SAP BI Terminology

Info Area

• Info Area is like “Folder” in Windows. InfoArea is used to organize InfoCubes, InfoObjects, MultiProviders, and InfoSets in SAP BW.

InfoObject Catalog 

• Similar to InfoArea, InfoObject Catalog is used to organize the InfoObject based on their type. So we will have InfoObjects Catalogs of type Characteristics & KeyFigures.

Info Objects

• It is the bsic unit or object in SAP BI  used to create any structures in SAP BI. 
• Each field in the source system is referred as InfoObject on SAP BI.
• We have 5 types of Info Objects: Characteristic, KeyFigure, Time Characteristic, Unit Characteristic, and Technical Characteristic.

Data Source

• Data Source defines Transfer Structure.
• Transfer Structure indicates what fields and in what sequence are they being transferred from the source system. 
• We have 4 types of data source:
  • Attr: used to load master data attr 
  • Text: Used to load text data 
  • Hier: used to load hierarchy data 
  • Transcation data: used to load transaction data to Info cube or ODS.

Source System

• Source system is an application from where SAP BW extracts the data. 
• We use Source system connection to connect different OLTP applications to SAP BI.
• We have different adapters / connectors available:
  • SAP Connection Automatic
  • SAP Connection Manually 
  • My Self Connection
  • Flat file Interface
  • DB connect
  • External Systems with BAPI

Info Package

• Info package is used to schedule the loading process. 
• Info package is specific to data source. 
• All properties what we see in the InfoPackage depends on the properties of the DataSource.