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Lesteryo's avatar
Lesteryo
Regular Visitor
9 years ago
Solved

SAP BW Connection

Hello.   I am new with connecting to SAP BW.   I already read post about SAP BW on the link below but still failed and still got an error.   http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Integrations-with-Fi...
Need Help
Tips and Tricks
  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    9 years ago

    Lesteryo,

    Have you installed the SAP NetWeaver library on your PC? Make sure the architecture for the SAP NetWeaver library (32-bit or 64-bit) matches your Power BI Desktop installation, then install all files included in the SAP NetWeaver RFC SDK according to the SAP Note.

    In other words, when you use 64 bit Power BI Desktop, you would need to install 64 bit  SAP NetWeaver library, when you use 32 bit Power BI Desktop, you would need to install 32 bit  SAP NetWeaver library. Also ensure that you use the latest version of Power BI Desktop, which is available in this link.

    Reference:
    https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-desktop-sap-bw-connector/


    Regards,

  • Blackjack's avatar
    Blackjack
    9 years ago

    If you are wondering where the SAP Netweaver RFC SDK library should be installed, the correct procedure is to simply copy the dll files contained in the SDK library into the C:\Windows\System32 folder, given you are running Power Bi Desktop on Windows.
     
    After you get the SAP Netweaver RFC SDK library 2 .SAR files from Sap Support Portal as described in SAP Note #1025361, extract them to any temp folder using SAPCAR.EXE, which is also obtained from SAP Support Portal. Go into the folders and copy the dll files from the lib folder C:\Windows\System32.

    Next open Power BI Desktop, click on 'Get Data' and select 'SAP Business warehouse Server'. The interface to connect to SAP BW server should be available now. If you are planning to use Data Gateway, you shold also copy the SAP RFC SDK dll files to folder C:\Windows\System32 in the machine you are running the gateway.

      

Rquant's avatar
Rquant
New Member
6 years ago

I am currently creating dashboards for a significant procurement/supply chain operation. I have investigated a lot of the commercial vendors for spend analysis such as SpendHQ, Invalua, PRM 360, GEP Smart, Seivo, Coupa, Claritum, Suplari, Zycus.

We use SAP Business warehouse for our procurement data, and I've been using SAP Analysis for Office. I've got a pretty extensive background in data analytics, Power BI, ML, etc. but I have never worked with the SAP BW to Power BI connector. I have heard/read; there are limitations to this connection. (Not all features, data available, etc.)

 

Has anybody here worked with it enough to have an informed (or uninformed) opinion on the viability of building the spend analysis piece in Power BI with the SAP BW connector?

 

The commercial solutions are hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and they don't seem that advanced to me. Lots of data ETL, clustering for category analysis, and some spend analytics AI algorithms to help identify areas of opportunity. (like rouge spending, soon to expire contracts, anomaly/fraud detection and the like)

 

Thoughts, opinions, feedback, suggestions?????

 

Thanks in advance!