Support for SAP BW Features

Pyramid reflects the same aggregations as those in the SAP public interface.

Pyramid fully supports all SAP BW parameter and variable configurations including default parameter values. Further, there are multiple scenarios to store parameter settings by user or report or session.

SAP BW currency conversion capabilities are not supported in Pyramid, because they aren’t exposed by the public API.

Default Filters can be included in a Bex query; by default, these filters are then applied by SAP BEx Analyzer. As these Default Filters aren’t exposed, these filters will not be applied by default in Pyramid.

Pyramid now supports the derivation of the set of measures created by the definition of “Double Structures”, where one structure holds key figures (Measures) and the other the set of characteristics (Dimension Members). This makes all the calculated items immediately available to users without having to recreate them using Formulate. In many organizations, this may be hundreds or even thousands of calculated, derived values.

The language settings can be set from the Choose Language menu in the Query ribbon.

Pyramid reflects all formatting: currency, numeric, units of measure, and scaling factor/ reverse sign.

Key figures hidden in in SAP Bex Analyzer are not hidden in Pyramid, because this capability isn’t exposed by the public API.

Hierarchy levels are cached as a set of fields. The fields don’t automatically change when the levels are changed.

Instead, the user must refresh metadata by clicking the ‘Refresh Metadata’ button from the Report ribbon.

Each hierarchy in SAP BW can be configured with one or more property values. These are fully supported by Pyramid. Users can switch the primary caption of hierarchical elements to one of these properties. Alternatively, these properties can be used like other attributes, as part of the visualization and query.

SAP BW enables management of multiple versions of a single hierarchy. Because hierarchy versioning isn’t exposed through the public API, Pyramid will only display the most recent version.

A characteristic’s attributes can be viewed and selected from two locations. Changing the attribute from the Elements panel will change the metadata labels in the Elements panel; if the hierarchy was already added to the query, the labels in the visualization will not be changed.

These selections are made on a per cube, per session basis.

However, changing the characteristics from the hierarchy chip’s context menu (in the drop zones) will change the labels in the query visualization only, without changing the labels in the Elements panel.

Results of Pyramid queries may differ from those in the same query constructed in an SAP tool such as Bex Analyzer. This is because local calculations configured in a BEx query are not reflected in Pyramid.

Basic operations will limit availability to the use of 2 hierarchies from the same characteristic (dimension).

In other, more complex scenarios (like interactions in “Present” and “Publish”) the query result will be empty, with an error logged to the system log.

SAP BW ragged hierarchies are reflected in Pyramid.

A characteristic’s sort order (by Key or by Text) may be defined in SAP. Pyramid will not reflect the sort order configured in SAP; the characteristic is ordered by its Key value by default. The sort order can be changed via the sort dialog.

In future versions, there will be more functionality to enable users to change default sort orders of characteristics.

Technical names are displayed in tooltips and on Dimensions and Measures trees. The property type can be changed from the Elements tree.

Field names containing placeholders for variable in SAP BW will not display the value of the variable in Pyramid. Instead, Pyramid will display the placeholder name; the user can then change the column name manually in Pyramid.