As mentioned earlier, SAP BW comes with predefined InfoCubes and a rich set of reports. In this section, you will see how this reporting and data analysis looks.
The first step to access SAP BW reports is to start the BEX Browser. You will be prompted for your user name and password assigned by your SAP BW administrator.
Once SAP BW accepts your user name and password, the BEX Browser displays all reports and analytical applications for which you are authorized. On the left are the channels. Each channel contains one or more reports. Figure 2-16 shows that you are in the General Purpose Channel; the title also shows the channel name. This channel has two clusters. Clusters are used to logically group a set of reports that address a similar subject area. This example uses Customer and Employee channels. In SAP BW 2.0A, channels are replaced with Activity Groups, and BEX Browser has different icons for clusters.
Figure 2-16: SAP BW Business Explorer Browser with Sample Reports.
To launch an analytical application from the BEX Browser, simply right-click the report text, Sales Distribution by Employee, as shown in Figures 2-16 and 2-17. This action gives you several options, such as Execute, Preview, and Change. Select Execute to open the selected report.
Figure 2-17: SAP BW Business Explorer Browser-Starting Data Analysis Tasks.
Now BEX Analyzer launches, MS Excel starts, and SAP BW requests data. The result then appears in the Analyzer, as shown in Figure 2-18.
Figure 2-18: SAP BW 1.2B Business Explorer Analyzer.
Here you can drill down by product hierarchy (see Figure 2-19) or some other navigational attributes. You can also normalize data in several ways to meet your analytical needs. You learn about such techniques in Chapter 11.
Figure 2-19: SAP BW 1.2B Business Explorer Analyzer Drill-Down by Product Hierarchy.
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