DXC w/ Sidecar vs. BW on HANA

[Former Member]

I'm traditional BW consultant trying to understand HANA technologies. My question is specifically concerned regarding separate ECC and separate BW on HANA installations....

I read about DXC w/ sidecar approach where we can use separate BW box to route datasource data to HANA. This is also possible with BW on HANA where BW on HANA data source activation queue gets redirected to In memory DSO.

How is this different than just having regular data sources in BW on HANA and then load data from data sources to In memory DSOs? I don't think there's any performance increase while loading data with DXC into BW on HANA.....So why take so much pain configuring DXC if you already have BW on HANA with established ALE IDOC connections between ECC and BW....

[lbreddemann · Accepted solution]

Abhijeet,

I'm not too sure why you see configuring DXC as painful - I experienced it rather straight forward even when it was really new.

Key for DXC is to be able to leverage the already present BW extractors even if you don't use BW on HANA (e.g. when doing a side-car approach).

Maybe you don't want to replicate all your operational data into HANA and then build models on top of it just to mimic the application logic, that has already been implemented years ago in the extractors.

That's where DXC provides an option to just read from the extractor interface.

Nobody says: "Go and use DXC, no matter what!"

It's just a feature that has it's use cases and you can choose whether it fits.

- Lars

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Great...that helps..

[Former Member]

Thanks Rama for more info.

With BW in existence for so many years; I believe most fortune 1000 companies (and other big customers); who have implemented ECC..most likely have implemented BW too....At those customers, moving BW on HANA (migrating DSOs, cubes), with existing setup of extractors will make more sense; than venturing into DXC. Most established SAP shops will most likely have ECC -> BW setup.

DXC should be useful if HANA is stand alone or no BW at all.

For new extractors also, continuing existing ALE/IDOC methods, putting data into in-memory-DSO and may be directly reporting off it; could be meaningful.

Correct me if i'm wrong.

Thanks.

[former_member184768]

Hi Abhijeet,

I think you are right. For the customers having BW already implemented, it makes sense to go for BW on HANA and they would prefer to use the existing extraction mechanism (extractors, DB connect etc). Also it preserves the investment in the development of the ETL and business logic implementation / customization and still enable them to utilize the power of HANA.

Also one point to keep in mind, BW on HANA can be enabled on Platform edition whereas for DXC you need Enterprise edition. There is a lot of cost difference between these two editions.

Hence in my opinion, it is better to go with BW on HANA using the standard extractors and keeping the total cost low.

Regards,

Ravi

[rama_shankar3]

Abhijeet,

From a techincal perspective you are right.

  However, there is a financial perspective. Even big corporations have become very calculative on IT investments. HANA is a Big investment for any company. If I wear my IT leadership hat  and if scenarios demand - I would prefer to   wait for  HANA DB for ECC to stabilize and  migrate my ECC to HANA instead of migrating BW to HANA unless there is a business need to boost BW report performance right away.  This is just my opinion.

Regards,

Rama

[Former Member]

Thanks Rama...

If you have heavy investment in BW (which most fortune 1000 companies have), they want to protect it (or atleast get good ROI in coming years). If you are moving to HANA on ECC, then existing BW investment has no future/improvements. Besides new investment in ETL for HANA (whatever models, etc) will be needed...

I think SAP came up with BW on HANA only to protect existing huge investment in BW. But as they say, for new data marts/extractors, there will be scenarios, where we can report everything off DSOs and no new cubes will be necessary.

So in reality, 10 years from now...HANA on ECC stabilized...much improvised modelling... who knows BW may be really obsolete (thought they say..its not going to be)....No new customers buying BW..only HANA on ECC and BOBJ...

@Lars Breddemann....Comments welcome!!

[rama_shankar3]

Abhijeet:

   The key drivers to decision making on whether HANA on BW or HANA on ECC will depend on  each indivdual corporation's a - IT management culture (one Big Bang implementation vs. piece meal approach) b- short term vs. long-term IT strategy alligned with business needs and nature of business, etc..

  I am shortly going to write a blog on this topic that will benefit technical folks like us.

Regards,

Rama

[former_member184768]

.. Nice thought

" So in reality, 10 years from now...HANA on ECC stabilized...much improvised modelling... who knows BW may be really obsolete (thought they say..its not going to be)....No new customers buying BW..only HANA on ECC and BOBJ... "

But in my opinion, very unlikely to happen. As for any large organization, ECC is not the only Transactional system. Even for ERP, not every company will implement only SAP ERP. There would be other ERP systems for local low cost markets or divisions. So you cannot say that your entire organization Analytical reporting can be done over ECC on HANA (no matter how faster and efficient it would get).

Secondly there would always be a difference between the DW system and Transaction system. Though the gap will reduce considerable, but it cannot be eliminated.

Hence from the perspective of integrating Non SAP source data, Historical information, Data life cycle management perspective SAP BW / Data warehousing system will continue.

So customers will buy BW, which may also come closer to Standalone HANA modeling and life will go on.. 

Regards,

Ravi

[former_member672336]

HI Abhijeet,

I agree Ravindhra Comments, But what I have in mind that having with Platform edition, we can have both ECC on HANA as well BW powered by HANA by doing BW technical upgrade to 7.3 (BW on HANA), hope it would be meaningful since still there are most of the companies keeping ECC as well BW as a seperate box for different aspect...in this scenario, the customer who has already spent for platform edition can go with this two options(here ECC can connect HANA with BODS as platform edition).  please confirm.

[rama_shankar3]

Configuring DXC is not a pain. If you have DXC configured, you do not need a separate BW instance. DXC runs within the ECC instance. DXC in short is a 

data extraction interface that  enables SAP ECC data extraction on near real-time basis using SAP BW extractors (aka data sources or business content extractors ) available within SAP ECC without the need for SLT or Data Services directly into SAP HANA. A standalone BW system is not required

Regards,

Rama

[Former Member]

Any BW on HANA experts?? This is fundamental one..