SAP BI Terminology

InfoArea

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.