Utilizing Multiple Data Providers

Objectives
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Create multiple queries in a document

Multiple Data Providers

When you run a query against a single data source, the results of the query are stored in the microcube of that document and the query is identified as a data provider. Within one Web Intelligence document, you can include multiple queries based on one or more of the universes available in the BI launch pad.

Each universe is built for one functional area. Therefore, when you work with both sales data and customer demographics, the data comes from two separate universes. For example, your organization may use one universe to access data product line sales, and another universe for customer data. It might be useful to include data from both of these sources in one Web Intelligence document.

Universes, queries, and local documents are all data providers. You can include data from local data providers such as Excel spreadsheets, text files, and CSV files in your document.

If you want to present product line sales results and information on customer age groups in the same report, create a single document that includes data retrieved by two queries. Each of these queries is built using a different universe. You can then include and format the results from both queries in the same report.

Using Multiple Data Sources

The figure, Using Multiple Data Sources, shows an example of how data from various sources can be formatted within one document, irrespective of the format of the original source. The system administrator assigns rights for access to specific universes.

Advantages of Using Multiple Data Sources

The following list outlines some of the actions that using multiple data providers helps you to perform once the basic report is built:

  • Compare and contrast information in a single table.
  • Add calculations across data sources.
  • Synchronize multiple data providers and merge on common dimensions to display data in the same block.
  • Synthesize data from different sources in the same report.
  • Create new variables and develop your analysis further.

Data from Another Query

See the following video to learn more about queries.

Data Projection from a Single Query into Different Blocks

See the following video to learn more about Data Projection from a Single Query to Different Blocks.

Data Projection from Multiple Queries Using a Single Universe

To compare metrics between different time periods, you run multiple queries on one universe in a single document. For example, you want to see the sales revenue for the current week, current month, and current year all in one table. In this case, create three queries, each with three different filters for the three different time periods.

If the document contains a set of data returned by an existing query, you can edit the query to include more objects. You can also expand the data contained in the data provider. Sometimes, adding more detail to the existing query can be inefficient because we only need a small subset of the detail.

You can choose to perform the following actions within one document:

  • Add a second query to the document.
  • Select different objects from the same universe.
  • Expand the document data by using two separate data providers.

Data Projection of Queries From Multiple Universes

See the following video to learn more about Working with Multiple Data Providers.

Refreshable Queries

You can select the queries to refresh when refreshing a document.

After you have once refreshed a document that contains several data providers, you can decide not to refresh specific queries for further refreshes. In this case, the data provider keeps the data-set retrieved from the previous refresh and stored in the data provider. This improves refresh performance when you do not need to refresh queries whose data you know do not change in time, as there is no need to fetch the data to retrieve results.

The following data providers are refreshable:

  • Universe
  • SAP BW
  • SAP HANA
  • Excel
  • Free-hand SQL

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