Time characteristic in Real time cube?

[Former Member]

Why is it necessary to have a time characteristic in real time cube?

[satish_waghmare3 · Accepted solution]

Hi Abhinav,

As SAP help says, Real-time InfoCubes differ from standard InfoCubes in their ability to support parallel write accesses. Standard InfoCubes are technically optimized for read accesses to the detriment of write accesses.

Based on my understanding, Dimensions (Geography/Product/Time) are added into infocube to allow grouping of characteristics according to different business perspectives. Time Dimension(Characteristics) are added automatically into the cube(CALDAY, CALWEEK, CALMONTH, CALYEAR etc). Any data which is loaded into infocube will represent specific time period in the past or future. Time Dimension becomes essential.  Also besides time characteristics, units, and data packets gets added into cube automatically too.

Regardless of Type of the info cube, (Basic, Transaction, Remote ) use of Time Dimension is the same.

Real-Time InfoCubes - Business Intelligence - SAP Library

FYI - It is more likely to get better answers in below forum dedicated for all BI Stuff.

http://scn.sap.com/community/data-warehousing

Hope this will help.

Thank you

Satish Waghmare

[Former Member]

Good question Abhinav,

As you probably know, Real-time InfoCubes are used when creating planning data (usually). Planning data is time-phased e.g. one might have Forecast for the future 13 weeks for which one would plan supply etc. This is the reason for the need for a time-dimension in a Real-time IC.

However, there is no technical restriction that I know off. And the reason could be that Real-time cube can be used for non-planning uses too .

Hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Venu

[Former Member]

Hi,

When you refered to "Real Time Cube" Were you talking about Virtual Cubes o Transactional Cubes? I mean.... in Virtual Cubes you can get data at report runtime. In Transactional Cubes you have to load data previously or entry records at runtime, but you can't load data at runtime. I think most of the Planning funtionality should be covered by APO and not by Transactional Cubes (using BPS or IP).

Even though Time Dimension Characteristics are not mandatory in Transactional Cubes, It's recommended to use them because you will load / entry data with that kind of characteristic.

Hope this helps you.

Regards,

Xavi.