BPC 10.1 Unified Environment

[Former Member]

Hello Experts,

My client has some questions around unified environment.Please help me understand it better

1) If we have a bpc model exactly same in classic environment and an unified environment,Will the model in unified environment be faster in performance.If yes then why so?

2)How difficult will be to migrate the development from a classic environment to unified environment?Will it be a total new development or there is a migration tool?

3)I understand that bpc script is replaced by fox script? Is the fox script ready to use or it will come in future?

4) Will the foxscript be faster than bpc script?

5) Will the reports run faster in unified environment?

Thanks

Senoy

[former_member200327]

Hi Senoy,

I numbered my answers in same order as you asked them.

1) You can't compare Models, but you can compare activities you do on those Models, such as data loads, reports, calculations, etc. Is your client concerned about some particular activity or this is a philosophical question?

2) It depends again what you have developed fro a Model. Some things could be just copy and past, but most of the things will be re-development.

3) FOX existed a long time before BPC script was invented. It didn't change much since than:(.

4) FOX in 10.1 runs mostly in HANA, BPC script runs mostly on App server (this supposed to change in the future). So, again it depends which components you are using.

5) Assuming you managed to keep your new Model almost same as old Model and both run on HANA and use EPM Add-in report performance should be very close.

Regards,

Gersh

[Former Member]

Hello Gersh,

Thanks for your valuable comments.

My Client is on BPC 10 NW and he is planning to migrate it to BPC10.1 Unified or Classic.

He wants Maximum performance and minimum lag.He has many complicated BPC reports which takes lots of time to execute.So he has questions around which environment(classic or unified) to go with? They are doing Consolidation using BCS tool and they continue to do it there.They are planning to move the planning to latest version.

My Client also have questions around on the fly Currency Conversion in BPC without storing them in BPC model? Can it be possible?

Thanks

[Former Member]

Hi Senoy,

The main question is does your client uses BW IP currently? and will you be using consolidation? and will you be using HANA?

If you want to migrate from NW classic to 10.1 Unified that is a totally new implementation.

there is no migration tool for classic to unified.

IP got some existing functions and some of them not available in classic, and vise versa.

Most of the new projects ask this question, there are lots to consider.

Andy

[Former Member]

Hello Andy,

My client has IP and at the same time BCS for consolidation.They have BPC 10 on BW too.They are planning to move to BPC 10.1 on HANA

Thanks

[former_member186338]

Hi Senoy,

As Gersh mentioned the reporting performance will be the same. Data calculation performance is better for FOX compared to script logic today (not sure that you have issues with calculations). But you need BW IP experience to work with Unified model. And Unified model is harder to administrate today compared to Classic.

Vadim

[Former Member]

Ok, then unified will be fine for them.

Just keep in mind that existing classic version need to be re-implemented in unified.

You will see improvements because of HANA.

[Former Member]

Hi,

You are right about the better performance of FOX against Script Logic...

But with both classic or embedded model ( unified now is called embedded ) you can build calculation with SQL stored procedure directly on Hana, which will get better performance at all. This is impressive, it is really really fast with the right approach.

But, right now, embedded model have a lot of problems.

I am on a huge project with embedded model and the integration between EPM and IP is not stable, with a lot of silly errors. The admin is poor and complicated. In my opinion, this version is far from being considered "ready".

Regards,

Samuel Matioli

[Former Member]

Hello All,

Thanks for your inputs.Based on your comments and from other posts, I have noted down the Key Differences between BPC Classic and Unified Version.Please let me know in case I have missed something or needs any correction

