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SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise Data
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SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise Data -
02-20-2004
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-----Original Message----- If there is anybody out there still looking for a comparison of SAP BW to SQL Server I would like to let you know we were one of the large SAP BW sites and having been acutely frustrated with BW we converted to SQL Server OLAP Services. There is a interesting Whitepaper on the Microsoft SAP Congress web site created by SAP themselves where they have benchmarked a SQL Server and OLAP Services running on a 8 way NT box outperformed SAP BW systems ruuning on 24 way UNIX databases-what better testimony than from SAP themselves. Further, SAP's findings were the BW cubes moved to SQL Server OLAP services were 10 times smaller this shows the appalling BW technology. If you have trouble finding this benchmark paper let me know. After seeing the results of a pilot migration we migrated our entire SAP BW applications to SQL server OLAP services at that Oracle 9i OLAP was still not in General availability but if you are thinking of a alternative now worthwhile to evaluate Oracle 9i OLAP & SQL Server OLAP services to the white elephant SAP BW. You will discover after this how many more less than average intelligence customers with less than average commonsense are running this SAP white elephant called SAP BW paying fortune to SAP. Nigel Pendse as published a very interesting article on SAP BW a worthwhile article to read if you are already being bled dry by SAP. Belinda From: Amanda Jones (amandajonesbc (AT) lycos (DOT) com) Subject: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application View this article only Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace, comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse Date: 2003-01-11 01:37:30 PST Hello All My company as asked me to prepare and evaluate between alternative solutions for data warehousing and one of our major source system to the data warehouse is SAP R/3 but of course we have other source systems apart from SAP. I am wondering how good is SAP Business Warehouse - BW 30B the latest version of SAP BW as a solution. I have personally talked to quite a few customers using SAP BW I could not get a good feedback about the product from SAP customers. Some of the customers indicated following issues with SAP BW: -difficult to use -went through long implementation cycles -performance was poor and scalability issues -maintaining the application was expensive since SAP BW and ABAP consultants are needed for ongoing maintenance. Apart from it we figured out SAP BW 30B does not have any ETL tool in it with ETL being 70-80% of the data warehousing effort I am bit sceptical how BW can run without a proper ETL tool. The part that caused us most concern was the language to extract, transform and load in SAP BW was ABAP and ABAP is proprietary which would cause us a major steep cost of ownership even for initial implementation to ongoing maintenance since our SAP project was not easy to implement and ABAP programmers are not available for less that $1000/day. So we would need expensive ABAP programmers to develop extractors for SAP R/3. Next configuring SAP BW needed specialist SAP BW consultants and we found out good SAP BW consultants were hard to get and getting consulting help from SAP would cost us - $2000/day. Apart from this the reporting layer in SAP BW was Microsoft Excel and any programming of the reporting was all done in ABAP again and for projecting reports Crystal reports was available but we had to buy a seperate license for Crystal reports and indications was in addition to SAP BW we had to buy a CPU based license for Crystal in addition. Since, we have non-SAP data sources to integrate into the data warehouse we were told we need a ETL tool like Ascential and we are to buy a seperate license to buy Ascential ETL tool once more CPU based licensing. Apart from buying a ETL tool like Ascential customers who had to build ETL to SAP BW have built part of the ETL process the extraction layer in Ascential and the transform and load part was written in ABAP for performance and that was the only solution for doing transforms and loads was to use ABAP programming. So in all staffing requirements we found for SAP BW to implement a enterprise data warehouse was we need : Read the rest of this message... (146 more lines) Message 2 in thread From: Nigel Pendse (nigelp (AT) nospam (DOT) compuserve.com) Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application View this article only Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace, comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse Date: 2003-01-11 02:18:11 PST "Amanda Jones" <amandajonesbc (AT) lycos (DOT) com> wrote in message news:d42580f.0301110137.5d6bdcca (AT) posting (DOT) google.com... Hello All My company as asked me to prepare and evaluate between alternative solutions for data warehousing and one of our major source system to the data warehouse is SAP R/3 but of course we have other source systems apart from SAP. snip Precisely I am wondering why not Oracle 9i OLAP or SQL Server 2000 or Oracle/SQL Server with Hyperion Essbase/Cognos. Some of the SAP BW consultants claim SAP BW is better than Business Objects, Cognos or Hyperion. Can you please throw some light and compare SAP BW to 9iOLAP/MicrsoftOLAP2000/Essbase/BO/Cognos & Acta/Informatica and if any of you are using any of these alternative solutions can you please provide your experiences with these alternatives to SAP BW like Acta with Essbase/Oracle/Cognos or SQL Server and if there are any resource on the net which outline how to evaluate a data warehouse. The OLAP Survey 2 also confirmed the low success rates of SAP BW users. Using an index based on eight separate benefits, SAP BW users reported the lowest scores among the nine products which had enough respondents to report. They also had the second lowest achievement of business goals among the same group. They also had an above-average rate of reporting technical problems (worse than any of the other products on your list). But, bizarrely, they also had the greatest loyalty -- presumably, many SAP R/3 sites have a fanatical loyalty to the vendor (after having invested so much), and despite the poor experiences of BW, are reluctant to consider third party alternatives, even though *all* the third party alternatives perform better. The same survey found that SAP BW users were the least likely to have performed a competitive product evaluation of all (only 24% of the BW sites surveyed had done this, against an average of 50%). This suggests that if people actually take the trouble to do what you're doing, they soon discover better alternatives and are able to achieve better results, more quickly and at lower cost. Largely, it's people who just assume BW "must be good because it's from SAP" who buy it, and then find it doesn't deliver. Of course, that same group probably don't realize how much better off they could have been if they'd bought something else. Because there are so many well-heeled R/3 sites, you'll find that all the independent BI vendors have put a lot of effort into ensuring that they can work well with R/3. Of the ones on your list, probably the only one not to consider at this stage is 9i OLAP, which is still somewhat unfinished. It may be good in a year or so, but currently has no apps available, and few tools. Consequently, there are currently very few deployments of it. Nigel Pendse OLAP Solutions http://www.olapreport.com http://www.survey.com/products/olap2/ Message 3 in thread From: DA Morgan (damorgan (AT) exesolutions (DOT) com) Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application View this article only Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace, comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse Date: 2003-01-11 11:06:13 PST Amanda Jones wrote: Hello All My company as asked me to prepare and evaluate between alternative solutions for data warehousing and one of our major source system to the data warehouse is SAP R/3 but of course we have other source systems apart from SAP. I am wondering how good is SAP Business Warehouse - BW 30B the latest version of SAP BW as a solution. I have personally talked to quite a few customers using SAP BW I could not get a good feedback about the product from SAP customers. Some of the customers indicated following issues with SAP BW: -difficult to use -went through long implementation cycles -performance was poor and scalability issues -maintaining the application was expensive since SAP BW and ABAP consultants are needed for ongoing maintenance. Apart from it we figured out SAP BW 30B does not have any ETL tool in it with ETL being 70-80% of the data warehousing effort I am bit sceptical how BW can run without a proper ETL tool. The part that caused us most concern was the language to extract, transform and load in SAP BW was ABAP and ABAP is proprietary which would cause us a major steep cost of ownership even for initial implementation to ongoing maintenance since our SAP project was not easy to implement and ABAP programmers are not available for less that $1000/day. So we would need expensive ABAP programmers to develop extractors for SAP R/3. Next configuring SAP BW needed specialist SAP BW consultants and we found out good SAP BW consultants were hard to get and getting consulting help from SAP would cost us - $2000/day. Apart from this the reporting layer in SAP BW was Microsoft Excel and any programming of the reporting was all done in ABAP again and for projecting reports Crystal reports was available but we