Accelerate the time to market of your reports, dashboards, and analytics with SAP HANA - PowerPoint Presentation

Accelerate the time to market of your reports, dashboards, and analytics with SAP HANA Live on SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA Dr. Bjarne Berg COMERIT

In This Session How the standard 200+ query views can quickly be deployed in universes and provide real-time reporting without moving data to a data warehouse Capabilities of the SAP HANA Live browser and get practical examples on how companies have deployed this in a BI self-service model How to easily enhance the views and extend them with additional fields when needed •How to deploy the solution with existing security models; how to maintain and upgrade the views; and get best practices for naming conventions, documentation, and adding search capabilities for end users

What We’ll Cover Introductions HANA Live Overview Deploying HANA Live views in BOBJ Universes and Direct connetions Customizing and Extending SAP HANA Live ViewsWrap-up

Introduction – Dr. Berg

What We’ll Cover Introductions HANA Live Overview Deploying HANA Live views in BOBJ Universes and Direct connetions Customizing and Extending SAP HANA Live ViewsWrap-up

HANA Live Overview Source: SAP SE (2016) SAP HANA Live is targeted to those companies that run SAP Business Suite applications on SAP HANA. The views inside can also be combined with data from non-SAP applications.

Training with SAP HANA Live Before beginning to use SAP HANA Live, companies should familiarize themselves with SAP HANA studio from a modeler perspective. They can do this by sending users to either SAP Education’s three-day HA–300 Implementation and Modeling class or the two-day HA–900 SAP HANA Live class. These classes are fundamental since SAP HANA studio is the primary interface used to administrate, model, and maintain the SAP HANA or SAP HANA Live systems. HA-900 HANA Live Course

SAP HANA Live Vs. SAP BW Before beginning to use SAP HANA Live, companies should familiarize themselves with SAP HANA studio from a modeler perspective. They can do this by sending users to either SAP Education’s three-day HA–300 Implementation and Modeling class or the two-day HA–900 SAP HANA Live class. These classes are fundamental since SAP HANA studio is the primary interface used to administrate, model, and maintain the SAP HANA or SAP HANA Live systems.

HANA Live – Calculation Views The calculation view is the foundation of SAP HANA Live. Actually, SAP HANA Live is based on virtual data models (VDMs). These models are comprised of several reusable calculation views that can be combined with both attribute and analytic views. By doing so, calculation views combine several analytic views (with many fact tables) into one reportable source. A fundamental benefit of this arrangement is that calculation views that make up VDMs can be modified and extended to include custom fields and tables as necessary

Other View types in HANA Live – Attribute Views Attribute views consist of one or more tables and are used to qualify the data in some way. Attribute views are the basic building blocks in the SAP HANA studio modeler. These views are reusable and are somewhat comparable to dimensions and master data in SAP Business Warehouse (BW). Most attribute views are built on master data, but are not technically restricted to this. BW

Other View types in HANA Live – Analytic Views Analytic views bring transactional data and attribute views together. Typically , this involves simply dragging one or more attribute view into the logical join in the Scenario pane and then adding transactional data to the Data Foundation . Once this is done, the attribute, the views, and the data in the Data Foundation can be joined by clicking and dragging the fields you want to join from the various views and tables BW

Extending a HANA Live View To avoid affecting the many sub-components in the VDMs, you have to cover some basics before beginning any enhancements. For example, when creating a new information view within SAP HANA studio, there is a Copy From: option to that you should select By using this option, you can copy a standard pre-delivered SAP HANA Live view and then extend it.

The SAP Live Extension Assistant SAP offers a tool to that assists with the view copying and extension process (available since mid-2014) called SAP Live Extension Assistant. This tool automates much of the process, thereby reducing the effort required to add additional fields to your SAP HANA view. Using this tool enables you to copy and extend reuse and query views within SAP HANA Live. Copying the view in this way assures that you are not impacting others using the standard view, and also speeds up the development process. This way, you only have to focus on the additions you are making and do not have to know all the underlying complexity that may exist in the views (some have 8 to 10 nested views and custom joins).

The Virtual Data Models (VDMs) VDMs take the foundational views of SAP HANA and categorize them into several view types, including private views, reuse views, and query views. Private views are the most basic view type that directly use SAP tables. Reuse views are those views created by combining private views and other composite tables. Finally , the query views are one or more reuse views joined together to report on various business scenarios. Normally, these query views are directly used for reporting. As of Jan 2016, there were 242 query views available for reporting straight out-of-the-box when installing SAP HANA Live.

