In our previous article, “8 Things to Know when Considering Integrating MicroStrategy with SAP BW,” we highlighted the key points behind the MicroStrategy / SAP BW integration. In this article, we expand on that topic and share implementation best practices for those companies who have made the decision to make the MicroStrategy / SAP BW plunge. We hope these tips will save you some time and money.
1. When possible, it is always preferable to work with SAP Queries instead of InfoCubes. Why? A lot of the native SAP BW functionality, including calculated key figures, SAP aggregates, OLAP caches, and the SAP BW accelerator, to name a few, are only available via Queries. In addition, MDX performance is significantly better when accessing Queries as compared to InfoCubes.
2. Create a master query for each InfoCube and include all objects like characteristics, key figures, etc… This will greatly reduce the ongoing maintenance cost by reducing the number of queries to import and maintain.
3. Avoid importing queries used in SAP BEx Designer. Global or local changes on a query will impact MicroStrategy reports sourced from that query. This can create change management and maintenance nightmares.
4. Try and avoid unbalanced hierarchies.
5. With a few exceptions, it is preferable to use MicroStrategy prompts in place of SAP BW variables. If you do keep SAP variables in a Query, make sure all characteristics used in the variable are included in the Query.
6. In MicroStrategy reports, do not set the current prompt answers as the default. Only do this at the prompt definition level in MicroStrategy.
7. Create SAP aggregates for queries based on InfoCubes.
8. Enable SAP Cache for Master Queries.
9. Create MicroStrategy Intelligent Cubes to support groups of reports used in dashboards that require a high-level of aggregation.
10. Turn on schema preloading for SAP BI Database Instances and increase Element and Object cache settings.