had to buy a seperate license for Crystal reports and indications was in addition to SAP BW we had to buy a CPU based license for Crystal in addition. Since, we have non-SAP data sources to integrate into the data warehouse we were told we need a ETL tool like Ascential and we are to buy a seperate license to buy Ascential ETL tool once more CPU based licensing. Apart from buying a ETL tool like Ascential customers who had to build ETL to SAP BW have built part of the ETL process the extraction layer in Ascential and the transform and load part was written in ABAP for performance and that was the only solution for doing transforms and loads was to use ABAP programming. Read the rest of this message... (161 more lines) Message 4 in thread From: timgale (timgale (AT) rogers (DOT) com) Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application View this article only Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace, comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse Date: 2003-01-14 14:59:01 PST My background is a little different having been a Cognos reseller for the past 6 years. I am lead to believe by the guru's that be that Cognos has a few solutions for SAP and/or SAP BW... You can buy and use Cognos "headstarts" for SAP BW which will give users all the benefits of the Cognos client against SAP's Data Warehouse. However, I believe that the user can not perform OLAP disconnected. You can use Cognos against the info cubes in BW but you lose your ad hoc query and drill through capabilities. All you get is OLAP. Performance may also be an issue as PowerPlay is connecting through an odbc type interface (ODBO?) which is yet another point of failure. Also, you then are dependant on both vendors for connectivity through various releases. You can purchase analytical applications for SAP from Cognos which uses Cognos Decision Stream for ETL (solves your multiple data sources problem) and takes advantage of Decision Stream functionality for slowly changing dimensions, conforming dimensions, etc. Also, there is a TON of business content for Inventory, Procurement, Sales, AR, GL, and AP. It's an end to end Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence offering that is quick to implement. Having said all that, I've tried to convince many SAP shops of the above and they are extremely loyal to the ERP vendor. I'm not sure why. Typically an ERP vendor's sales force is plugged into the executive buyers which helps set an ERP agenda despite a favourable Cognos IT recommendation. Also note that Cognos was a licensed reseller for ACTA a few years ago so presumably they learned a thing or two about SAP data sources. Cognos resources are available in most major cities either from Cognos or through a systems integrator. Also, Cognos resources are available on a contract/permanent basis (at least in Toronto) through most agencies or on the open market. Personally, I think Cognos Analytical Applications are the best bet but I've been programmed to think that way:-) Hope that information is helpful. Cheers! Tim "Amanda Jones" <amandajonesbc (AT) lycos (DOT) com> wrote in message news:d42580f.0301110137.5d6bdcca (AT) posting (DOT) google.com... Hello All My company as asked me to prepare and evaluate between alternative solutions for data warehousing and one of our major source system to the data warehouse is SAP R/3 but of course we have other source Read the rest of this message... (194 more lines) Message 5 in thread From: Ihre_Frage (Ihre_Frage (AT) yahoo (DOT) de) Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application View this article only Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace, comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse Date: 2003-01-16 09:25:31 PST Hello Amanda, having lately had a look on all major multidimensional and relational OLAP systems I can just agree to all the statements regarding BW: -difficult to use -went through long implementation cycles -performance was poor and scalability issues -maintaining the application was expensive since SAP BW and ABAP consultants are needed for ongoing maintenance. you stated. At the moment there are only three reasons to implement SAP BW: 1. Your source data originates from SAP R/3 (at least 85 %). 