SAP BI-A

How PG&E implemented SAP BI-
A and did performance tuning
]
Darin Lemos
PG&E

Bjarne Berg
Director SAP BI
[ ANUP MAHESHWARI
Comerit Inc.
ASUG INSTALLATION MEMBER
MEMBER SINCE: 2008

[ SHERRYANNE MEYER
[ AJAY VONKARERY MEMBER SINCE: 2000

MEMBER SINCE: 1999

[ Learning Points
 See a practical example from PG&E and
understand what you can expect on your
implementation
 Learn how BI-A works

 Explore benefits and limitations of the
tool

Real Experience. Real Advantage. 2

[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Pacific Gas & Electric Project Overview
 What is SAP BI-A
 Overview
 Building aggregates
 Benefits
 How we implemented BI-A
 Sizing the environment
 Team organization and project plan
 Testing
 BI-A Limitations
 PG&E - Our top-10 Lessons Learned
 Wrap-up


[ In this session.

 We will look what SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator can—
and cannot—do to optimize dashboard performance.

 Explore how we PG&E planned, and implemented SAP
NetWeaver BI Accelerator.

 Examine performance benchmarks for SAP NetWeaver BI
Accelerator

 Explore the top 10 lessons learned from the project team
and see a sample work plan and an organization chart
from this project as a reference for your own SAP
NetWeaver BI Accelerator initiative…


[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Overview
 Benefits
 Testing
 Other Query Performance tricks
 Wrap-up


[ PG&E Company Overview

 Pacific Gas and Electric
Company, incorporated in
California in 1905, is one of the
largest combination natural gas
and electric utilities in the United
States.

 There are approximately 20,000
employees who carry provide
natural gas and electric service to
15 million people throughout a
70,000-square-mile service area in
northern and central California.


[ PG&E Company Overview
 SAP since 1996

 Currently on SAP ERP 4.72, upgrade to ECC 6.0 in 2009

 8,500 users for all back office and field operations
–Finance/Controlling
–HR Org/Benefits/Personnel/Payroll
–Employee Self Service: 20,000 employees; 18,000 retirees
–Manager Self Service
–Supply Chain Management --Materials Management &
Supplier Relationship Management
–Equipment/Work Order Management in Plant Maintenance
–Business Warehouse

 First major go live was a 50,000 person day project in October
2007

[ PG&E SAP Project Overview

Detailed Design Phase
Roadmap Phase
• Design the foundation for the deployment
• Vision and Strategy of new processes and tools
• “To-be” business capabilities • Design SAP customizations
• Build business case for change • Design training and performance support

Aug 04 - Nov 04 Feb 05 – Oct 05 Nov 05 – Sep 06 Oct 06 –

Design Phase Foundational Release: Build, Test, and
• Design Level 1 and Level 2 Deployment Phases
processes • Build Customizations
• Application architecture
• Build Procedures and Training
• Design “To be” organization • Convert master and transactional data
to enable future business
processes and technology • Assembly Test
• Product Test
• Deployment

[ PG&E Project Scope - EAM WRM


[ PG&E Project - Scope and Modules

SAP  PG&E has used SAP for almost 10 years in various
Modules & forms
Versions  R/3 4.7 utilized- (PM, PS, MM, SD,SRM)
 Modifications to existing FI and HR-CATS functionality
 Integration with third party applications:
ClickSoftware (ClickPlan, & ClickSchedule), ITRON
LD-Pro and ESRI GIS
 SAP BI 7.0

Impacted 8,500 (1,500 core EAM, rest for supply chain)
Audience


[ PG&E Project Benefits


[ PG&E Project BW and History - Performance Needs

Delivering High Performance Analytics to a potential
user community of 8,500 users requires special
considerations for design, technical architecture and
hardware.

I the spring of 2008, PG&E therefore started an
examination of BI-A as potential tool for increasing
performance of the financial dashboards in SAP BI.

The scope of this effort was primarily finance, but the
benefits were also intended to benefit a larger user
community.


