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Former Member
January 22, 2014 | 5 minute read

Composite Providers with BW on

HANA for Efficient data modelling
 34  45  122,819
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By this time most of you would have come across the term composite providers
 Like w.r.to BW systems on HANA. This paper takes a deeper look at this new type of Info
provider and also looks at how modelling scenarios that previously were time
consuming could be made easily, in lesser time and also make use of the Calculation
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engine of HANA to its best. This paper does not focus on the steps to be followed for
creating a composite provider.

Composite Provider:

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A Composite Provider is an Info Provider, which combines data from several analytic
indexes or from other Info Providers (by Join or Union), and makes this data
available for reporting and analysis. UNION and JOIN operations are executed in
HANA and not the application server. BEx Queries can be created on Composite
Providers as on any other BW Info Provider. This is done in transaction RSLIMOBW.

The main advantage of Composite providers is that: BW Info Providers can be

combined using the JOIN operation allowing us to create new scenarios not possible
or very expensive with standard techniques (Multiprovider, InfoSet).

When we hear the word Union, what strikes our mind immediately is a Multi
provider. SAP Still suggests the usage of Multiprovider in case your requirement is
just to use Unions. This is because the OLAP engine is well suited for this operation.

Composite providers however can be used on top of Multiproviders to execute Join

operations with Multiprovider as one of the data providers. This gives us additional
flexibility and even one additional level of modelling thus allowing us to create new
scenarios that were not possible before.

For information on how to create Composite providers using RSLIMOBW refer to

help.sap.com.

Having seen the definition and some of the benefits of Composite providers its time
that we jump into some real modelling scenario to see its real benefit.

Modeling Scenario:

Most  or almost all of us would have come across this typical scenario of building
cubes in our projects. A cube is created as a final destination for source data. This
cube is loaded from several DSOs containing transaction data and during the loading
there are several lookups written inorder to fetch master data attributes from other
DSOs and load them in the cube.

Regular Modeling Scenario – An example :

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Let us take an example of a simple cube. Let us assume that the cube is used for
tracking sales information based on customer data and also based on the product
sold. So for the report to have slice and dice capabilities we would need to have all
the attributes of Customer as well as Product to be a part of the cube. This is not
required in case the attributes are not required historically. Where we can use them
as Navigational attributes. For example, to track sales of a city (an attribute of
customer) for a month, and to see its trend in the past, it would make sense to have
city as a part of the cube and lookup and populate city every month from customer
master, when data is loaded to the cube. This prevents a customer from being left
out if his City was changed historically. Similarly, we also have product attributes like
Product Category, Product Group etc.

A typical data model for the scenario described above would look like the following:

This scenario depicted above is just an example considering one source DSO, In real-
time, the number of DSOs loading to a cube is usually more than one and also the
number of look-ups performed can be more than what is depicted here.

In this typical way, we not only store the same information of the DSOs in an
aggregated form in the cube, but also add additional attributes added to the

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transaction data and stored again in the cubes.

An addition of new characteristic to the cube which requires look-up from one of
these DSOs would be a herculean task,  as the new characteristic has to be added
to the cube and all the impacted transformations, DTPs would have to be
transported again with precision. The characteristic would then have to be added
to the Multiprovider to be made available in the reports. And on top of this a
reload of history is required in case an attribute is required historically.
AlthoughSAP has provided a new rule type in the transformation called the “Read
DSO data” in the transformation, this would only help us in avoiding the ABAP
part of the look-up but not in reducing the effort taken for changes and the
expenses.

Modeling Scenario using Composite Provider:

With the new Composite provider it is possible to realize the dream of storing the
same data only once at least for this scenario. The following case shows how we can
model the same scenario using a composite provider and thus make use of the
calculation capabilities of HANA DB.

In transaction RSLIMOBW, we create a Composite provider that uses the 3 Data

store objects, Sales Transaction, Customer Master and Product Master as shown
below.

How this works:

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The Sales transaction DSO is taken in the Composite Provider with Binding Type
“Union”. By default there should be at least one Info provider of type Union in
the Composite provider.
The fields of Sales Transaction DSO are dragged into the Central Composite
Provider.
The Customer Master and the Product Master DSO are added to the Composite
provider with the binding type “Join”.
Master data fields required in the composite provider are dragged and dropped
into the composite provider. (These are the fields for which look-ups were
written in the original scenario).
The fields Customer number and Calmonth are used as Join fields and a join
condition is drawn between the Sales DSO and the Customer Master.
Similarly Product number and Calmonth are joined from the Product DSO with
the composite provider.
In this way, the composite provider will contain all the records present in the
Sales transaction DSO with the corresponding attributes filled based on the
Calendar Month.
The Joins and Unions are executed at the query execution time. UNION and JOIN
operations are executed in HANA DB.
Note that SID generation option should be checked in the DSO for it to be
available as a data provider for Composite provider.

