Setting up Consumption Models

You build your Consumption Models on top of business entities or on top of fact models, which have some elements of the Consumption Model already predefined. This means Analytical DataSets, Fact models, or Dimensions have already been defined.

These Consumption Models focus on specific analytical requirements and enrich the model accordingly. As an example, this could mean setting measures and attributes from different fact and dimension sources or fact models into relation by defining context-dependent navigation to compose use case-specific Consumption Models.

For instance, if we consider the case of Controlling - Profitability Analysis (COPA) in a business context, it becomes clear that three fact sources storing the measures Actuals, Budget, and Forecast are connected to different dimension sources through associations (Material, Profit Center, SAP Mastercode, and Time). All four dimensions from the first level are connected to the three fact sources. Given that the link between the different business entities was already established, the information on Company Code is automatically available through the Profit Center dimension source.

As a result, the Consumption Model allows harmonized reporting on different measures and attributes of all the included fact and dimension sources. The object used for reporting is the perspective which is defined within the Consumption Model editor.

Procedure

1. In the side navigation area, choose Business Builder, select a space if necessary, and choose New Consumption Model to open the editor.
2. Enter a title for your Consumption Model. Choose Step 2.
3. Choose the fact source you want to use in your Consumption Model: you can choose analytical datasets or fact models. Choose Step 3.
4. Define a Source Alias and choose Create. You are taken to the graphical representation of your model. At the center of the diagram, you can see your fact source.
5. You can zoom into your fact source and add associated business entities for consumption by selecting your fact source and choosing (Show Source Graph) .

   If your Consumption Model contains just one fact source, you will see all associations from the selected fact by default.

6. To add dimension sources, choose Add Dimension Sources and select your business entities. They then appear under Dimensions in the right half of the screen.

Note

Attributes in Consumption Models can either reference attributes from the included fact or dimension sources or be calculated from other attributes of the current Consumption Model.

A measure is a quantifiable value that refers to an summable field of the underlying model.

Perspectives are reusable configurations that contain a subset of a Consumption Models attributes, measures and parameters.

You can create multiple perspectives for your Consumption Model which allows for different variants to enable quick validation while modeling. Perspectives can be used to create stories in SAP Analytics Cloud.

You can create a perspective by going to the Perspectives tab or by choosing Data Preview and save it as a perspective.