Characteristics are fixed values that will not change over period (Example:

Employee ID).
Key figures are changeable values like salary, working hours etc.
Info Object Catalog are used for grouping of Info Objects.

Characteristics will be added to the dimension of Info Cubes.

Create Transformation,
This is to map fields from data source to Info Cubes.

Transformation Screen,

Create DTP to transfer data from Data Source to Info Cube

The white columns in info cube are index columns and the index columns are not
created for key figures.
Right click on info cube to see the data flow.
DSO is previously called as ODS.

Creation of DSO,

All non-changing fields (characteristics should be dragged into Key fields).

Drag key figures to data fields
Then rest of the steps are same as creating Info cubes.

Above picture is dataflow for DSO.

Above white columns are index columns. Index columns are not applicable for key
figures because it has changing data.
Until now, SAP BW stood for a data warehousing solution. As of release
3.5 however, SAP BW offers additional functions such as data mining
and BPS that do not constitute the usual data warehouse functions. This
will be taken into account in the next SAP NetWeaver release, and the
description SAP BW will be replaced by the description SAP Business
Intelligence (SAP BI).