Criteria	BPC Classic	BPC Unified
BPC Script	BPC script would be running in Application server and so the performance would be less as compared to Unified Version	Scripting would be in FOX script.This FOX script would run directly on Database Server and so the performance would be good
Reporting	Performance would be good as the data retrieval would be from HANA database	Performance would be good as the data retrieval would be from HANA database
BW IP	You cant use BW IP functionality	BPC Unified will incorporate most of the IP features
Data for Underlying Models	BPC Classic Environment has models which is not tightly integrated with BW	BPC Unified Environment Models can have Actual and Plan data sitting in different cubes and tighly integrated with BW
BW Master Data Access	Not Possible	Unified Version allows real time Data Access to Master data
BW Query Access	Not Possible	It can access BW queries too
HANA service Pack	BW 7.40 SP5 requires HANA SP7, so HANA SP7 is required for BPC 10.1 as well.	BW 7.40 SP5 requires HANA SP7, so HANA SP7 is required for BPC 10.1 as well.
Software component CPMBPC required to be installed?	CPMBPC( as well as HANABPC) is only need to be installed when BPC Classic is to be used	BPC 10.1 Unified is to be used, install SAP_BW is already enough
EPM add-in for BPC 10.1?	EPM add-in 10.0 SP16 onwards	EPM add-in 10.0 SP16 onwards
Can BOBJ Analysis be used in front end office?	No.Only EPM Addin	EPM Addin or BOBJ AO as front end interface
Data Model support?	Based on Account Based Model	Supports Keyfigure Model
Comments	Comment Functionality Available	Comments not Yet Available
Consolidation	Available	Consolidation not Yet Available
Business Rules	Available	Not Available yet
Drill Through Functionality	Available	Not Available yet
Member Formulas	Available	Not Available yet
Journals	Available	Not Available yet
Controls	Available	Not Available yet
User Exits	ABAP User Exits	SQL User exits
FULL Hana Integration	Its not a full HANA Integration	It’s a Full HANA integration
Currency Translation	Possible with Business Rules	Not Possible as Business Rules are not yet configured
Migration to Unified	Migration from Classic to Unified not possible.It would be a fresh Implementation	No need of Migration
Flexibilty Rating	Very Highly Flexible	Medium Flexibilty
Can Classic and Unified be present in the same server	Yes	Yes
Auditing	Can be set at Admin	It has to be done in Backend RSA1 Transaction
BPC Admin	Entire web client has been rebuilt with HTML5 technology	Entire web client has been rebuilt with HTML5 technology
Language Support	Both Hebrew and Arabic language are supported with BPC 10.1 in web interface and EPM add-in.	Both Hebrew and Arabic language are supported with BPC 10.1 in web interface and EPM add-in.
Owner	Business Owned	IT owned

[gregor_dieckmann]

Hi Senoy,

your table is hard to read. I think this kind of 'feature' comparison is a misleading since you can compile a list from BPC point of view and from BW point of view; and always a lot of things are missing. This is misleading in the sense that 'features' might be missing, but in fact just have other names.

In my opinion one should compare concepts; in the end one has to solve technical and business problems. It is obvious that having different engines (BPC standard use mostly concepts coming from the MDX world and BPC embedded is based on BW concepts) you might get different solutions for the same problem.

BW developments was driven by the big companies thus you got a solution controlled by the IT; BPC NW development was driven by LOB, so it is a data mart on top of BW. The idea of BPC embedded is now to bring these two worlds closer together without paying the 'price' of the data mart. In addition, LOB enablement should not be lost.

This price is coming from the completely different data models in BW and BPC standard and thus one has to copy a lot of meta data and transaction data from BW to BPC standard (and vice versa), simply because in BPC standard another engine is used that does not understand BW concepts. This forum is full of examples.

The first step on this long road of better intergation is BPC embedded; there you can use reuse everything from BW since the BW-IP engine is used, not MDX. So the copy stuff goes away. In addition you can use BPC concepts like work status and BPFs. EPM Add-In has to 'learn' BW queries and this takes some time. In addition AO and Design Studio can be used as well.

The next steps will be BPC admin client enhancements in the area of master data maintenance with respect to BW master data and LOB versions of BW master data (extension concept, no copy!). More information about these topics will be available soon. And then we should also integrate more BW-IP modeling in the BPC admin client (aggregation level, planning functions, ...).

