How does SAP want me to connect more than one fact model?

[alexander_john_berlin]

Let's think of a very common scenario. You have

1. Sales value

2. Stock value

You want to analyse sales vs stock value of a product. You need to combine those two facts.

From what I see you have the following sitation

1. Analytic model does not support more than one fact model and I can see no reference that this feature is being worked on

2. Business builder is abandoned

3. Blending models in SAC is not supported and I can see no reference that this feature is being worked on

Am I missing something here?

Sure you can aggregate the data based and create another analytics model but then you lose a lot of the granularity that you might need. I honestly don't understand how such essential features are not supported when the competition has been supporting this for years!

I feel like a fool when business users ask me completly understanable questions when they want to see different fact measures aggregated per customer, product and so on and I have to tell them that this is not possible with this quite expensive product.

[bheemeshRao]

Do you have any notification from SAP that Business Builder is abandoned? Because in Business builder we can combine facts in the consumption model

[TuncayKaraca]

@alexander_john_berlin This is a great question. I'm sure somebody will come up with a great explanation.

[TuncayKaraca]

@alexander_john_berlin @bheemeshRao - BTW Oh dear, what does "Business builder is abandoned" mean? I must have missed some recent announcements!

[Martin_Kuma]

Hey Alexander,

You need to model your data. Like SQL WH. For your scenario you just create a UNION - or JOIN and on top of this View you create you Analytic Model. 

Actually very easy, straight forward and used in classical WH for decades. 

There is also a very nice blog to this topic: https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-blogs-by-sap/sap-datasphere-analytic-model-series-blog-post-...

I hope this helps. 

Cheers

Martin 

PS: Business Builder - I never used it, after Analytic Model was introduced. But it is definitely not obsolete, rather the functionalities are moved to Data Builder (like the Versioning/Release State)

[alexander_john_berlin]

Hello Martin,

well yes working with joins and unions is always possible but there is a reason why SAC allows blending of modells (just not for datasphere models) or why business builder alows more than one fact model: It is much easier and safes time to be able to "connect" two fact models one way or another.

I think everybody who had to combine two very different fact models knows that it requires a lot of work and it is easy to make mistakes. Especially joins and the possibility of unwanted multiple entries always looms.

[Martin_Kuma]

Hello Alexander, Blending in SAC is a nogo - Performance. You can still work with two Models and Link the one of the common dimensions f.e. if you would like to avoid backend unions/joins. Cheers, Martin