SAP BW/4HANA 2023 is around the corner and will be released soon (end of October 2023).

As many already know, we offer a long term support commitment until 2040 for SAP BW/4HANA and as announced, we will also deliver a new product version with SAP BW/4HANA 2023 this year.

In this blog I will go into the different innovations and provide a brief overview of our end of mainstream maintenance key dates.

Since we have already provided a successor to SAP BW/4HANA with SAP Datasphere, I would like to start with our statement of direction.

Many of you have maybe seen, that we have updated the current version a few weeks before.

Follow this Link for more information.

To ease the transition of our installed base customers, we offer public cloud, as well as private cloud options in RISE with SAP, enabling them to make the right technology choice for their business needs.

While SAP Datasphere is a ready-to-run cloud application that delivers the latest best practices and continuous innovation, the SAP BW/4HANA Cloud, private edition is a tailored-to-fit cloud offering, helping customers adapt to their unique transformation needs.​​

SAP ERP customers moving to SAP S/4HANA Cloud (leveraging our “RISE with SAP” strategy), need to consider a way forward for their on-prem SAP BW deployments. Some operational reporting/analytics workflows can be moved to SAP S/4HANA Cloud (and get covered by the embedded analytics), but for the most part, the need for comprehensive data and analytics functionality (including data warehousing) will remain.​

In order to help customers transition to a modern business data fabric with SAP Datasphere, we support several innovation journey paths – especially considering the pending end of maintenance of SAP BW. For example, customers that have already invested into a project to move from SAP BW to SAP BW/4HANA should continue on that path in order to land on a supported and full-featured product version. ​

They can then move to SAP Datasphere directly or simply add SAP Datasphere to extend their business warehouse deployment with the innovation, openness, and self-service abilities in a hybrid scenario. Over time, the workloads can get increasingly shifted to SAP Datasphere, and customers can even leverage the SAP BW bridge component to re-use and integrate BW objects with a tool-supported move, or leverage the BW-based data ingestion and staging, including the BW/4HANA business content as an accelerator.​

In some cases, customers can already move their BW systems directly to SAP Datasphere and that is also the recommended solution for Business Suite customers that don’t have a BW deployment.​

Regardless which initial path the customer chooses, they can always move forward to SAP Datasphere – both, technically (BW bridge and tool-supported move) and commercially (private cloud subscriptions can be converted to public cloud subscriptions).​

Now let me give you an insight into our feature list for SAP BW/4HANA 2023.

Significant enhancements in the area of:

• Data Protection & Privacy
• Administration
• Modeling
• User Interface

Data Protection & Privacy

Enhancements Anonymization capabilities Data Protection Workbench

1. Support of Datastore Objects (advanced) type ‘Data Mart’

• Anonymization of key fields supported
• If anonymization results in duplicate records keyfigures are aggregated as defined in the Datastore Object (advanced)

2. Propagation of anonymized data

• Propagation of anonymized data to subsequent data targets possible when Data Store Object supports propagation
• An additional entry (Action) in the menu is offered ’Perform Anonymization with Propagation’

3. New formula editor for Anonymization Rules

• A new formula editor for Anonymization Rules is available
• Data preview feature to simulate anonymization
• Metadata check of Anonymization Rules (i.e. data type of constants)

4. Support update of anonymized data into Cold Store targets

Administration

Object synchronization between SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Bridge

• Syncronize existing developments between SAP BW/4HANA and the SAP Bridge in hybrid landscapes with SAP Datasphere

• For hybrid landscapes with SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Datasphere where major developments are still being performed in SAP BW/4HANA

Procedure

• Run Report RS_B4HANA_ALLOW_OBJECT_SYNCH
  • Option to select all or only certain object types to be updated in the SAP Bridge

• Execute Task List
  • SAP_BW4_TRANSFER_CHECK_SYNC to test the feasibility of the update
  • SAP_BW4_TRANSFER_CLOUD_SYNC to do the update
  • It appears to be a standard Shell Task List, however it knows about the update scenario and hence will not refuse to transfer objects that are already transferred. Also, it performs additional checks.

