KEY TERMS IN SAP. Representation of Info Area and with Diagram.

Characteristic : Characteristics are descriptions of key figures, such as Customer ID, Material Number, Sales Representative ID, Unit of Measure, and Transaction Date. The maximum number of characters allowed for the technical name is  9.

Key  Figure : Key Figures are numeric values or quantities, such as Per Unit Sales Price, Quantity Sold, and Sales Revenue. The maximum number of characters allowed for the technical name is  9.

Info Area : Info Areas are used to organize Info Cubes and Info Objects. Each InfoCube is assigned to an Info Area. Through an InfoObject Catalog, each InfoObject is assigned to an Info Area as well. The maximum number of characters allowed for the technical name is  30.

Info Object Catalog : Info Object Catalogs are used to organize InfoObjects. Two types of InfoObject Catalogs exit: one for characteristics and one for key figures. The maximum number of characters allowed for the technical name is  30.

Diagrammatically representation of above key terms :

In Info Area, the Characteristics are SID's (Surrogate-ID) translates a potentially long key for an InfoObject into a short four-byte integer, which saves I/O and memory during OLAP.

why Star Schema ? what is Star Schema?

• Poor system performance. A data warehouse usually contains a large volume of data. It is not an easy job to retrieve data quickly from the data warehouse for analysis purpose. 

For this reason, the data warehouse design uses a special technique called a Star Schema.

The Star Schema derives its name from its graphical representation -  that is, it look like a star.

The Fact Table appears in the middle of the graphic, along with several surrounding Dimension Tables.
The central Fact Table is usually very large, measured in gigabytes. It is the table from which we retrieve the interesting data.

The size of the Dimension Tables amounts to only 1 to 5 percent of the size fo the Fact Table. Common dimensions are Unit and Time.

Foreign keys tie the fact table to the dimension tables. 

what is SAP? abbreviation for SAP? History of SAP?

SAP : - Systems Applications and Products in data processing is business software for that can  be customized according to the requirements of a user.

SAP was developed by the SAP AG Company, Germany, where SAP stands for Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverabeitung. 

The basic idea behind developing SAP was the need to introduce standard application software that helps in real-time business processing.

A standard SAP system is divided in to three systems, namely

• Development 
• Quality Assurance and
• Production 

The development systems helps customized data in a SAP system.

The Quality Assurance Systems performs the final testing before the SAP applications are used in the production system.

The Production system helps perform the day-to-day business activities (Transactional Data).

For see the best example of Business Intelligence Demonstration ? why BI and uses of BI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j5J7lXav7Y

Short keys for SAP application.

Ctrl + F1 = Display / Change
Ctrl + F2 = Check
Ctrl + F3 = Active
[F8] = Execute

-- > Some Inbuilt Objects

INBUILT OBJECTS
TEXT FIELD	TYPE [ 0 = ZERO ]	SIZE
LANGUAGE SHORTTEXT MEDIUMTEXT LONGTEXT	0LANGU 0TXTSH 0TXTMD 0TXTLG	1 20 40 60

--> SAP TRANSACTIONAL CODES 

RSA1   --> DATA WAREHOUSING WORKBENCH MODELING

RSA1 OLD --> BW ADMINISTRATOR WORKBENCH

RSA11 --> INFO PROVIDER

RSA14 --> INFO OBJECTS

RSA15 --> DATA SOURCE

RSA12 --> INFO SOURCES

RSA13 --> SOURCE SYSTEM

RSA10 --> REALTIME SOURCE INTERFACE SYSTEM

RSA16 --> FAVORITES TREE

RSA17 --> GENERAL SEARCH

RSA18 --> OPEN HUB DESTINATION

what is Master Data and Transactional Data in SAP?

Master data :-  It refers to the information that is present in the system for its lifetime. It is where a  reference and other derivations that a transactional  data get its characteristics. Master data are the top level data cause systems requires it in order to run.

The Master Data is one time job.

examples : Vendor , customer, GL account creation is master data

Transactional data :- refers to the facts or encoded information during the transaction process. 

Transaction data is day to day job.

examples : Using Vendor, customer or GL account in document is called Transaction data.