SAP NetWeaver BI (along with its precursor, SAP BW) is widely recognized as a highly scalable, robust data warehouse infrastructure that can help retain and cost-effectively manage multiple terabytes of “online” data needed to support business decision-making.

However, as data volumes increase exponentially, and legal requirements for retention of detailed historical data become more extensive, it is becoming increasingly difficult for organizations to satisfy the requirements of

• Data warehouse Service Level Agreements (SLA’s)
• Data warehouse budgets (for overall administration & hardware)

The situation is made even more difficult as users make increasing demands on the warehouse for analytic capabilities, requiring easy access to comprehensive, up-to-date, detailed and highly available information about the business to guide important decisions.

Using the new NLS features of SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0, SAP customers are able to overcome these challenges.

The new NLS Interface, broadly described in such documents as SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Release Notes SPS 7 (New “Data Archiving Process (DAP)”), enables use of a partner NLS application for effective management of vast data volumes based on an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) approach. The ILM approach classifies warehouse data into current data kept online in the main data warehouse, less frequently used nearline data, and old data that is moved into an archive solution for economical storage.

“Nearline storage can be an integral part of an information life cycle management strategy. Starting with SAP NetWeaver 7.0, SAP offers certified integration with nearline storage solutions, assuring advanced integration and interoperability.” - Lothar Schubert, Director, Solution Marketing for SAP

This approach is designed to relieve the main SAP NetWeaver BI relational database of the “burden” represented by growing quantities of less frequently used data, thereby streamlining the online database and optimizing system availability. Using this concept of “slimming” the data warehouse without diminishing the accessibility of any required information, the ILM strategy for SAP NetWeaver BI provides the following benefits:

• Increased volume of data available for analysis
• Increased ability to satisfy SLA’s
• Optimized system responsiveness
• Reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
• Ability to “freeze” SAP NetWeaver BI at a given size (data volume, hardware and administration requirements) while maintaining the ability to load more data

Data volumes are in fact growing faster than the price/performance ratios of disk storage technology. Furthermore, there are many more factors involved in managing data environments than simple disk storage capacity. Consider the following facts:

• In order to meet agreed service levels for data availability, integrity and performance, multiple copies of the data are typically maintained on mirrored devices, off-site disaster recovery facilities and development systems
• Storage devices for industrial use require rugged and/or redundant components, with far greater performance and reliability than is typically provided by low-cost drives
• Large amounts of expensive cache memory are required to get adequate performance from large storage arrays
• Significant processing power is required to perform I/O operations and processes to ensure data availability (backups, for example)
• Storage farms and the associated processors require expenditures on energy, space and other environmental factors. This includes both the cost of managing the stored data itself and the associated expenses for air conditioning, sophisticated Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) equipment, and so on.
• Offsite “hot sites” require network bandwidth to maintain data currency.
• Considerable administrative work (for example, index building) is involved in retrieving data and making it ready for analysis.

“1 Terabyte of data in our SAP BI production environment generates 5 terabytes for failover and backup processes.” – Adrian Bourcevet, Volkswagen Bank GmbH Germany

The result is that for every terabyte of required production data, as many as five to six terabytes need to be kept online and under management across the enterprise, with associated infrastructure costs to maintain adequate service levels. For these reasons, when a mid-tier service level agreement (SLA) is in place for data, the cost of provisioning a terabyte of data can easily exceed $200,000 per annum.

The newly designed “Data Archiving Process” (DAP) can be used for storing data “nearline” in SAP partner applications such as SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 and/or for archiving data traditionally via ADK. Both processes involve deleting the selected data within SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0, but only “nearline” data will still be transparently accessible via BEx or other SAP-certified front-end tools.

Since “nearline” data can be accessed by individual users as well as used within Data Transfer Processes (DTP) to load new “online” InfoCubes or DSO’s, the NLS Interface and application can play a very important role within the SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 architecture.