BI in SAP NetWeaver 2004s is the official abbreviation for the successor of the Business Information Warehouse (BW) which has been completely revised by SAP with its latest release. Core elements of this comprehensive suite for decision making applications are functions for extraction, transformation and data management. With this new release, these functions aim more heavily at company-wide data warehousing.

The book focuses on these core tasks of SAP BW and gives well-founded insights into the system architecture. As practical handbook and well-structured reference book, the book is for SAP consultants and IT staff that are responsible for or planning a BW-based data warehouse implementation.

Apart from system architecture, the book focuses on detailed descriptions of data management (data models and Analytical Engine) as well as the Staging Engine which have been completely revised and deal with new data transfer process technology. The design of the controlled operations has been substantially expanded and besides a comprehensive description of automization techniques by using process chains, regular maintenance and administration tasks are also discussed (model trimming, technical validation).

The book emphasizes a comprehensive view on aspects to manageability and system performance which are discussed in individual chapters but also implicitly in all other ranges of topics.