Advantages:

Development time & Cost:

Using this approach, a lot of time taken to develop look-ups and maintain
complex data models is saved.
Addition of a new attribute (changes) to cubes, which required changing a
lot of objects in the earlier scenario is very simple now. The only place
where the attribute need to be added is in the source DSO (Master DSO)
and in the composite provider Maintenance).

Loading time:
The time taken for loading huge amounts of data through several layers
(staging and further) in BW is reduced as the Composite providers can be
modeled using the DSOs in the EDW layer itself.
The time taken for performing look-ups to derive attributes is also saved
during loading.

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DB Size:
A lot of DB –space is saved since we only store information once and use it
at different places instead of executing a lookup and storing them every
time in the cube.

Flexibility:
Further to what is shown above and as in the case with most of the real
time systems, not just one DSO loads to a cube. In that case, a Multiprovider
is created on top of these DSOs can also be used in the Composite provider
to deliver the desired results.

Conclusion:

With the new Composite provider and SAP BW on HANA there are numerous
capabilities that can be explored to save time and cost for your company. In each
case it is good to evaluate these possibilities and make a wise decision.

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34 Comments

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Former Member
January 22, 2014 at 11:15 pm

Thanks for sharing the views

Like 0 | Share

Former Member
January 23, 2014 at 3:04 pm

Hi Ram,

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/01/22/composite-providers-with-bw-on-hana-for-efficient-data-modelling/ 7/18
8/17/23, 3:26 PM Composite Providers with BW on HANA for Efficient data modelling | SAP Blogs

Excellent illustration !!

Like 0 | Share

Kodanda Pani KV
January 24, 2014 at 3:53 am

Very good document about composite provider

Thanks,

Phani.

Like 0 | Share

Stefan Hoffmann
January 24, 2014 at 2:23 pm

Very good.

In case you want to integrate external data in BW with Smart Data Access please see document
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-50504, as that topic is closely related to the Composite Provider topic.

regards

STefan

Like 0 | Share

Former Member
January 29, 2014 at 3:34 pm

Very usefull and very clear information.

Thanks for sharing.

Regards

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/01/22/composite-providers-with-bw-on-hana-for-efficient-data-modelling/ 8/18
8/17/23, 3:26 PM Composite Providers with BW on HANA for Efficient data modelling | SAP Blogs

Jürgen

Like 0 | Share

prabhith prabhakaran
February 4, 2014 at 2:27 pm

Good one, Ram...

BR

Prabhith

Like 0 | Share

Former Member
February 14, 2014 at 4:31 pm

Hi Ram,

Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Very helpful.

-Eashwar

Like 0 | Share

Stefan Hoffmann
February 17, 2014 at 8:59 am

Hello,

I published a document in which the BW 7.4 on HANA based CompositeProvider is described. Please have a
look at SAP First Guidance – SAP NetWeaver BW 7.4... | SCN.

regards

Stefan

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Like 0 | Share

Pradip Nikam
February 19, 2014 at 1:30 pm

Very good document...

R/-

Pradip

Like 0 | Share

Pradip Nikam
February 19, 2014 at 1:31 pm

very good.. informative

Like 0 | Share

Benedict Venmani Felix

March 11, 2014 at 2:57 pm

Excellent document Ram. Quite extensive with explanation involving a real-time scenario.

Benedict

Like 0 | Share

Ashok Babu Kumili

March 12, 2014 at 4:17 am

Hello Srinivasan,

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/01/22/composite-providers-with-bw-on-hana-for-efficient-data-modelling/ 10/18
8/17/23, 3:26 PM Composite Providers with BW on HANA for Efficient data modelling | SAP Blogs

Perfect document to understand the basic concepts of  "Composite Info provider". Very nicely written articles.
Thanks for the examples used.. I learnt the key views. It has been summarized very nicely

Like 0 | Share

abilash n
March 12, 2014 at 2:06 pm

Very nicely presented blog . Thanks for sharing....

I had bookmarked to refer while thinking about Composite provider ..

Like 0 | Share

Ramakrishnan Azhagappan
April 3, 2014 at 2:16 pm

Hello Ram,

This is an excellent content.

I Think there is a typo error please correct if am wrong. Instead of "Sales DSO" it should be "Composite
Provider". Also I could see the TCode for creating a Composite Provider RSLIMOBW here, but in help.sap it is
RSLIMO. Is these transactions depicts the same or what. Thanks for the clarification.

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Like 0 | Share

Former Member
January 4, 2015 at 11:31 pm

RSLIMO is used to create Rapid Prototype models to combine Transient Providers based on Analytic
Index or HANA models.

RSLIMOBW is used to create JOINS between BW Infoproviders to develop new scenarios which
otherwise is very expensive with standard methods using Infoset or Multiprovider.

Like 1 | Share

Former Member
June 12, 2014 at 3:44 am

this is very nice content,thank  you .

Like 0 | Share

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/01/22/composite-providers-with-bw-on-hana-for-efficient-data-modelling/ 12/18
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Former Member
July 10, 2014 at 3:23 pm

Very helpful, love the doc.

Thank you!

