SAP BW on HANA - Architecture

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When SAP BW is powered by HANA, all the tasks are performed using HANA database optimized techniques. SAP HANA is responsible to perform key tasks related to Data Warehousing delivering excellent performance while performing analytical reporting.

In the following figure, you can see BW on HANA architecture where all the key activities of BW are HANA optimized −

• HANA-Optimized Data Modeling: InfoCubes
• HANA-Optimized Data Modeling: Advanced DataStore Objects
• HANA-Optimized Data Modeling: Composite Providers
• HANA-Optimized Data Staging
• HANA-Optimized Analytic Manager
• HANA-Optimized Analysis Processes

Layered Scalable Architecture (LSA and LSA++)

In SAP BW, LSA makes it more robust, flexible, and scalable solution to perform enterprise data warehousing functions. LSA is the corporate framework for BW to reliably manage the entire data and metadata life cycle −

• Data delivery
• Data modeling
• Data staging
• Authorizations
• Solution delivery

When BW is implemented on SAP HANA, you can create a different LSA which is more dependent on virtual objects. This is known as LSA++ and it consists of three key layers −

Open Operation Data Store Layer

This layer is similar to the data acquisition layer in SAP BW. The open ODS layer is used to integrate data into the Data Warehouse and provides the same functionality as the classic data acquisition layer, but with more flexible data integration possibilities.

Core Data Warehouse Layer

This layer is responsible to perform functions like data transformation, data cleansing and consolidation.

Virtual Data Mart Layer

This layer is responsible to combine the data from other layers and to make it available for reporting purposes. This layer contains all the InfoProviders that combine data using join or union, without saving the result: MultiProvider, Composite Provider, etc. You can use this to access data directly in the SAP HANA database, to allow queries on Composite Provider, Open ODS View.

Composite provider allows you to merge the data from BW InfoProviders with HANA Modeling views. Union and Joins are performed in SAP HANA and queries can be run on composite providers, like BW InfoProviders.