[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Overview
 Benefits
 Testing
 Wrap-up


[ Why BI-A? Disk speed is growing slower than other HW
components
Technology Drivers Architectural Drivers
1990 2009 Improvement 1990 2009
Disk based data In-memory data
CPU 0.05 8.30 166x storage stores
MIPS/$ MIPS/$

Simple Multi-channel
Memory 0.02 8.51 425x consumption of UI, high event
MB/$ MB/$
apps (Fat client volume, cross
UI, EDI) industry value
Addressable chains
Memory 216 264 248x
General-
purpose, Application-
application- aware and
Network 100 10 100 x agnostic intelligent data
Speed Mbps Gbps
database management

Source: 1990 numbers SAP AG
Disk 5 400 80x 2009 numbers Dr. Berg

Data Transfer MBPS MBPS

Physical hard drive speeds only grew by 80 times since 1990.
Real Experience. Realother hardware components grew faster.
All Advantage. 14

[BI Accelerator Works by Indexing InfoCubes in Hardware memory
BI Accelerator has been simple SAP Any
to install and operate for BW tool

established SAP BI teams

You use process chains to
maintain the BI-A engine after
each data load

IBM, Sun, HP & Fujitsu have standard 32 GB Blades are
solutions ranging from $32K to $300K+ certified by SAP
that can be installed and tested in as
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
little as 2-4 weeks (+ SAP license fees) 15

[ BI Analytical Engine’s Query executing priorities
Information Broadcasting / Information Broadcasting /
Precalculation Precalculation

Query Cache Query Cache

Aggregates SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator

InfoProvider

Query Execution Query Execution
Without BI Accelerator With BI Accelerator

Aggregates can be replaced with BI-A, while
the memory cache is still useful.

[ Performance is Near-Linear: Benchmarks
BIA’s strength resides in its
near-linear scalability

Performance is measured in
terms of:
1. BI-A index creation time
2. Multi-user throughput per hour
3. Average report response time
4. Average number of records
touched by each report

BIA Currently reads data from
InfoCubes. DSOs & InfoObjects
are still read from base/physical
tables (even when the InfoObject
is indexed as part of master data).


[ Most customers have found BIA Admin to be minimal
The training & admin to run
BI Accelerator has proven to
be minimal. Training is
included in the SAP courses:
BW310, BW360 and in the
online course BW361

Many companies, have spent 2-5 days in
BIA training (total for 1-2 administrators)
and a work through a single interface:
RSDDBIAMON (Checks available at: RSRV)

In the past, SAP has also offered a 2 day workshop
called “BI Upgrade & Accelerator” (WNABIA)

[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Overview
 Benefits
 Testing
 Wrap-up


[ Sizing was critical, but good tools were available to help

SAP has integrated key sizing parameters for BIA in the new
QuickSizer. You can give it a try at: http://service.sap.com/quicksizer
Customer with existing BI systems and data loaded can get good sizing
estimates by running the SAP program available in SAP Note: 917803

[ Some Hardware options we looked at
Operating Systems and Storage
SUSE Linux 64-bit, Intel based
Memory based and file storage (no database for
Accelerator)

Available Hardware Platforms
HP (HP ProLiant and HP StorageWorks)
IBM (IBM Blade Center and IBM Total Storage)
FujitsuSiemens (FSC Blade Server and EMC Storage)
SUN Microsystems (SUN Blade Server and StorageTek)

The hardware implementation is done by the vendors. Be prepared for
lead times on delivery of large systems (Made-to-Order is common).


[PG&E - Our Initial Hardware sizing (July 2008)
Environment Area Recommended size IBM example*
Production Blade servers 14 Blades BladeCenter HS21 -8853G6U
Production Memory 2x8 GB (2x4) DDR2 total 16 GB 39M5797
Production Processors 2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor 2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor
Production Processor speed 3.00 GHz+ 3.00 GHz
Production Network cards 2 x Gigabit Cisco cards 32R1760
Production External storage Dedicated disks (500 GB+) DS-4800
Production File system General Parallel file system (GPFS) GPFS
Production Chassis 14 blades capacity H-series (rack-mount/9U) 88524XU
QA Blade servers 14 Blades BladeCenter HS21 -8853G6U
QA Memory 2x8 GB (2x4) DDR2 total 16 GB 39M5797
QA Processors 2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor 2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor
QA Processor speed 3.00 GHz+ 3.00 GHz
QA Network cards 2 x Gigabit Cisco cards 32R1760
QA External storage Dedicated disks (500 GB+) DS-4800
QA File system General Parallel file system (GPFS) GPFS
QA Chassis 14 blades capacity H-series (rack-mount/9U) 88524XU
Development Blade servers 4 Blades BladeCenter HS21 -8853G6U
Development Memory 2x8 GB (2x4) DDR2 total 16 GB 39M5797
Development Processors 2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor 2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor
Development Processor speed 3.00 GHz+ 3.00 GHz
Development Network cards 2 x Gigabit Cisco cards 32R1760
Development External storage Dedicated disks (300 GB+) DS-4800
Development File system General Parallel file system (GPFS) GPFS
Development Chassis 14 blades capacity H-series (rack-mount/9U) 88524XU

