Before getting started, a brief introduction about myself :

I am a quality specialist working on the Quality and validation of the products like SAP BW/4HANA and BW modeling tools.I work specifically in the BW integrated Planning Area.

Most of us are excited about exploring the new functionalities provided by SAP BW Modeling tools. With the Version 1.18 of SAP BW Modeling tools we have a new editor with respect to the BW Integrated Planning topic which is the Characteristic Relationship editor.

The following blog post will help the readers discover new functionality which is specific to BW Integrated planning community and as a whole to the BW/4HANA product community.

please refer to the below link in case if you want to know what is a characteristic relationship in SAP BW integrated Planning :

https://help.sap.com/viewer/0ecf5244825c4742a7b062a89d11c2ac/7.5.7/en-US/4cb82d6b54182102e10000000a42189e.html

This blog shows the steps on how to create a Characteristic relationship using the brand new editor in BW modeling tools. Please, not that this Editor is only available for the BW projects created on BW/4HANA systems.

Prerequisite: SAP BW Modelling tools version should be of 1.18 and above.

Steps to Create a characteristic relationship in the BW modeling tools:

  • Connect to BW Modelling tools and login to the respective system in the BW project(BW/4HANA project with BPC add-on enabled).
  • Choose an infoarea which has plannable infoproviders.Open any planning enabled infoprovider (Any plan enabled Cube like ADSO or DSO like ADSO ), Please note that we can only create Characteristic relationship on top of the above-mentioned providers.

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  • Later right click on the provider in the project explorer screen. You will be able to choose the option to ‘Open Characteristic Relation’.
  • The characteristic Relation editor will be opened in the right side pan. The General settings tab will look something like in the below screenshot:

  • In the General settings, You can change the values for the Key Date. If the scenario is to save the plan data, we can provide the planning sequence name for the save of planned data.And also the aggregation level name for reading the changed data. The use of these options is similar to those in the RSPLAN transaction for Characteristic Relationship in BW system.

Please refer to the below document in case if you want to know more about using the central settings options in the Characteristic Relationship.

https://help.sap.com/viewer/0ecf5244825c4742a7b062a89d11c2ac/7.5.7/en-US/478dc648db0741359f726481d4309dcd.html

  • In the Characteristic Relations tab, choose the type of Characteristic relation you wish to create.This can be done clicking on the corresponding type of Add option (say Add attribute for attribute type Characteristic Relationship, Add exit for Exit type Characteristic Relationship etc).

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  • For example, let’s create Attribute type Characteristic Relationship. So click on Add Attribute (please note that the infoobjects selected have the attribute relation i.e.. one infoobject should be added as the attribute of another).Add the base infoobject for which attribute is defined.

  • Once we have added the base infoobject , Now in the Used characteristics tab we add the attribute infoobjects of the base infoobjects.

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  • Once the infoobjects are added for the attribute type of Characteristic Relationship. Click the checkbox to make the Characteristic Relationship active.Check the Characteristic Relationship for consistency, it should be consistent with respect to the definition. If any inconsistency found, please correct the errors and check again.
  • Save the Characteristic Relationship. And the created Characteristic Relationship can be used to generate valid combinations during the execution of planning functions.

The procedure is the same for the creation of other types of Characteristic Relationships like Hierarchy, DSO, and Exit. Based on the type of the Characteristic Relationship, the relevant options are to be checked in the editor.

This is the way in which we can use the new Eclipse-based editor to create the characteristic relationships without the need to go back to the RSPLAN transaction in the backend BW/4HANA system.

Feel free to post your questions or comments if any.

Thanks & Best Regards,

Tharun.