Forum Discussion
SAP BW connector parameter input: How?
Hi Sokon,
Firstly, do you connect to SAP BW cube in Power BI Desktop? I would recommend you select dimension and key figures to combine a valid table in Bex Query Designer, then choose the same dimension and key figures in Power BI Desktop navigator.
Secondly, have you defined variables or parameters in your SAP BW model? Once you have created variables or parameters in SAP model as described in the following similar blog, you will be able to get parameter input view in Power BI Desktop.
https://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/en/ac/789b3c4d4d8d15e10000000a114084/content.htm
Thanks,
Lydia Zhang
Hi @Lydia,
Thanks for your answer! Ok, this is getting confusing. :-) This is what I found out together with one of our BW guys:
- In Power BI Desktop you can use then SAP BW connector to connect to both BW Cubes and BEx Queries.
- The PBI Desktop navigator shows all available cubes below a folder called $INFOCUBES
- On the other hand, BEx queries, are found below a folder with the name of the corresponding cube.
- We followed the steps decribed in this documentation to connect to a BEx query. That BEx query has optional and mandatory fields that we want to use. No parameter input view is shown.
- Then, following your suggestion, we connected to a cube. We were able to query data that is shown in preview- ok!
- The BW guy wasn't sure what is meant by "variables or parameters in SAP BW model", so we tried to reproduce a BEx query. At this point he missed a lot of BW objects that were not shown in the navigator, including "restricted key figures" that are most probably the variables you are talking about:
To avoid getting too much into detail, all I need to know at this point is:
- Does Power BI Desktop support query parameter editing for BEx queries (not cubes)?
- If not, do you know if that feature is on the roadmap?
Thanks a lot in advance!
hi,
I know this is an old post but were you able to resolve this?
No solution so far, I'm sorry.
I stopped trying to connect directly to BW Queries altogether and import Workbooks instead (the Excel files that contain the results given back by Analyzer) That way works with parameters, is faster, gives back the desired fields and the correct amounts of rows. In my experience, the problems only start when you try to connect to SAP and get worse when you want to use it in production. Additionaly, as you can see, there's not much help to be found on this subject.
Sorry, I do not understand what you meant by SAP workbook - is it the same as BW workbooks?