We found that the BIA should be sized for critical applications. Most companies
use BIA only for Production, while others have a complete landscape

[ PG&E - Our Query Performance Improvments
Current
With
Queries performance Improvement
BIA
(seconds)
CS Expense - 5 Year History 169.25 14.54 1064%
Charges to Partners via Orders - Units 243.40 21.37 1039%
Charges to Partners via Orders $ 171.39 18.28 838%
Std Cst Var - PCC Count 136.84 15.72 770%
ActPlan vs Target by MWC - Summary
BU Expense - 5 Year History
179.09
201.90
21.25
25.23
743%
700%
The slowest
CR - Expense Order Cost In 166.37 24.59 577% queries that
Labor Cost In Hours 84.66 14.39 488%
24 Month Rolling FC - Amounts 173.60 29.82 482% spent most of
ActPlan vs Target by MWC - Expense 122.91 21.40 474%
SR_RCC_Order Costs by Planning and Actual Orders 171.31 29.86 474% their time on
Labor Prod ST Hours 91.01 18.12 402%
CWIP - LOB 45.06 9.43 378% the database
Paid OT Hours 83.37 17.55 375%
ActPlan vs Target by MWC - Non Earnings 96.28 23.52 309% side benefited
PCC Labor $/Qty by CE, Plan, Act - Mid-Year 69.32 17.73 291%
ActPlan vs Target by MWC - OBS 107.86 28.58 277% the most
CR - PCC Costs Billed Out 163.16 45.07 262%
Annual Amt by MWC 100.94 28.18 258%
Monthly Run Rate vs Annual EOY 98.82 29.56 234%
Monthly Run Rate by Primary Cost Elem
Activity Price Report (KSBT)
62.01
52.59
19.35
17.52
220%
200%
Overall 36 of
PCC Non-Labor $ by CE, Plan, Act - Mid-Year
Month/YTD/Annual Amt by MWC
32.99
76.94
11.44
28.46
188%
170%
70 queries
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (Material & Service)
CR - PCC Costs
24.48
62.43
9.55
24.49
156%
155%
were at least
ActPlan vs Target by MWC - Capital
CR - PCC Costs Billed Out to CC
108.49
46.38
42.84
18.86
153%
146%
twice as
Order: Actuals since Inception
Paid Labor Hours (excludes Overtime)
25.87
27.39
11.09
11.83
133%
132%
fast….
SR_PCC Costs_In_Out - Graph 42.83 18.98 126%
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (Other CO Postings) 36.18 16.51 119%
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (Non-PO Invoices) 24.60 11.34 117%
Billable Hours 26.55 12.54 112%
PCC Std CstExperience. Real Advantage.
Real Var Plan - Mid-Year 21.98 10.60 107% 23
PCC Billable Hrs, $ by Actv, Plan, Act - Mid-Year 20.51 10.09 103%

[ PG&E - Our Query Performance Improvments

Current
With
Queries performance
BIA
Improvement 58 of 70
(seconds)
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (CATS & Order Confm) 21.17 10.74 97%
queries were at
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (Other FI Postings) 38.13 19.44 96% least 50%
Summary Removal Costs 11.36 5.90 93%
Cost Report by Order/Cost Element (PORR/PORY) 63.62 33.55 90% faster
SR_PCC Costs by Cost In and Cost Out 34.33 18.28 88%
SR_PCC Costs by Cost In and Cost Out 34.33 18.34 87%
SR_PCC Costs_In_Out - Graph 17.00 9.19 85%
PCC Activity Prices 16.66 9.18 81%
Spend - Tracked/Not Tracked 14.79 8.23 80%
Savings % 8.23 4.58 80% Before BIA the
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (NEBS) 32.81 18.35 79%
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (Material & Service) 30.41 17.12 78% average query
PCC Detail Planning Report (KSBL) 49.62 28.09 77%
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (Other FI Postings) 32.81 18.86 74% execution took
PCC Headcount by Month - Classification
SR_PCC Costs by Cost In and Cost Out - 12 Months
21.39
17.66
12.34
10.51
73%
68%
58.8 seconds,
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (Non-PO Invoices) 27.19 16.25 67% after BIA the
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (Other CO Postings) 17.18 10.43 65%
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (NEBS) 24.89 15.33 62% average query
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (CATS & Order Confm) 24.48 15.59 57%
Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers (CO Reposting) 18.34 11.90 54% took 17.9
Actual Cost Line Items for Orders (CO Reposting)
Conforming %
25.43
6.68
16.55
4.50
54%
48%
seconds
Activity Type Planning 24.52 16.68 47%
Conforming % 6.01 4.23 42% (295% faster).
PCC Headcount by Month - Classification (Graph) 15.43 11.58 33%
Removal Costs 6.15 4.77 29%
Resource Report by PCC/Activity Type (PORV) 39.63 35.42 12%
PCC FTE Count by Planning Version - Mid-Year 17.80 15.91 12%
CWIP - LOB & Orders 93.04 85.98 8%
Savings $ 4.57 4.29 7%
Savings $ 4.10 4.02 2%
SavingsReal Experience. Real Advantage.
% 3.63 3.94 -8% 24
Conforming % and Savings % 10.37 11.99 -14%

