just yet. Obviously I will check this again in the next step, when we have installed the Starter Add-on. (update: it does work with the Starter Add-on installed)

SE38: RSO_CONVERT_IPRO_TO_HCPR

So in the absence of  RSB4HTRF, I thought I would try the program RSO_CONVERT_IPRO_TO_HCPR (converts MultiProviders to CompositeProviders).
Look here for further information - 2080851 Conversion of MultiProvider to CompositeProvider.
This only updates MultiProviders and Queries, it does not do the persistent objects under the MultiProviders.
This program could have limited use, as the transaction RSB4HTRF seems to do the whole data flow, including Queries.

As you can see below, the program also handles Queries and Variables.



BUT, if you think you can convert your existing BI Content, think again !

I thought I could at least be able to convert my BI Technical Content, until a B4H version comes out, but alas, not just yet. (update: it does work with the Starter Add-on installed).

HANA Database Size

My last explorations were around the size of the BW existing HANA database. We are told that B4H is leaner and meaner. Below is an output of the SCHEMA size(SUM(DATA_FOOTPRINT)) by Table Types(TABLE_TYPE), and the Number of Tables(T_COUNT).


Schema SAPABAP1, is BW's. It will be interesting to see the footprint reduction of this, or indeed, any others.

update: [24/01/2017] we later discovered that most of our BW systems footprint was down to our data, which we deleted quite a lot during the conversion. so performing a before and after was not an option any more.

So now, I hand this back over to Claire Richards (BASIS), who I will blog the installation of the Add-on.
Over to you Claire 🙂

Step 3b. SAP BW 7.5, edition for SAP HANA Add on

Road to BW4/HANA – BW 7.5 on HANA to BW7.5 edition on HANA

Step 4. SAP BW4/HANA

What we consequently found is that there are no further BW steps required, once BASIS perform the necessary tasks to put into B4H. The remaining BASIS tasks are blogged by my colleague here Running the conversion process to deliver a BW/4HANA