How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Applies To:
This article applies to SAP_BW 350 with support package SAPKW35015

Summary
Business rules change from year to year, but it is generally necessary to study Financial Variances (variances related to Cost center accounting, Activity-based accounting, or Product Costing) across different Fiscal years. In the past, this definitely called for complex BEx queries with sets of restricted/calculated key figures corresponding to each year. But with BW 3.5 onwards, we can achieve this using the Analysis Process Designer, or APD, new in BW 3.5. By: Padmanabha Rao Company: Wipro Technolgies Date: 25 January 2006

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Table of Contents
Applies To: .................................................................................................................................1 Summary....................................................................................................................................1 Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................2 Business Scenario .....................................................................................................................3 What is the APD?.......................................................................................................................3 APD Functions..............................................................................................................................4 Step by Step guide.....................................................................................................................4 Data sources.................................................................................................................................4 Transformation..............................................................................................................................4 Data target ....................................................................................................................................4 Online Reporting...........................................................................................................................4 Prerequisite Steps ........................................................................................................................5 Create the BEx query................................................................................................................5 Create ODS...............................................................................................................................5 Creating a new Analysis Process Designer..................................................................................5 Datasources ..............................................................................................................................6 Transformation ........................................................................................................................10 Datatarget................................................................................................................................14 Online Reporting .....................................................................................................................22 Learning, Recommendations & Other uses of APD ................................................................22 Learning ......................................................................................................................................22 Recommendations......................................................................................................................22 Other uses of APD......................................................................................................................22 Reference: ...............................................................................................................................23 Author Bio ................................................................................................................................23 Disclaimer & Liability Notice ....................................................................................................23

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Business Scenario
Business Scenario: Stored Financial Variance Model Business rules change from year to year, but it is generally necessary to study Financial Variances (variances related to Cost center accounting, Activity-based accounting, or Product Costing) across different Fiscal years. In the past, this definitely called for complex BEx queries with sets of restricted/calculated key figures corresponding to each year. But with BW 3.5 onwards, we can achieve this using the Analysis Process Designer, or APD, new in BW 3.5.

What is the APD?

The Analysis Process Designer (APD) is the application environment for the SAP data mining solution. The APD workbench provides an intuitive graphical interface that enables you to visualize, transform, and deploy data from your business warehouse. It combines all these different steps into a single data process with which you can easily interact. Use APD to pre-process your data: Read data from different sources and write it to a single location Transform data to optimize reporting Ensure high data quality by monitoring and maintaining the information stored in your data warehouse.

The APD is able to source data from InfoProviders such as InfoCubes, ODS objects, InfoObjects, database tables, BW queries, and flat files. Transformations include joins, sorts, transpositions, and with BW 3.5, integration with BWs Data Mining Workbench (RSDMWB).

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

APD Functions The APD interface consists mainly of a Navigation Area, Function selection, and Work Area, as shown below:

The Navigation area consists of an Application toolbar and a tree structure in which all available analysis processes are displayed. A new Analysis Process must be assigned to any one of the applications that SAP has provided. Functions vary from application to application, so they depend on the application component in which you model your analysis process. In the function selection area, all of the available datasources, transformations, and data targets are displayed in the form of icons.

Step by Step guide

Well make the following assumptions to design a Stored Variance Model as described in the business scenario section above: Data sources A BEx query is used as data source. Transformation An ABAP routine is used to transform the query data. Data target A transactional ODS is used to store the transient variance (say monthly). Online Reporting An Infocube will get data from the transactional ODS.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Financial Variance will be reported using a BEX query designed on the Info cube. Prerequisite Steps Create the BEx query The scenario requires a BEx query that uses complex calculations to calculate Financial Variances using Restricted / Calculated key figure functionality. Create ODS The ODS must be made transactional so the APD process can write entries to this object. A transactional ODS cannot be directly used for reporting in BW.

Creating a new Analysis Process Designer SAP menu for the APD is SAP Menu => Data Mining => Analysis Process Designer

Click on icon

to create new Analysis Process Designer work area.

You will be prompted to select an application. Select the application Generic

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Enter a description and start building the Analysis Process:

Datasources First select the query icon from the Datsources section, and drag & drop it into the Work area. Enter a source query when prompted by the following screen:

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Use Choose query to select the required query.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Also enter the variant for the variables available in the selected query, if required.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Under the Extended Settings tab, data partitioning can be done for the source query using characteristics similar to the infopackage setting in BW.

The work area will look like the following:

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Transformation Select routine from the Transformations area, and drag & drop it to the work area. Connect the query to it using link.