[ PG&E - Query Performance Improvments OVERALL
Query execution time before BI-A
10

9

8

7

6

5
The major
4 improvement
3

2 was to make
1

0
query
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 70
Seconds
80 90 100 110 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260
execution
more
Query execution time after BI-A
25
predictable
20
and overall
15 faster
10

5

0
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260
Seconds

[ PG&E - Workbook Performance Improvments with BIA
Current
With BIA
Top 20 Workbooks performance Improvement
(seconds)
(seconds)
1 ORD205 Actual+Plan by MWC W/Plng Orders 614.63 94.75 649%
2 SR_RCC_202 -Order Costs by planning and Actual Orders 171.31 29.86 574%
3 ORD225 - Actuals since Inception 25.87 11.09 233%
4 Forecast Model (Summary Reports) 438.34 113.01 388%
5 ORD418 - Compliance & Savings 58.38 45.78 128%
6 ASM001 - CWIP (LOB, MWC, Order) 155.61 106.08 147%
7 ORD201 Reports 76.94 28.46 270%
8 ORD207 - 5 year historical & FCST 100.94 28.18 358%
9 PMG008_24Mo PRJ Fin by Area/Div/RCC/MWC/Ord/PrjMngr/Mo 173.60 29.82 582%
10 PMG005 Reports 63.62 33.55 190%
11 ORDPMG001-PORV 39.63 35.42 112%
12 ORD230 - Line Items for Order 209.31 119.23 176%
13 PCC130 - Line Items for Cost Center 168.79 88.73 190%
14 PCC016 - PCC Detail Planning Report (KSBL) 126.73 62.29 203%
15 PCC018 - Mid-Year PCC Planning Assumptions for SLSR 179.26 74.95 239%
16 PCC116 - Standard Cost & Labor Trend for SLSR Groups 136.84 15.72 870%
17 SR_PCC_102 - PCC Costs by In-Out Costs 94.82 47.77 198%
18 RCC209A - BU/CS Expense: 5 year history 371.15 39.77 933%
19 SR_PCC_401 - Charge-Out Cost Center Type A or E 815.92 165.53 493%
20 ORD209 - Plan vs Actual By MWC and primary CE 160.83 48.91 329%
Average run times (same selection criteria) 209.13 60.95 363%

Average performance improvement for workbooks was 363% faster

[Performance Info – PG&E BI-A Indexes build times
Infocubes No of Records Time to build Indexes ( sec)
ZMIM_C04 19,867,026 327
ZMIM_C03 19,200,412 196
ZMIM_C01 2,287,483 95 232,298,392 records
ZKCC_C26
ZKCC_C13
125,570
16,287,318
15
138
in 23 infocubes were
ZKCC_C12 32,808,858 208 indexed in 90.56
ZKCC_C09 1,509,754 68
ZKCC_C06 25,346,239 341 minutes.
ZKCC_C04 2,936,394 71
ZKCC_C03 35,154,491 615
ZKCC_C02 33,985,298 225
ZKCC_C01 27,747 26 On average we were
ZFAA_C02 6,611,084 1520 able to build indexes
ZFAA_C01 765,838 113
KOD_C208 28 10 on 2.56 million
KOD_C207 3,059,811 148
KCC_C508 1,036,593 63
records per minute
KCC_C408 3440 11
KCC_C407 1,350,169 84
KCC_C23 3,058,715 677
KCC_C22 20,745,219 149
KCC_C208 3,346,213 168
KCC_C207 2,784,692 166
Total 232,298,392 90.56 minutes
RealaverageReal Advantage.
Experience. 2,565,132 records indexed per minute 27

[ Team organization at PG&E
1. We had a small team of 3 people dedicated to
the BIA project supported by one basis
person, and the rest of the BW team

2. Hardware team supported by the vendor was
also involved in a part-time capacity.

3. Overall the effort was combined with a
performance tuning project that also included
building of aggregates, caching and query
redesigns.


