
28 SAP BW and DB2
2.5 Extended star schema (InfoCubes)
SAP uses an extended star schema in defining and creating InfoCubes. It
contains two types of data used in analysis:
Key figures: Sales revenue, fixed costs, sales quantity, or number of
employees, etc.
Characteristics: Customer type, fiscal year, period, or region are some
examples. Characteristics are used to create evaluation groups for analysis.
The underlying InfoObjects that make up an InfoCube are categorized in terms of
these two types of data. That is, a given InfoObject represents either key figures
or characteristics. A third type of InfoObject,
attributes, contains metadata ...