PCM and Web Intelligence

[Former Member]

Hi there.

The documentation indicates PCM is compatible with WEBI 3.1, however, it's a little ambiguous surrounding WEBI 4.1.

Is it supported?

The documentation also indicates that you can connect PCM to BW OLAP cubes to extract data, however, does it support extraction through queries?  I've seen a couple comments in the documentation which seem to indicate this is a possibility.

Thank very much!

G from Canada

[former_member285534]

Hi G,

Please let me know if the reply was helpful.  If it was I'll appreciate that you mark it correct or helpful.

Thank you very much !

Fernando

[former_member285534]

Hi Gary,

I successfully connected Webi 4.0 to PCM 10.0 about 2 years ago so I would almost surely affirm that 4.1 is supported.

Besides using BW as an intermediate component, there are at least 2 less complex ways to achieve your goal:

1. Use the OLAP MDX XMLA Connector

This option allows you to exploit your pcm models as a multidimensional source in Webi and OLAP-enabled BO apps. After configuring the connector, you create an OLAP connection with IDT.  Then a multidimensional universe is easily created (automatically) and that's all the work you need to do before you can create your webi's mdx queries.  The problem is configuring the connector:  there is little or no documentation on how to do so.  Another drawback is that the connector is not stable with heavy data requests.

Please refer to:

SAP BusinessObjects Profitability and Cost Management MDX Connector Guide (pcm_10_mdx_en)

2. Connect directly to the underlying PCM's DBMS

Here you would have to establish a relational connection to the PCM's database (for example Oracle) and build a relational universe upon, so that you can exploit the PCM data tables directly.

PCM's model's data and metadata are stored in "structural tables".  They are transactional oriented so they wouldn't be the most suitable for BI purposes. Instead you can use a set of tables called the "result tables" that pcm provides for analysis purposes.  They are not populated automatically.  To do so, you have to run the PCM's process "Export to Universe".

I also remember that SAP provides a pre-built 3.x PCM universe.  I tried to use it but I remember it was very complex and poor-performant, so I better decided to invest some time understanding the underlying relational model and then I built my own simplified universe, modeling and exploiting only the features that I needed.

Hope you find this helpful

😃

Fernando

[Former Member]

Hi Gary,

I have the same question regarding WebI. As for BW connnection, you should have a look at the LSDAL executable in the PCM installation folder. With it you can connect to NW system (not sure about the query capacity though).