[ PG&E - Testing
1. We had testers and requirements gathered
from the finance community. The goal was at
least 50% faster on the 38 web dashboards.

2. We achieved:
a) 363% faster for workbooks on average
b) 70% faster for queries on average
c) 58 of 70 queries were at least 50% faster
d) Index builds took about 1.5 hrs


[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Overview
 Benefits
 Testing
 Wrap-up


[ PG&E - Top 10 Lessons Learned
1. Plan to order hardware early - lead times can
be long
2. Make sure you have a committed project
sponsor
3. Create benchmarks for workbooks, queries
and cockpits to document success
4. Update to latest service pack
5. Involve your basis team and environment
management team early


[ PG&E - Top 10 Lessons Learned
6. Be realistic, not all queries will benefit equally
from SAP BIA
7. Plan for testing and gradual rollout of BIA to
key users
8. Make sure failovers and spare blades are part
of your hardware sizing
9. Create a small dedicated team with access to
external expertise as needed
10. Perform query tuning and potential redesign
as part of a larger system performance tuning
effort.

[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Overview
 Benefits
 Testing
 Wrap-up


[ How does it work in reality??
Currently, the BIA performs aggregation and data
selection for the query, all other processing is done by the
OLAP analytical engine. Not all query processing will be
dramatically faster…

In the next SAP NetWeaver release the BIA will handle more of the
analytics processing such as “top-5 products sales”
which is currently done in the OLAP analytical engine.

SAP BIA is not used when the result set exceeds 3 million records
(max. default). When the result set is less, the data is sent
as one large data package to the application server (need
fast network).


[ BIA is becoming mainstream
Some of SAP reference clients

BIA is no longer
something exotic.

Many of the large BI
systems have already
implemented BIA and
many more projects are
under way in Europe
and in the Americas.

Once you exceed a few hundred critical users and/or 3-
4 TB of data you should seriously consider SAP BIA

[ The Future SAP BI-A RoadMap

Prior to 2008 2008 2009/2010
Optimized
SAP Accelerator for Analytic Capabilities
InfoCube Read BusinessObjects (e.g. top n)
NetWeaver Webl integration
Times DataStore Object
BI Accel- Low Cost of
on top of SAP
Acceleration
erator NetWeaver BI/BIA
Operations Standalone BIA for
BusinessObjects
High source-independent
Polestar
Availability / acceleration via
integration: Self-
Backup & Business Objects
Service BI based
Recovery Agile BI: Local and
on search
paradigm source-independent
innovation space for
departments


[ Agenda
 Introduction
 Overview
 Benefits
 Testing
 Wrap-up
 Question and Answers


[ Key Learnings

 BI-A is a useful tool for performance tuning, but it is not a ‘solve-all’ solution for
poorly made queries

 It was easy to implement (very quick)

 Look at how your queries are executing (i.e. database or application server usage)
when estimating benefits of implementing BI-A

 Once you exceed a few hundred critical users and/or 3-4 TB of data you should
seriously consider SAP BIA

 The administration of BI-A is simple and anyone can learn it in a few days

 Plan on waiting for hardware, we found that most was made-to-order

 Make sure you have redundancies and check that what you order is what got
shipped.


[ Resources

Dr. Bjarne Berg's web page -- 85+ presentations, tutorials & articles
http://csc-studentweb.lrc.edu/swp/Berg/BB_index_main.htm

Large scale testing of SAP BI Accelerator on a NetWeaver Platform
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/b00e7bb5-3add-2a10-
3890-e8582df5c70f


[ Questions and Answers

How to contact us:
Dr. Bjarne Berg Darin Lemos
bberg@comerit.net D4JLY@pge.com


[

]
 Thank you for participating.
Please remember to complete and return your
evaluation form following this session.
For ongoing education on this area of focus, visit the Year-Round
Community page at www.asug.com/yrc

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