SAP BW versus R/3 Reporting

Would it be sufficient just to Web-enable R/3 Reports ? Why does one need
to implement BW ? What are the major benefits of reporting with BW over
R/3 ?

There are quite a few companies that share your thought but R/3 was designed
as a OLTP system and not an analytical and reporting system. In fact
depending on you needs you can even get away with a reporting instance
(quite easy with Sun or EMC storage) Yes you can run as many reports as you
need from R/3 and web enable them but consider these factors.

1: Performance -- heavy reporting along with regular OLTP transactions can
produce a lot of load both on the R/3 and the database (cpu, memory, disks,
etc). Just take a look at the load put on your system during a month end,
quarter end, or year end -- now imagine that occurring even more frequently.

2: Data analysis -- BW uses a Data Ware house and OLAP concepts for storing
and analyzing data. Where R/3 was designed for transaction processing. With
a lot of work you can get the same analysis out of R/3 but most likely would
be easier from a BW.

Major benefits of BW include:
1) By offloading ad-hoc and long running queries from production R/3 system
to BW system, overall system performance should improve on R/3.

2) Another key performance benefit with BW is the database design. It is
designed specifically for query processing, not data updating and OLTP.
Within BW, the data structures are designed differently and are much better
suited for reporting than R/3 data structures. For example, BW utilizes star
schema design which includes fact and dimension tables with bit-mapped
indexes. Other important factors include the built-in support for
aggregates, database partitioning, more efficient ABAP code by utilizing
TRFC processing versus IDOC.

3) Better front-end reporting within BW. Although the BW excel front-end has
it's problems, it provides more flexibility and analysis capability than the
R/3 reporting screens.

4) BW has ability to pull data from other SAP or non-SAP sources into a
consolidated cube.

In summary, BW provides much better performance and stronger data analysis
capabilities than R/3.