Where do I find additional information on mySAP BI pricing?

If you have questions on pricing please contact SAP's product marketing organization. top

What does the Open Hub Service provide that third-party extraction tools do not provide?
The Open Hub Service is one specific functionality out of the Open Hub suite of techniques that provides access to nearly any kind of operational data stored persistently within SAP BW. As the meta object for this extraction technique, so-called InfoSpokes define the entire process of data extraction out of BW. Master data from master data tables, data from ODS Objects, data out of complex InfoCubes enhanced with Navigational Attributes, delta mechanisms for extraction, involvement in process chains, and so on - all these features can be driven easily via InfoSpokes. Scheduling and monitoring are implemented in BW on the high quality standards to which BW users are accustomed. The data is extracted in a well-understood denormalized format. Flat files are explained via additional flatfiles with meta data descriptions. top

Some technical questions about the Open Hub Service.

Is it possible to work with variables as selection criteria during InfoSpoke definition? Unfortunately not at the current moment. In this case BADIs probably can help to reduce the volume of the data that has to be transferred. The extraction process itself can only be driven via static selection criteria. Any hints concerning performance issues? For extraction, the same interface is used as for Data Marts in BW. Thus the read performance should be comparable to Data Mart scenarios. For writing into particular destinations, no key statistics are available so far. But loading data to the local PC is definitely not supported for mass data scenarios. Problems with the number of key fields when extracting into a DB Table via InfoSpoke. With SP09 onwards it will be possible to define a technical key for DB Tables that are generated via an InfoSpoke definition. In this case the number of characteristics for the extract table is not restricted any more. Up to SP09 any characteristic used during the InfoSpoke definition will be marked as a key field in the DDIC description for this table. The number of key fields in a DB table is normaly restricted by 16.

Can self defined DB Tables be used as a target table for an InfoSpoke? Target DB tables for InfoSpokes can only be generated via the InfoSpoke maintenance and activation. The DB table always resides on the underlying default database of the BW system. Are InfoSpoke BAPIs available in order to trigger data extractions via InfoSpokes from outside? No BAPIs are available so far. It is possible to involve InfoSpokes into BW process chains. Process chains can be triggered from outside via a BAPI in order to launche an InfoSpoke. A follow up step in this process chain can then be an ABAP Report that will hand over the extracted data to any other target. Can Hierarchies be extracted out of BW via InfoSpokes? Unfortunately not at the current moment. This is planned for the next release. top