SAP BW Authorization is definitely different from R/3 authorization. Why? Well, first, R/3 authorization usually involves up to the transaction code level. But for SAP BW, the mostly used transaction is "RSA1", "RRMX",RSPCM,RSMO etc. Therefore, authorization based on transaction code alone, is definitely not sufficient.
So how do we design authorization in SAP BW? There's a few authorization objects that relates to SAP BW.
For reporting, you will most probably use the following SAP BWauthorization object:
S_RS_COMP - Reporting Component, here is where you control the query authorization blah blah.
S_RS_COMP1 - Reporting Component Owner, you can control users to only be able to access report created by Power Users, here.
S_RS_FOLD - Disable/Enable the 'InfoAreas' button.
Besides that, you will also need to configure the following authorizations:
S_RS_ICUBE - Infocube authorization
S_RS_ODSO - ODS Objects
S_RS_HIER - Hierarchy Authorization
For SAP BW administration purposes, aside from the above, you also need to configure the following authorization objects:
S_RS_ADMWB - Administrator Workbench
S_RS_IOBJ - Info Objects authorization
S_RS_ISOURCE - Transaction Infosource
S_RS_ISRCM - Master Data Infosource
There that's what you need for authorization. Anyway, to achieve "field level" authorization like those in R/3, you can create a customize object, select the infoobject that has been set "authorization relevant", and add it in the authorization matrix, and walla, you got "field level" authorization.