With respect to the feature list I also have some remarks:

'Account versus key figure model':

BW supports both models and anything in between. Observe that BW is used as the data warehouse that has to support everything back to 'old R/3' times and the Business Suite; there you can find account and key figure models as well. The real difference is that in BPC standard one can have 'calculated accounts' as master data (not base members) and this is against the BW design of master data. In BW one uses hierarchies and mostly structure elements in BW queries for this purpose; i.e. 'calculations' are modeled in BW queries, not in master data.

Currency translation:

Of course, BW-IP and thus BPC embedded supports this; there is a planning function type for currency translation and one can do this even on the fly in BW queries. Same with unit conversion. This is again an example where BPC standard and BW concepts are different; BPC standard simply does not use the BW infrastructure (unit dimension in BW InfoCubes for example)  but uses another concept (master data attributes, rate cubes).

Extension concepts:

Also BPC standard and BW have many extension techniques, in BPC standard mostly based on BAPIs, in BW (since it is much older) one can find BAPIs, exit classes and not to forget the variables concept. In BW one has the full world of InfoProviders available, so some requirements maybe solved simply using another InfoProvider type where in another solution one has to implement BAPIs.

And the nice thing with BPC standard and embedded is you get both worlds in one product; so there is no pressure to do either this or that. If a data mart is ok, use BPC standard. If you also need somthing in between IT and LOB BPC embedded can be an option. This is a developer forum, not a marketing forum. Remember: 'There is not silver bullet'.

Regards,

Gregor

[former_member200327]

Hi Senoy,

I doubt that your customer will be able to make any decision based on such broad range of criteria. You have to narrow it down to those that are relevant to your customer.

And you can always prove your point by selecting a right set of criteria, you just have to know what point you want to prove.

Regards,

Gersh

[Former Member]

Hello Gersh,

Thanks for the suggestion.My Client has certain pain areas which we have to address in BPC 10.1 and propose a solution either in BPC 10.1 classic or 10.1 Unified Environment.I am planning to provide the advantages and disadvantages of each of the two environment in addressing their pain areas.

1) On the Fly Currency Translation at the report without storing the translated values in BPC model-I know that we can do this in Unified Environment easily by using BW queries for on the fly currency translation.But can we do currency translation on the fly in Classic Environment based models too?

2)Predictive Analytics in BPC- I am not sure whether we can provide predictive analytics in BPC-Please let me know if its possible

3)Planning on few dimensions but Reporting on many dimensions which may not be in the model-I thought of drill through functionality for this Purpose.But Client is expecting all the dimensions(Dimensions which are there in the model and other dimensions which are not present in the model) in the same report.I thought of having other dimensions which are not present in the model to be present as properties of existing dimension.But is there any other good solution for the same?

4)Their existing BPC 10 NW Report performance is very poor as their existing vendor has been using many macros an VB code-I understand that Reporting performance would be almost same in Unified as well as classic environment.BPC On Hana can surely increase the reporting performance but I would like to know whether Business Objects Analytic tool on Unified environment can reduce their Macros or VB code?

5) They also want to use their existing BCS for consolidation-If BCS is used for Consolidation, then can BCS be migrated easily to HANA as Furure BPC 10.1 would also be in HANA

Thanks

[Former Member]

Hi,

I am on a project on BPC 10.1 and the main motivation to base it on embedded is that SAP indicated the embedded as the priority for the future. Thinking this way, focusing on a long term solution, the customer decided to use embedded model as a premise to the project.

As said before, there are good things and bad things. Till now, the decision of use embedded brought more difficulties than advantages to the project, comparing to a normal BPC implementation.

More than technical aspects, the driver for the decision was the priority that embedded/unified will have against classic/standard BPC...

Regards,

Samuel Matioli

[Former Member]

Hi Samuel:

I m just starting a bpc 10.1 project (planning and consolidation) and I was wondering if you can share your learned lessons with this new technology so far.

Regards

mah

[sap_user62]

Hello,

Check this link, It talks about the speed of Fox code vs Script logic

How to... Use SQLScript for Planning Functions ... | SCN

This could be a starting point

Thanks

Ed.