Like 0 | Share

Former Member
September 10, 2014 at 8:42 am

This is really appreciating document.Thanks for sharing. .

Like 0 | Share

Ian Barrow
December 30, 2014 at 11:56 am

What is your opinion of joining the master data directly in the Composite Provider rather than a master data
DSO?

Like 0 | Share

Former Member
January 4, 2015 at 11:21 pm

Valid question. One that came to my mind whilst reading this document. However I would believe you
could use InfoObjects, to replace the master data DSO's, as a Infoobject is a BW Infoprovider too.

I am thinking, maybe in this example a DSO is used to include Calendar month (derived from ERDAT)
in the Key Fields to maintain history, which otherwise is not posssible with an InfoObject which has an
OVERWRITE behaviour.

Correct me if I am wrong.

Like 1 | Share

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/01/22/composite-providers-with-bw-on-hana-for-efficient-data-modelling/ 13/18
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Former Member
January 4, 2015 at 11:30 pm

A very informative article and excellent example to demonstrate this concept.

I have a question: In the above example - what type of link is City, Customer-Segment, Customer Sub-
Segment from the Customer master DSO and Product Sub-Category from the Product master DSO to the
Sales data? Is it a Join ?

Like 0 | Share

Shyamala Valeti
January 7, 2015 at 10:27 am

Hi,

A very useful and informative article.

Thanks,

Shyamala

Like 0 | Share

Antony Jerald J
January 21, 2015 at 7:37 am

Hi,

Thanks for sharing.  Really useful.

Is it possible to write some conditions on Composite Providers?  If so, can you please tell me how to write conditions on
Composite providers and what all the conditions we can write?

Regards,

Antony Jerald.

Like 0 | Share

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Former Member
January 27, 2015 at 11:40 am

I have created my Local Composite Provider but I do not see it is BEX Query Designer. Is there a setting to
make the Composite Provider visible in BEX Query Designer?

Regards,

Sandy

Like 0 | Share

Tharun Kumar K C
April 9, 2015 at 9:24 am

Very useful article . thanks

Like 0 | Share

Former Member
March 17, 2016 at 5:50 pm

Simple and Precise....

Like 0 | Share

Ganesh Bothe
March 17, 2016 at 7:12 pm

Useful blog. Thanks for sharing .

Like 0 | Share

Saravanan A
April 1, 2016 at 6:48 am

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/01/22/composite-providers-with-bw-on-hana-for-efficient-data-modelling/ 15/18
8/17/23, 3:26 PM Composite Providers with BW on HANA for Efficient data modelling | SAP Blogs

Nice document Thanks.

Please let me know below scenario possible in BW modelling tools from hana studio

Join of 2 DSO's which result in J1.

Then I want to do union of J1 with another DSO.

SDN Link : Re: Union of Join between 2 objects in composite providers

Thanks,

Saravanan.

Like 0 | Share

Former Member
April 5, 2016 at 7:53 am

Hi Ramachandran,

very helpful document!

Could you please let me know on which document your Statement is based?

"SAP Still suggests the usage of Multiprovider in case your requirement is just to use Unions."

Can you share a link?

Thanks, Martin

Like 0 | Share

Daniel Ray
May 12, 2016 at 11:50 am

Hi Ramachandran,

Thanks for the nice article. However, I have a doubt on the same lookup strategy. For example while loading
Material MD to DSO, we have one field called Vendor, where each of the material's will be looked up on the PO
DSO, and it has to take all the material & Vendor & PO in that PO DSO, sort out all the records for that material

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for the past 1 year and take the latest vendor from the result after arranging the result in the descending order
of the PO created date. How can we achieve this requirement while pushing it to a composite infoprovider ?
Please advice. Appreciate it.

Thank You

DR

Like 0 | Share

Daniel Ray
June 30, 2016 at 8:37 am

Hi,

IF city is the attribute of the customer MD, we can enable city as NAV so that the report will have the drill down
based on city right. We just need to enable the NAV of the customer MD in the infocube and MP. Is my
understanding wrong ? Please advise.

Thanks

DR

Like 0 | Share

Suresh Vemulapalli
January 28, 2017 at 3:11 pm

Hi Daniel,

Based on the above scenario, When Attribute History required, two approaches here, look up during
transforming data into the info cube or Maintain Time-dependent attribute in master data tables as
we know. Hope this helps!!!

thanks, Suresh V

Like 0 | Share

C Harish
January 19, 2018 at 7:55 am

Hi thanks for the nice explaining.

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/01/22/composite-providers-with-bw-on-hana-for-efficient-data-modelling/ 17/18
8/17/23, 3:26 PM Composite Providers with BW on HANA for Efficient data modelling | SAP Blogs

I would like to ask a question In Bw we would see the composite provider.Without going into the hana studio
can we find out which operation did composite provider performed ( Join, union) in Bw itself.Is there any
Tcode.

Please help me here to get clarified.

Like 0 | Share

Firoz Syed
March 15, 2018 at 8:05 am

Excellent Explanation with Scenario.

Like 0 | Share

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