The SAP HANA Live Browser To make it easier to locate and understand the views, SAP has created an SAP HANA Live browser tool. Basically , this web page provides information about all the content available after you have installed SAP HANA Live on your transaction system The HANA Live browser can be accessed by navigating to http://<WebServerHost>:80<SAPHANAinstance>/sap/hba/explorer/index.html in your web browser.

What We’ll Cover Introductions HANA Live Overview Deploying HANA Live views in BOBJ Universes and Direct connetions Customizing and Extending SAP HANA Live ViewsWrap-up

Reporting on SAP HANA Live with BusinessObjects In general, reporting in the SAP BusinessObjects suite is done on top of a universe when consuming SAP HANA Live data. The universe layer provides a customizable semantic layer between the SAP HANA calculation views and the end-reporting tool. In order to use the real-time reporting capabilities of SAP HANA Live, the query views are used straight on top of the Business Suite and no data is moved to the EDW (like in BW). It is important to note that some of the newer SAP data visualization and reporting tools (such as SAP Lumira) have native connectivity to SAP HANA and can skip the need to connect through a BusinessObjects universe, allowing you to connect directly to the views. This direct connection to SAP HANA query views can allow for less latency in reporting, which means even faster front-end execution of reports and visualizations.

Creating a HANA Live Universe in BOBJ As of BI 4.1, SAP has included a new option in the Information Design Tool (IDT) to allow you to directly convert an SAP HANA view into a deployable universe. This dramatically increases the speed of the deployment of the views into BI. Most of the hundreds of query views can be exposed in as little as a few days’ work, making the deployment of SAP HANA Live with BusinessObjects tools very efficient. As we look at the step-by-step process for deploying the views into a universe, it is important to note that this feature is only available in the 4.1 and higher release of the IDT. You are prompted to give the business layer a name as well as to define the name of the data foundation that is being created. We recommend that the suffix BL or DF be added to the end of the business layer and data foundation names, respectively. This helps distinguish these different universe components quickly.

HANA Live Universe in BOBJ - Add a Connection in the IDT We now select the applicable connection to your SAP HANA Live system. Notice here that this connection is a .cnx type. CNX connection types are local connections that are not stored in the BusinessObjects connection repository. This connection type cannot be used in reports that are published to the BusinessObjects BI 4.1 platform since users cannot be authorized.

HANA Live Universe in BOBJ - Add a secure .cns connection in IDT You also need to create a secure .cns connection within the BusinessObjects connection repository to enable reports to be authored and shared on this universe within the BusinessObjects 4.1/4.2 platform. Once this connection is defined, you can change your SAP HANA Live connection to point to the new .cns connection in the repository. With the .cns connection type reports that are published to the BusinessObjects BI 4.1 platform users can be authorized.

Connect the business layer in IDT to a SAP HANA Live query view After you have completed the connection change, right click your local project and select New HANA Business Layer from the context menu options. Next , with this connection established, select the SAP HANA Live view on which you would like to create the universe In our example, we want to connect to the pre-delivered SAP HANA Live query view called SalesOrderQuery that we found in the SAP HANA browser. Select the view and click the Finish button to complete the creation steps for SAP HANA business layer for your universe

Publishing a Universe based on a HANA Live Query View The next step is to publish this new universe to the BusinessObjects repository so that the developers and power users can access it directly. To do that, right-click the new SAP HANA business layer and select Publish > To a repository… After publishing is completed, this universe based on the SAP HANA Live query view is available for consumption in any of the SAP BusinessObjects reporting tools by power users and developers. This method of exposing SAP HANA query views is an efficient way of moving this data to the reporting tools, but it does not come without some custom configuration

Change Query settings in IDT for SAP HANA Live based universes NOTE: By default, the universe settings do not enable query stripping and limit the row count that can be returned by the universe. Therefore we need to add a couple of flags to the settings It is very important that you change these settings in the query properties section in the IDT

Alternatives to Using Universes with HANA Live – Lumira Example As an alternative to using BusinessObjects universes, certain SAP reporting tools, such as Lumira, Design Studio, and Analysis for Office can natively consume SAP HANA views . This means that a universe is not required and data can be consumed directly from the underlying SAP HANA system through the SAP HANA Live views and other views you might have created or extended. The first step to connect to an SAP HANA view with Lumira is to create a new document and select your data source type

Alternatives to Using Universes with HANA Live – Lumira Example Once you have selected the SAP HANA option, you need to log in to the system with your access credentials (user name and password). These are the credentials you got from your security team that is monitoring and administrating the SAP HANA system in your organization . Next, select the SAP HANA view you would like to use as the basis of your Lumira analysis. In this example, we use the same SalesOrderQuery view that we built the BusinessObjects universe on previously, to illustrate the query view’s versatility.

