Need a hand getting to know BW? Here you will find the best links to find the information you need. From SAP BW User documentation to Discussion Forums, it's all here. Feel free to explore and learn :)
BW : A Quick Overview
Want to know the basics of BW? Then read this...
Business Warehouse (sometimes lengthened to "Business Information Warehouse" or BW) is a packaged, comprehensive business intelligence product centered around a data warehouse that is optimized for (but not limited to) the R/3 environment from SAP.The SAP Business Information Warehouse allows you to analyze data from operative SAP applications as well as all other business applications and external data sources such as databases, online services and the Internet.
The Administrator Workbench functions are designed for controlling, monitoring and maintaining all data retrieval processes.
SAP BW is part of the NetWeaver suite of applications offfered by SAP.
Like most data warehouses, BW is a combination of databases and database management tools that are used to support management decision making.
BW supplies the infrastructure typical of data warehouses, but also includes preconfigured data extractors, analysis and report tools, and business process models.
Among the other features of BW are: Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs) that enable connections to non-R/3 applications; preconfigured business content; an integrated OLAP processor; automated data extraction and loading routines; a metadata repository; administrative tools; multiple language support; and Business Explorer, a Web-based user interface.
BW consists among other things of components for data management (Data Warehousing Workbench), extensive data modeling capabilities , an embedded analytical engine, a suite of rich front-end analytical tools refererred to as Business Explorer, BEx) and operational tools used for importing the most current transactional data into the system.
It may be helpful to consider three layers that make up the structure of SAP's BI solution:
Extraction, Transformation and Load (ETL) layer - responsible for extracting data from a specific source, applying transformation rules, and loading it into SAP BW system.
Data Warehouse Area - responsible for storing the information in a various types of structures, including multidimensional structures called InfoCubes.
Reporting - responsible for accessing the information in data warehouse area and presenting it in a user-friendly manner to the analyst of business user.
SAP Business Warehouse is an integral component of the company's Netweaver Business Intelligence group of products.
Online Documentation
Links are continuously added
- help.sap.com
- The help files for BW from SAP.
- SAP BW: A Step-by-Step Guide
- The focus of this documentation is on the core SAP BW technology, but it also discusses other relevant technologies, including Basis, ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming), ALE (Application Link Enabling), and ASAP (Accelerated SAP) for BW.
- SAP Business Warehouse - Best Practice Scenarios
- These SAP Best Practices for BW support the fast and smooth implementation of predefined scenarios that handle the most important business requirements in the area of BW.
- Infocubes for Beginners
- This article shows how you can teach users the basics of InfoCubes using Excel. Hopefully resulting in better understanding and better BW reports.
- Enterprise Data Warehousing with SAP BW - An Overview
- This White Paper offers an overview of the implementation of SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) from a corporate perspective.
- 200 BW Questions and Answers for Interviews
- A basic resource to help you understand the variety of questions that could be asked during a job interview.
Business Intelligence Weblog Articles
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byThe Best Books on SAP BW
No need to trawl through Amazon to find the Best Buys, they're right here!
SAP(R) BW: A Step-by-Step Guide (Addison-Wesley Information Technology Series)
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $53.07 (as of 10/13/2008)
BW Forums
- SAPGenie - Information Integration (BI, KM and MDM) forum
- SAPGenie's discussion forum.
- SAPFans - Business Warehouse forum
- One of the longest established BW forum on the internet.
- SDN - Data Warehousing forum
- SDN's Data Warehousing forum - often frequented by employees of SAP.
- SAP-IMG - SAP BW Tips and Business Information Warehouse Discussion Forum
- As well as a mail based discussion forum this site also offers a wide collection of articles, code examples and other useful information regarding BW.
Recent BW Forum Discussion Topics
See what BW developers have recently been discussing...
Below are the first few lines of forum threads that have been started within the last 30 minutes. If you like the sound of one, just click it to find out more:
Fetching RSS feed... please stand bySAP BW Tutorials
Some links that you may find useful...
- Introduction to SAP BW
- A tutorial designed for people encountering BW for the first time. It gives a very good introduction to the concepts behind BW.
- SAP Business Warehouse Tutorial
- This tutorial was designed to complement the book "Data Warehouse Management with SAP BW" by Prof. Prosser and Mag. Ossimitz. It offers interactive demos and videos.
- SAP BW Learning Guide
- A very wide ranging set of resources from 'SearchSAP' are available here. Covering questions from "What is BW?" to 'Careers in BW'.
It also offers a Business Intelligence (BI) Learning Guide. - BW 3.x and 3.5 "How To Guides"
- A collection of guides on how to do various tasks within BW.
