2073519 - IBM i: Support for flat InfoCubes for BW for DB2 for IBM i

Symptom

You want to use the technical possibilities of flat InfoCubes in your SAP BW system.

Other Terms

AS400, OS400, iSeries, flat InfoCube, BW, Business Warehouse, EVI, encoded vector index

Reason and Prerequisites

You use an SAP system with the SAP_BW component in SAP Release 7.40 SP09 or higher.

Solution

Import the Support Package SAP_BW 7.40 SP13

• SAP BW 7.40
  
  Import Support Package 13 for SAP BW 7.40 (SAPKW74013) into your BW system. The Support Package is available once SAP Note 2176288 ("SAPBWNews NW BW 7.40 ABAP SP 13"), which describes this Support Package in more detail, has been released for customers.

In urgent cases, you can implement the correction instructions relevant for your release. Before you implement the correction instructions that are relevant for your release, read SAP Note 1668882 that contains information about transaction SNOTE. This SAP Note may already be available before the Support Package is released.
If your SAP system has not yet been updated to Support Package 13 or cannot be updated, implement the correction instructions provided in this SAP Note. They contain corrections and enhancements for supporting flat InfoCubes on the database DB2 for IBM i. The minimum patch level for the SAP component SAP_BW is also 7.40 SP09 in this case. You must also download and implement all referenced SAP Notes for your currently valid version. You then have the possibility to convert existing InfoCubes from the star schema to the flat schema and back.
We also recommend implementing the current version of SAP Note 1999462. This SAP Note is updated regularly.
Additional activities
Direct support for flat InfoCubes by the BW user interface is activated in the SAP GUI through a parameter in the table RSADMIN. Use the ABAP report SAP_RSADMIN_MAINTAIN to maintain this table. Add the following value combination and then restart the BW-relevant transactions (such as RSA1):

OBJECT = FLAT_CUBE_UI
VALUE  = X

You can then continue the conversion routines in transaction RSA1 (in the view "Modeling" -> "Infoprovider"), using the context menu of the InfoCube to be converted. To do so, open the context menu and choose "Additional Functions" -> "Repartitioning". In the window that is then displayed, you see two new processing options for the conversion of InfoCubes. Due to the generally long runtimes, the conversion is carried out in batch mode. After the initialization of the requests, you can enter an appropriate start time for the conversion. The InfoCube remains locked during the conversion. You can use the "Monitor" button to track the progress of the process.
Current limits
At the moment, there is a limitation in connection with the conversion of flat InfoCubes. A maximum of 100 indexes can be created in one fact table. For flat InfoCubes, an index is created for the respective table field for each characteristic. If more than 99 characteristics are defined for an InfoCube, the required indexes cannot all be created. The conversion of these InfoCubes may be carried out in principle, however, performance will not be optimal because indexes are missing. As soon as the source code to increase this limit is available, this SAP Note will be updated.

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|Manual Activity                                                       |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|VALID FOR                                                             |
|Software Component   SAP_BW                        Business Inform...|
| Release 740          SAPKW74009 - SAPKW74012                         |
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Caution: You have to perform this manual activity separately in each system into which you transport the Note for implementation.

Create the following parameter in the RSADMIN table with the SAP_RSADMIN_MAINTAIN (use transaction SE38):

FLAT_CUBE_UI = 'X'



Create the following messages in the message class DBMAN using transaction SE91:

756: Flat InfoCubes not supported. See SAP Note 2073519.
757: Flat InfoCubes not supported for real-time cubes. See SAP Note 2073519.