Mastering the SAP Business Information Warehouse: Leveraging the Business Intelligence Capabilities of SAP NetWeaver, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 8Information Presentation

The old saying that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink is particularly apropos when discussing business intelligence presentation tools. Information access and presentation is often the center of great debate and controversy. Even if a tool delivers the right information to the right user at the right time, there is no guarantee that the user will use the tool. No single information-access tool can satisfy an organization’s (or even an individual’s) requirements. It is not uncommon for each department to insist on using a particular tool because of its unique requirements. SAP BI has and supports a broad range of presentation and access tools that turn data into information and deliver it to the desired consumer.

This chapter highlights the main capabilities provided in NetWeaver BI that retrieve data, turn it into meaningful business information, and deliver that information to an information consumer. The chapter has been organized into two main sections: one on the Business Explorer suite of tools and one on common functions across the tool set. If you have not read Chapter 7, now would be a good time to at least read the section titled “Query Processing Overview.”

BEx Presentation Components

The Business Explorer (BEx) has come a long way since its first incarnation as an Excel add-in that provided access to information stored in SAP BW. It has evolved into a suite of independent tools that supports a wide range of ...