BW-BPS vs. BI SDK

[zlatko_radisic]

Scenario:

You have a BW transactional infocube containing information.

You want to perform estimation and planning on the data.

You want a web based user interface.

You want to manage a large number of concurrent users (with appropriate locking).

You want sophisticated navigation capabilities and complex screen designs.

You do not want to execute any specific planning functions against the data, i.e. you do not want to do things like ALLOCATIONS, DISTRIBUTIONS, REVALUATIONS etc.

Do you use BW-BPS and create a planning framework and a web based user interface?

or do you use BI SDK to create a Java application against the BW data source and deploy it as an iView in an Enterprise Portal?

Which method is better?

I would like to have some opinions, best practices, etc.

Thanks very much, in advance for your contribution.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Will you be planning with hierarchies and budgeting logic (top-down/ bottom-up)? That would make a big difference in my eyes. There is quite some javascript functionality implemented in the web interfaces. It checks (client-side) whether your planned amount exceeds the allocated budget, whether the characteristic combination makes sense, whether you actually entered a number in the correct format etc. If you don't need this functionality, you might be better of with JDK. But I haven't got any experience on this myself.

Simon

[former_member93896]

Hi Zlatko,

this is the old question of standard functionality vs. custom development.

Do a gap analysis of the BPS functionality. What is really missing (that adds business value)?

Then compare that to $$$ for customer development.

I don't know the timeframe for your project. I suggest to take a look at the coming release with BI Integrated Planning, too.

Regards

Marc

SAP NetWeaver RIG

[Former Member]

As far as my understanding goes, requirements, such as appropiate locking, security etc. will be taken care of when the BPS API is used.

But do you think that the cost of developing your own web front-end is justified? Developing anything from scratch that would compare to the bps web interfaces would take a considerable amount of developing time.

[zlatko_radisic]

The article:

https://media.sdn.sap.com/javadocs/NW04/SP12/bi/docs/business_scenario.html

implies that it is not so difficult.

Also, we have found that a lot of times, we have to do a significant amount of customization to the BSP application generated by the BPS WEB INTERFACE.