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roman_moehl
Explorer
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Abstract

SAP NetWeaver BW 7.30 introduces a new test transaction for creating, running and analyzing MDX statements. The following article explains how you can use the test environment to efficiently use the query language MDX.

Motivation

MDX is a query language for accessing multidimensional data sources. It is the central technology of SAP BW’s Open Analysis Interface.

MDX allows dimensional applications to access OLAP data in a generic and standard-based way. Besides external reporting clients from other vendors, MDX is also used by SAP’s own products, for example by BusinessObjects Web Intelligence or BPC.

As a language, MDX offers a variety of functions that potentially result in very complex statements. Customers or client applications that create their own statements often lack of good editing- and tool support. Therefore, SAP BW 7.30 offers a new test transaction for composing, executing and analyzing MDX statements.

The new test transaction MDXTEST is typically used by developers (working on MDX-based integration for SAP BW), administrators and consultants.

Hands on MDXTEST

The new test transaction MDXTEST consists of three parts:

  1. Pane Section
  2. Editor
  3. ResultSet Renderer

Pane section

The pane section on the left side of the transaction consists of three sub sections.

Metadata browser

The metadata browser exposes the ODBO related metadata of the selected Cube. The selected objects (for example Members or Hierarchies) can be dragged onto the MDX editor. This improves and accelerates the construction of MDX statements. The user sees all the available objects that are available for defining statements.

Function library

The function library provides a list of all available MDX functions and methods. For each function or method, a corresponding code snippet can be added to the editor by drag and drop. The functions in the browser are arranged by on their return types, for example Member, Tuple or Set.

Statement navigator

The statement navigator provides a list of stored statements. By double clicking on a statement, the statement is read from the persistency and displayed in the MDX editor. This allows the user to easily find the stored MDX statements.

Editor

The central part of the test transaction is the editor pane. The editor itself provides a set of new functionality that is known from the ABAP editor such as mono-spaced font for indentation and formatting, line numbering or drag-and-drop of function templates.

Pretty Printer

Most MDX statements are generated by clients. These statements are often not in a readable format. Most of them need to be manually formatted to get a better understanding of statement structure. In addition, the statements are typically quite complex and often consist of a composition of multiple functions. Formatting and restructuring of the statement consumes a lot of time. A built-in pretty printer transforms the text into a “standard” formatting.

ResultSet Renderer

The result of a MDX query is displayed in a separate window to analyze the statement and its result in a decoupled way. Besides the data grid, additional information about the axis and details about MDX-specific statistic events are added to the query result.

Executing a MDX statement

Once you’ve constructed your MDX in the editor, there are two ways of executing the statement:

  1. Default: The status bar provides a default execution button. The statements are executed via the multidimensional interface and the default settings.
  2. Expert mode: If you need to run the MDX statement via a different interface, then the expert mode is the right choice. The expert mode is available via a button right next to the default execution button.

The expert mode provides the following options:

  • Interface: It’s possible to run a MDX statement via several APIs. The most common interface is the default multidimensional API. In addition, it’s possible to run the statement via the flattening or XML/A interface.
  • Row restriction: The flattening API allows you to restrict the range of rows that are about to retrieved. Besides a fix from- and to-number, it’s also possible to define a fixed package size. This setting is only available if the flattening API is chosen.
  • Display: The rendering of the result can be influenced by the display setting. In general, you can switch off the default HTML rendering. This might be handy if you run performance measurements and you would like to exclude the rendering overhead.
  • Debug settings: there are a couple of internal MDX-specific debug-breakpoints which are typically only used by SAP support consultants.

Summary

In this article, you learned about the new central UI for testing MDX statements. The various components of the test environment support you in creating, executing and testing MDX with minimal effort.

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