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thomas_rinneberg
Explorer
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Have you ever thought: How many steps do I need to do, until I can load a flat file into BW? I need so many objects, foremost I need lots of InfoObjects before I can even start creating my infoprovider. Then I need DataSource, Transfomation (where I need to draw many arrows), DTP and InfoPackage. I just want to load a file! Why is there no help by the system?

Now there is - BW 7.30 brings the DataFlow Generation Wizard!

You start by going to BW DataWarehouse workbench (as always), then selecting the context menu entry „Generate Data Flow..." on either the File-Source system (if you just have a file and want to generate everything needed to load it) or on an already existing DataSource (if you have that part already done - this works also for non-file-source systems!) or on an infoprovider (if you have your data target already modeled and just want to push some data into it).

Context Menu to start data flow wizard


Then the wizard will pop up:

Step 1 - Source options

Here, we have started from the source system. If you start from the InfoProvider, the corresponding step will not be shown in the progress area on the left, since you have selected that already. Same for the DataSource.

I guess you noticed already: ASCII is missing in the file type drop down (how sad! – however please read the wizard text in the screenshot above: It’s just the wizard where it is not supported because the screen would become too complex). And look closer: There is „native XLS-File“. Yes, indeed. No longer „save as CSV“ necessary in Excel. You can just specify your Excel-File in the wizard (and in DataSource maintainance as well). There is just one flaw for those who want to go right to batch upload: The Excel installation on your PC or laptop is used to interpret the file contents, so it is not possible to load Excel files from the SAP application server. For this, you still need to save as CSV first, but the CSV structure is identical to the XLS structure, so you do not need to change the DataSource.

Ok, lets fill out the rest of the fields, file name of course, data source, source system, blabla – (oops, all this is prefilled after selecting the file!) – plus the ominous Data Type (yes, we still can’t live without that)

 

and „Continue“:

Step 2 - CSV Options

 

 

One remark on the header lines: If you enter more than one (and it is recommended to have at least one line containing the column headers), we expect the column headers to be the last of the header lines, i.e. directly before the data. Now let‘s go on:

Step 3 - Data Target

 

The following InfoProvider Types and Subtypes are available:

  • InfoCube – Standard and Semantically Partitioned
  • DataStore-Object – Standard, Write Optimized and Semantically Partitioned
  • InfoObject – Attributes and Texts
  • Virtual Provider – Based on DTP
  • Hybrid Provider – Based on DataStore
  • InfoSource

This is quite a choice. For those of you which got lost in that list, have a look at the decision tree which is available via the „i“ button on the screen. As a hint: A standard DataStore-Object is good for most 😉

Step 4 - Field Mapping

This is the core of the wizard. At this point, the file has already been read and parsed, and the corresponding data types and field names have been derived from the data of the file and the header line (if the file has one). In case you want to check whether the system did a good job, just double click the field name in the first column.

This screen does also define the transformation (of course only 1:1 mapping, but this will do for most cases – else you can just modify the generated transformation in the transformation UI later) as well as the target infoprovider (if not already existing) plus the necessary InfoObjects. You can choose from existing InfoObjects (and the „Suggestion“ will give you a ranked list of InfoObjects which map your fields better or worse) or you can let the Wizard create „New InfoObjects“ after completion. The suggestion uses a variety of search strategies, from data type match via text match to already used matches in 3.x or 7.x transformations.

And that was already the last step:

Step 5 - End

After „Finish“, the listed objects are generated. Note, that no InfoPackage will be generated, because the system will generate the DTP to directly access the file rather than the PSA.

 

Legal Disclaimer

Don't miss any of the other Information on BW 7.30 which you can find SAP Business Warehouse  7.3

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