SAP Data Warehouse

We have large amounts of historical sales data stored on our legacy system (i.e. multiple files with 1 million+ records). Today the users use custom written programs and the Focus query tool to generate sales'ish type of reports. 

We are wanting that existing legacy system to go away and need to find a home for the data and the functionality to access and report on that data. What options does SAP afford for data warehousing? How does it affect the response of the SAP database server?

We are thinking of moving the data onto a scaleable NT server with large amounts of disk (10gb +) and using PC tools to access the data.  In this environment, our production SAP machine would perform weekly data transfers to this historical sales reporting system. 

Has anybody implemented a similar solution or have any ideas on a good attack method to solve this issue?

You may want to look at SAP's Business Information Warehouse. This is their answer to data warehousing. I saw a presentation on this last October at the SAP Technical Education Conference and it looked pretty slick. 

BIW runs on its own server to relieve the main database from query and report processing. It accepts data from many different types of systems and has a detailed administration piece to determine data source and age. Although the Information System may be around for sometime it sounded like SAP is moving towards the Business Information Warehouse as a reporting solution.

Interview Questions
Business Warehouse SAP Interview

SAP Business Warehouse Books
SAP BW Books - Certification, Interview Questions and Configuration

SAP BW Tips
SAP BW Tips and Business Information Warehouse Discussion Forum

Best regards,
SAP Basis, ABAP Programming and Other IMG Stuff
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