1. In Infosets now you can include Infocubes as well.
2. The Remodeling transaction helps you add new key figure and characteristics and handles historical data as well without much hassle. This is only for info cube.
3. The BI accelerator (for now only for infocubes) helps in reducing query run time by almost a factor of 10 - 100. This BI accl is a separate box and would cost more. Vendors for these would be HP or IBM.
4. The monitoring has been imprvoed with a new portal based cockpit. Which means you would need to have an EP guy in ur project for implementing the portal ! :)
5. Search functionality hass improved!! You can search any object. Not like 3.5
6. Transformations are in and routines are passe! Yess, you can always revert to the old transactions too.
7. The Data Warehousing Workbench replaces the Administrator Workbench.
8. Functional enhancements have been made for the DataStore object:New type of DataStore object Enhanced settings for performance optimization of DataStore objects.
9. The transformation replaces the transfer and update rules.
10. New authorization objects have been added
11. Remodeling of InfoProviders supports you in Information Lifecycle Management.
12 The Data Source:There is a new object concept for the Data Source.Options for direct access to data have been enhanced.From BI, remote activation of Data Sources is possible in SAP source systems.
13.There are functional changes to the Persistent Staging Area (PSA).
14.BI supports real-time data acquisition.
15 SAP BW is now known formally as BI (part of NetWeaver 2004s). It implements the Enterprise Data Warehousing (EDW). The new features/ Major differences include:
a) Renamed ODS as DataStore.
b) Inclusion of Write-optmized DataStore which does not have any change log and the requests do need any activation
c) Unification of Transfer and Update rules
d) Introduction of "end routine" and "Expert Routine"
e) Push of XML data into BI system (into PSA) without Service API or Delta Queue
f) Intoduction of BI accelerator that significantly improves the performance.
g) Load through PSA has become a must. I am not too sure about this. It looks like we would not have the option to bypass the PSA Yes,
16. Load through PSA has become a mandatory. You can't skip this, and also there is no IDoc transfer method in BI 7.0. DTP (Data Transfer Process) replaced the Transfer and Update rules. Also in the Transformation now we can do "Start Routine, Expert Routine and End Routine". during data load.
New features in BI 7 compared to earlier versions:
i. New data flow capabilities such as Data Transfer Process (DTP), Real time data Acquisition (RDA).
ii. Enhanced and Graphical transformation capabilities such as Drag and Relate options.
iii. One level of Transformation. This replaces the Transfer Rules and Update Rules
iv. Performance optimization includes new BI Accelerator feature.
v. User management (includes new concept for analysis authorizations) for more flexible BI end user authorizations.