2. Your users only know SAP R/3 reporting and are not "spoiled" by front ends from Cognos, Hyperion, Oracle, etc. or there are mainly (3) users receiving reports delivered by SAP's Business Explorer Web Application Builder (which is quite good). Why 1? Because SAP BW offers predefined extractors to extract data from R/3. Be careful though since any additionaly created field in R/3 won't be covered by the extractors and need to be created manually. If you won't employ BW there will be no way around an ETL tool and consultants who know exactly where and how they get the data from (using routines that use the R/3 application by creating ABAP code through the ETL tool). The question is where you want to put the effort: In data extraction from R/3 or in maintaining your warehouse application server, the latter called BW. The options you stated with the ETL tools and their analytical apps form one scenario. Using the ETL tool, filling a database and employing separate front end tools is another. You are also comparing multidimensional and relational databases: In my oppinion you should see if you need the first or the latter to meet your requirements. This depends largely on the data volumes you want to handle. Data volume, #users and your required performance influence the decision which system and what platform to use. "Neutral" warehouse vendors like SAS, IBM, Microsoft or Oracle could do. Some of them even have "ETL" functionality built in which is quite good, like SAS or Oracle. Regarding the front ends: There are indeed 3rd party front ends available for BW. The problem is just that the ODBO implementation is very often different from SAP's (although they have certified interfaces). OLAP BAPI gives less hazzles but only two vendors are certified. It is not correct though, that programming reports in BW needs any ABAP at all. There is a query builder you can use to create the report you want (in Excel or for the Web). The use of Business Explorer Analyzer is just not as comfortable than using Hyperions Excel Add-in or other vendors'. RDBMS and the way SAP BW implementes aggregates is not like Oracle's Read the rest of this message... (62 more lines) Message 6 in thread From: Andreas Wessner (canttell (AT) yahoo (DOT) de) Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application View this article only Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace, comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse Date: 2003-01-16 13:59:17 PST Amanda, Tim, You can buy and use Cognos "headstarts" for SAP BW which will give users all the benefits of the Cognos client against SAP's Data Warehouse. However, I believe that the user can not perform OLAP disconnected. Headstart can be used to connect Impromptu against the physical tables of SAP BW. This means just database security, no application security. Powerplay facilitates the OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) interface SAP implements. Unfortunately in the past (BW 2.1 to 3.0A) SAP's ODBO interface experienced slight "improvements" by SAP resulting in 3rd party software (also Powerplay) not working with SAP BW any more. I wouldn't therefore recommend patching BW (and you have to apply many patches) without the 3rd party vendors' assurance that his software runs with the new SAP BW patch. You wonder why SAP customers are loyal? I assume that they think stucking with the "market leader" is a good thing - SAP products are self running although they are far from optimality. Secondly have you ever tried to image what you would tell your boss if you voted for a software costing your company a fortune and realizing half a year later that you made a mistake? Regards, A. Message 7 in thread From: Nigel Pendse (nigelp (AT) nospam (DOT) compuserve.com) Subject: Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application View this article only Newsgroups: comp.databases.olap, comp.databases.oracle.marketplace, comp.databases.oracle.server, microsoft.public.sqlserver.datawarehouse Date: 2003-01-16 14:31:54 PST "Andreas Wessner" <canttell (AT) yahoo (DOT) de> wrote in message news:b079vj$mgcun$2 (AT) ID-25239 (DOT) news.dfncis.de... You wonder why SAP customers are loyal? I assume that they think stucking with the "market leader" is a good thing - SAP products are self running although they are far from optimality. Secondly have you ever tried to image what you would tell your boss if you voted for a software costing your company a fortune and realizing half a year later that you made a mistake? Indeed so, but many sites assume that SAP BW must, by definition, be better integrated with R/3 than third party products are, which is not necessarily true. There's also a very long history of ERP vendors (or ledger vendors, as they used to be called) doing a poor job with end-user business applications. Companies like Hyperion, Cognos, Business Objects, Comshare, etc have long derived a significant part of their business from providing the flexible analysis and reporting that was promised but not delivered by the supplier of the ledgers. Oracle tried to overcome this by buying the Express business from IRI, and marketing OFA as the standard front-end for Oracle Financials, but this product has been fading. But, as you say, once a company has spent tens of millions to implement SAP, it's very hard for them to accept that they then need to buy a third party product from a smaller vendor to make the most of it. Nigel Pendse OLAP Solutions http://www.olapreport.com . |
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