Click on Properties on the context menu of Routine1

Now the query is read and it is ready for any transformation using routine. Under the first tab of routine, specify a description for the routine.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Under the Source Flds tab, select the source fields that need to be transformed.

There is an option for grouping the fields. Move required fields to Source Fields.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

You will find all the selected source fields that were selected under the Target fields. BW assigns InfoObjects automatically to all the characteristics and restricted key figures (basic key figure InfoObject used by RKF). Assign InfoObjects to the fields where there is no automatic assignment is available. You also have the option of adding or removing any InfoObject that you would like to map for the Data targets.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Under the last tab Routine, you can do complex mapping of source fields to target fields. For example, the routine below gets the fiscal year from source field fiscal period.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Data Target Select the ODS icon from Data targets section, and drag & drop it to the work area.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Specify the transactional ODS that was already created and provide the description. Under the tab Target Area, APD provides two options for how data (result) is to be stored in the ODS.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Option 1: Already existing data is deleted from ODS regardless of the keyfield combination of ODS. Option 2: Only selected section of data from ODS will be deleted and selected area will be written. Example: Say you have key figures in ODS that are mapped to keyfigures coming from two different data source queries. In this case, insert a master data characteristic Data source Category (eg: ZCQUERY) and load it with the respective query names. Design two Analysis Process one each for each of the predefined query category. This way data will be deleted in ODS only for the respective category query data. Join the nodes of Routine and ODS by dragging on nodes.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Click on Properties available on link connecting routine & ODS

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Click on Automatic Assignment and further click on same info object. All objects that can be identified readily by ODS to target fields in the routine are mapped automatically.

For Target structure fields like Key figures, you can map it manually by selecting them individually.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Three kinds of field assignment between Target structure (ODS) and Source Structure (Routine Target fields) can be done at this stage, namely: Source char or Constant or Initial value.

Save the analysis process by using icon You will be prompted to enter the technical name for the same. Provide as per the naming convention. Once you have checked the Analysis process using The Analysis process is ready for use. Click on , activate it by to execute the process.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Log may be displayed as below:

Context menu functionality is available at every node to see the results in each stage and analyze the transformation and storage of data.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Context menu for the Datasource node:

Context menu for Transformation node:

Context menu for Data Targets node:

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Online Reporting An info cube can be built that is connected through BW data mart functionality to the transactional ODS (used in the above Analysis Process). The Analysis Process will run every month, capturing the financial variance using the formula built into source query, storing the data in ODS, and then moving the data to Infocube, so that the ODS is ready for the next months financial variance loading. Hence, the infoCube can be used for reporting the financial variances. If there is any change in business rules or if there is a change in a variance formula, respective changes will have to be done to the query and the data is stored in the infocube accordingly without disturbing the variance values that are already stored.

Learning, Recommendations & Other uses of APD

Learning Do not use any characteristic in filter or free characteristic in the datasource query for APD. If you are using hierarchy for characteristics in the data source query, ensure to remove Active check from the properties.

Recommendations The APD can easily be adopted into a process chain using the process type ABAP program. Choose the ABAP report RSAN_PROCESS_EXECUTE to accomplish this. Query variables and variants can be used to make the APD query more flexible. For example, a user-exit variable can derive the current fiscal year versus entering this value and saving it as a variant. Do not segment the data on the query object if the query is written on a Multi Provider. An overview of APD is available online in the SAP Library (help.sap.com). Follow the menu path Documentation>SAP NetWeaver>(your release/language)>Information Integration> SAP Business Intelligence>BI Platform>Analysis Process Designer. Other uses of APD In a complex system landscape that involves a plethora of sources, a reconciliation method becomes more crucial in reporting financial information. The Analysis Process Designer (APD) can help reconcile financial data. Profiling key figures and characteristics in ODS objects, PSA data, and BW queries can be difficult, time consuming, and inefficient. The Analysis Process Designer tool vastly improves ability to profile data also giving more options to understand data.

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How to Use the Analysis Process Designer to Store Financial Variance

Reference:
www.help.sap.com www.bwexpertonline.com

Author Bio
Padmanabha Rao , is a BW Consultant working with Wipro Technologies.

Disclaimer & Liability Notice

This document may discuss sample coding or other information that does not include SAP official interfaces and therefore is not supported by SAP. Changes made based on this information are not supported and can be overwritten during an upgrade. SAP will not be held liable for any damages caused by using or misusing the information, code or methods suggested in this document, and anyone using these methods does so at his/her own risk. SAP offers no guarantees and assumes no responsibility or liability of any type with respect to the content of this technical article or code sample, including any liability resulting from incompatibility between the content within this document and the materials and services offered by SAP. You agree that you will not hold, or seek to hold, SAP responsible or liable with respect to the content of this document.

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