After selecting the view, Lumira displays the dimensions and measures associated. By default, all dimensions and measures are selected for use in the report, but they can be deselected. After you have selected the fields to use in your data visualizations in Lumira, we complete the addition of the new SAP HANA Live dataset by clicking the Create button. The dataset is now accessible within Lumira where it can be used as if it were a universe. This means that all normal functionality, such as custom calculated fields, custom hierarchies, and other formatting are available. Select fields from the SAP HANA Live views to use in Lumira

What We’ll Cover Introductions HANA Live Overview Deploying HANA Live views in BOBJ Universes and Direct connetions Customizing and Extending SAP HANA Live ViewsWrap-up

Customizing and Extending SAP HANA Live Views It is possible to modify and extend any of the 800 pre-delivered views that come as a part of SAP HANA Live. The most common use case is to extend the views to add custom fields that may be proprietary to your specific business. The first step to extend a SAP HANA Live view is to find the base view you would like to use as a basis for the extended view. This information is found in the SAP HANA Live browser. Step-1: In SAP HANA studio , right-click the package where you want to store this custom view, select New, and then select Calculation View from the context-menu Step-2: In the New Information View window that opens select the Copy From check box and click the Browse … button to locate and select the view you would like to use

Customizing and Extending SAP HANA Live Views After opening the view and setting the Data Category, you can add any fields that you want to the semantic layer. A list of available fields is presented that can be propagated to the reporting layer. In this example, extend the SalesOrderQuery to include SalesDistrict. Step-4: First, select SalesDistrict and right-click to add this field to the output. Then , to add the SalesDistrict field to the output layers , right-click SalesDistrict again and select the Propagate to Semantics - menu option Step-3: The view’s Data Category needs to be set as a Cube to ensure it is visible to the BusinessObjects reporting tools

Customizing and Extending SAP HANA Live Views To complete the process of adding the new field you need to add a new join to the view. Step-5: Click the join icon then drag and drop the new SalesDistrict field into the join.

Customizing and Extending SAP HANA Live Views After this join has been added to the view, it needs to be reconnected to the data flow and then propagated to the semantics layer. Next step: now that the SalesDistrict join is complete, you need to propagate the new field to the semantics layer. Step-6: The join type is also defined in this step. This includes the join cardinality as well as the join type; in the case, a left outer join

Customizing and Extending SAP HANA Live Views Now that the SalesDistrict join is complete, you need to propagate the new field to the semantics layer. The view has been extended with the new field from the transaction system. It can now be consumed in the BusinessObjects reporting tool suite after it has been published in the IDT to a universe or to Lumira via direct SAP HANA connections. Step-7: When prompted, select the OK button to confirm that that new field has been propagated upwards to the aggregation and semantic layers.

What We’ll Cover Introductions HANA Live Overview Deploying HANA Live views in BOBJ Universes and Direct connetions Customizing and Extending SAP HANA Live ViewsWrap-up

Where to Find More Information http:// scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-59928 SAP HANA Live core page on SCN http :// tinyurl.com/HANALive SAP HANA Browser Intall and Details on SAP Help page https://www.sap-press.com/sap-hana_3687 Introduction to SAP HANA – SAP Press 3rd Edition

7 Key Points to Take Home SAP HANA Live is a tool set with over 800 views that can be installed on your SAP Suite on HANA system The HANA Live views can easily be picked up in to SAP BusinessObjects for ad-hoc real-time reporting using the standard BOBJ tools. The views can be extended with additional fields (should be copied first) HANA Live does not replace SAP BW, but provides a platform with VDMs for real-time operational reporting (SAP BW is for management reporting) Some front-end tools can connect directly to the HANA Live views HANA Live should be on the roadmap for all ERP/ECC migrations to Suite on HANA (and S/4) A two day HANA Live training is available (HA-900) and should be taken by the technical team before deploying the solution

Your Turn! How to contact me: Dr. Bjarne Berg bberg@comerit.com Please remember to complete your session evaluation

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