Designing user roles and profiles in SAP R3 is a complex task. Sometime back, I had covered in one of my earlier post the authorization concept in SAP and how to design user roles. The role based user access concept extends to SAP Business Warehouse BW also. Roles are used in BIW to maintain users. In its simplest form a role in SAP BW can be defined as:
"A role is a combination of tasks and activities that an individual is responsible for carrying out."
Similar to SAP R/3, in SAP BW also, authorizations and menu objects required by users to carry out a specific role are assigned through the use of activity maintenance groups. Basically, three types of roles can be configured in SAP business warehouse. These are
- Administration - Delivered Roles (BW Administrator)
- Business User Roles
- Reporting User Roles
Each of these roles in SAP BIW is used for a specific activities. For example, the administration role in BW contains all authorizations required for BW adminstration. Basis transactions relevant to adminstration, development and core functions are configured in this role. The reporting and business user roles on the other hand come configured with reporting relevant BW authorizations. Infact, some of the role templates are preconfigured. These include BW administrator, BW Operator, BW modeler, BW Report Developer and BW Report user.