IDT Universe or BICS approach for reporting on SAP BW in Bobj 4.0

[Former Member]

Hi All,

We are in the phase of Analysing the best approach - IDT Universe ot BICS (BEx to Webi directly) for SAP-Bobj Reporting.

Following in the Env:

• Backend - SAP BW 7.0  (there is no other DWH. Only source DWH is SAP-BW).
• SAP Bobj version:  4.0 sp2

Pls inform in which scenarios IDT Universe will be beneficial and in which scenarios BICS appraoch (BEx to Webi directly) will be better.

- If using IDT Unvierse approach we would liek to avoid developing BEx query and directly build Universe on top SAP BW-Cube.

- Also, pls throw some light on data-level security implementation aspects if not using BEx query and directly building IDT Universe on Cube.

Thank you all,

AK

[Former Member]

Hi Anil,

First of all please have a look at the PAM (https://websmp230.sap-ag.de/sap(bD1lbiZjPTAwMQ==)/support/pam/pam.html#ts=2) S-User is required. You can also reach the document by going to http://service.sap.com logon with you S-User and then navigate to the tab "Release & Upgrade Info" then the subtab "Product Availability Matrix". There you can see if your BW Server fits the PAtchlevel to enable the full BO-Support.

Netweaver 7.0 SP6 is the minimum requirement itherwise you will get a lot of exceptions

About your original question:

With IDT you can access Infoprovider with a relational Interface. The advantage is that you can combine other relational daatasources to une universe and make this transient for your report developers or your business (so that they do not have to join different connections on report side).

In your case i would say you won' need it, because Nteweaver is the only datasource. You can also do customization of texts and prompts and so on. Downside of this approach is that you are not able to access restricted and calculated keyfigures (because those are defined in BEx-Queries) and you have to define row level access based on BO Users and groups in the IDT Universe. This can be great but on the other side there are already security settings on BW side and you usually don't want to double this work.

With BICS you have access to all restricted keyfigures and the (probably) existing security concept of netweaver is used and you don't have to bother with it on BO side.

If you have more specific questions please feel free to ask.

Best regards

Manfred