Customers who decide to move towards SAP BW/4HANA as an initial step can start with hybrid scenarios with SAP Datasphere and import data models into SAP Datasphere even without SAP BW bridge.

Especially for customers who have already migrated to SAP BW/4HANA or are currently planning to do so, we offer an easy synchronization option of meta data between SAP BW/4HANA as a sender and SAP BW bridge as a target system.

SAP BW bridge is based on the same codeline as SAP BW/4HANA and can therefore be combined very easily.

This means that data models can slowly be removed from SAP BW/4HANA at your own pace and transferred to the SAP BW bridge. The synchronization option allows data models to be overwritten multiple times in the target system if changes in the original data flow in SAP BW/4HANA had to be implemented later.

After the respective data model has been completely adopted and kept in sync, the original data flow in SAP BW/4HANA can be switched off and the data supply for the respective reports comes via SAP Datasphere with SAP BW bridge.

Enhancements Data Transfer Process (DTP)

• Transmission of non-cumulative data via SAP Operational Data Provisioning (ODP) improved
• Performance improvements for Datastore Objects (advanced) and CompositeProvider where database aggregation is not activated1
• Enable customer defined navigational attributes for SAP HANA execution

Further Enhancements

• Analytic Authorizations for InfoObjects via ODATA

  • Additional option to activate Analytic Authorizations in the ODATA interface to prove access to authorized values of the attributes of an InfoObject

• Messaging Request

  • Improved handling of RSPM packages in scenarios with high frequent data loads via write interface enabled DSO
  • New Process Type for Process Chains available to regularly close open messaging requests: ‘Close Messaging Request‘ (PUSH_MSGR)

• Housekeeping Tasklist

  • Collection of typical Housekeeping activities in one tasklist (SAP_BW4_HOUSEKEEPING in transaction: STC01)
  • Variants for process chains

Modeling

Enhancements Modeling

• Adding content to a newly created column in an existing Datastore Object (advanced) via re-modeling toolset was only possible:

  • by filling it with constant values
  • of by copying the content of another column of the same record

• With SAP BW/4HANA 2023 it is possible to fill the new column with a JSON formula to fill-in:

  • Constant values
  • Content from another field of the record (or substrings)
  • Arithmetic- and SQL functions cobining the two latter ones
  • It is also possible to user fields of other tables (which are part of an existing Datastore Object or InfoObject

User Interface

Enhancements User Interface – SAP Modeling Tools Eclipse

Structure Overview and Notes in SAP BW Query Designer

• Gives detailed overview of the structure definition
• Technical Names can directly be adjusted
• Possibility to add a note to the member of a structure which is stored in the query context

Preview functionality Anonymization

• View original value together with the anonymized output as a preview

advanced) via JSON

Copy filter definitions in Data Transfer Processes

• Possibility to copy filter definitions between Data Transfer Processes
• Copy also possible across projects
• Target compatibility is checked and only suitable definitions copied

Package Explorer

• Allows browsing within BW projects on assigned package
• Separate display of different object types by folders

Data Transfer Process – Copy & Paste

• Support to copy & paste a filter definition between 2 DTPs.
• Copy & Paste is global available within of a running BW-MT instance.So also between 2 different projects.
• Target compatibility will be checked and allows to merge also only suitable definitions.

Data Transfer Process – Enhanced Process Chain Monitoring

• Detailed Process Chain Monitors which have been introduced with the SAP Bridge are also available in SAP BW/4HANA now
• Drill-down from general overview to detailed Process Chain Runs
• New KPIs e.g. like average CPU usage usage of ABAP-/database storage

SAP End of Mainstream Maintenance Key Dates

Please let me know, if you have any detailed question regarding SAP BW/4HANA, BW MOVE or the journey to SAP Datasphere.

Regards

Dominik