This book is your A-to-Z guide to understanding, setting up, and operating the SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator. After summarizing the BI Accelerator's concept and reviewing its overall functionality and architecture, the author provides detailed insights on all regular and advanced administrative tasks. Volumes of technical background information and in-depth customer examples serve to round out this indispensible resource.

1 Purpose and Architecture
Learn about the business case and technical challenges the BI accelerator tackles and understand the TREX engine's architecture.

2 Basic Administration
Become familiar with all standard administrative tasks such as set-up and configuration, building and maintaining indexes, cloning the software onto new blades, updating the TREX engine, etc.

3 Advanced Administration
Benefit from extensive coverage of special tasks and optimization measures, including repairing the RFC connection, reorganizing the index landscape, checking and rebuilding indexes, recovering the system from a backup, and tracing.

4 Technical Details
Learn about the metamodel for indexes and how queries are executed, and get an understanding of vertical decomposition, parallelization, and smart compression.

5 Your Definitive Guide to Administration
Numerous screenshots, detailed instructions, and real-life customer examples make this book the one-stop resource for all BI administrators.

Highlights

• Technical and business challenges
• The TREX engine
• Administration transactions
• Standard and advanced administration
• Technical background information

About the Author(s)

At SAP, J. Andrew Ross has participated in the development of the accelerator from its conception in 2004. He has held numerous lectures and workshops on the accelerator and created several iterations of online learning materials introducing it to both business and technical audiences.

Table of Contents

1 ... Introduction ... 9

2 ... Impact ... 17
... 2.1 ... The Platform Revolution ... 20
... 2.2 ... Business Impact ... 23
... 2.3 ... Technical Impact ... 36
... 2.4 ... Summary ... 43

3 ... Architecture ... 45
... 3.1 ... The Appliance: TREX Engine Inside ... 47
... 3.2 ... Availability ... 57
... 3.3 ... Scalability ... 68
... 3.4 ... Minimized Administration ... 73
... 3.5 ... Summary ... 73

4 ... Administration ... 75
... 4.1 ... Main Administration Transactions ... 77
... 4.2 ... Initial Tasks ... 88
... 4.3 ... Regular Tasks ... 121
... 4.4 ... Occasional Tasks ... 127
... 4.5 ... Summary ... 131

5 ... Advanced Administration ... 133
... 5.1 ... The TREX Standalone Administration Tool ... 133
... 5.2 ... Exceptional Tasks ... 137
... 5.3 ... Optimization Tasks ... 163
... 5.4 ... Collaborative Tasks ... 183
... 5.5 ... Summary ... 199

6 ... Success Stories ... 201
... 6.1 ... Scalability: Project Jupiter ... 201
... 6.2 ... Colgate-Palmolive Company ... 205
... 6.3 ... Bayer AG ... 209
... 6.4 ... German Defense Forces ... 210
... 6.5 ... T-Mobile UK ... 211
... 6.6 ... Rabobank Group ... 212
... 6.7 ... Kimberly-Clark Corporation ... 213
... 6.8 ... WACKER Group ... 215
... 6.9 ... Summary ... 216

7 ... Technical Details ... 219
... 7.1 ... Vertical Decomposition ... 219
... 7.2 ... Parallelization ... 221
... 7.3 ... Smart Compression ... 223
... 7.4 ... SAP NetWeaver BI InfoCubes ... 227
... 7.5 ... BIA Indexes ... 229
... 7.6 ... Query Execution ... 233
... 7.7 ... Deploying the Accelerator ... 236
... 7.8 ... Summary ... 238

8 ... References ... 239

A ... Glossary ... 243

B ... The Author ... 253