Reviewed documentation on Reporting: I will appreciate some clarification

Question

Hi,
Reviewed documentation on Reporting: I will appreciate some clarification:
1. Can you help me understand what "Staging" means as used here:
A data warehouse system serves primarily to stage information from various data source
The information is staged in various forms including personalized reports, freely definable queries, and predefined reports.
2. Is RemoteCube the same as Virtual Cubes? if not, what is the difference?
3. Can you help me understand what "flexible update" means as used here:
Characteristic InfoObjects have to be included in the InfoProvider tree in the Data Warehousing Workbench to make them available as data targets for flexible updates and as InfoProviders for reporting.
4. "DataStore Objects are available for transaction data and for master data."
When do we decide to store master data in a DSO?
5. Formula Collision vs. "Exception Aggregation"
I understand what formula collision is about but is it the same as "Exception Aggregation"?
If not, do you have a real-life example to help me understand the concept of "Exception Aggregation"?
The documentation/link is not helping.
6. i. With the followin limitation on Display attribute, why not always make the attribute Navigational?
"You can show Display Attributes in a report in the drilldown. However, navigation steps are not possible. (For example, you cannot choose values from a display attribute as a filter.)"
ii. Any example where Nav Attrib does not make sense but it must be Display attrib?
Thanks

Answer 1

Hi Amanda,
2. Is RemoteCube the same as Virtual Cubes? if not, what is the difference?
     Yes, they are one and the same.
3.Can you help me understand what "flexible update" means as used here:
Characteristic InfoObjects have to be included in the InfoProvider tree in the Data Warehousing Workbench to make them available as data targets for flexible updates and as InfoProviders for reporting.
in 3.x, you have infosources and not transformations. So you have basically two types of infosources, direct update and flexible update.
Direct update infosources do not have any update rules. These are used for master data loading since the format of data is usually fixed as in fields etc.
Flexible update datasources have update rules, which means that you can use it for loading pretty much anything. You can load master data by changing the update rules and you can use the same infosource for loading transactional data as well. What the statement means is that the infoobject has been set as an infoprovider. and therefore it can be used as a source in a query. The loading is done via flexible updates.
More info on direct and flexible updates can be found here :[3.x InfoSource Types|http://help.sap.com/erp2005_ehp_04/helpdata/EN/87/3fdf9587f211d5b2ff0050da4c74dc/frameset.htm]
5)Formula Collision vs. "Exception Aggregation"
I understand what formula collision is about but is it the same as "Exception Aggregation"?
If not, do you have a real-life example to help me understand the concept of "Exception Aggregation"?
The documentation/link is not helping.
I'm glad that you understand what formula collision is...since its a difficult concept. Exception aggregation is much simpler.
For every key figure that is present in BW,  there are two types of aggregations that can be maintained.
Standard: can be sum etc.
and exception aggregation like avg etc. When you do this, you need to give a reference characteristic. By default this is time. and usually it is summation. Now when you drilldown in your query based on the ref. characteristic, the exception aggregation is used.
Eg [http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/en/d2/e0173f5ff48443e10000000a114084/frameset.htm]
6.  With the followin limitation on Display attribute, why not always make the attribute Navigational?
"You can show Display Attributes in a report in the drilldown. However, navigation steps are not possible. (For example, you cannot choose values from a display attribute as a filter.)"
ii. Any example where Nav Attrib does not make sense but it must be Display attrib?
Essentially this is a preference or a personal choice basically. You can have several attributes. but keeping all of them as navigational does not help and degrades system performance as they have to be interlinked. For eg.
You have an employee ID as your characteristic.
attributes are as follows
Date of birth
division
salary stack
*** etc
now things like division,salary stack and  *** could be used as filters in a query but date of birth would in general not be used as filter and hence would make no sense to use it as a navigational attribute(unless you want to find all employees whose birthday is a certain date ).
In the end, it just comes down to the requirement. If you are required to put a filter on an attribute of master data, then it needs to be a nav. attribute else a display attribute would suffice.
Hope this helps.
Regards.