SAP HANA BI Development

About the Tutorial

SAP HANA is an in-memory database which also provides HANA Modeling, Data
Provisioning, and BI reporting features in a single application. SAP HANA is mostly used
as a Data Warehouse for many organizations with Transaction system. BI development is
always a challenge for organizations with massive amount of historical data. SAP HANA is
an in-memory database that reads data 1 million times faster as compared to traditional
systems.

This tutorial teaches how to use SAP HANA with SAP BusinessObjects BI tools.

Audience
This tutorial has been prepared for those who have good knowledge on SAP Basis and
HANA system concepts. After completing this tutorial, you will find yourself at a moderate
level of expertise in using SAP HANA BI tools.

Prerequisites
Before you proceed with this tutorial, we assume that you are well-versed with basic SAP
Basis and HANA concepts. You should have a good exposure to SAP HANA in-memory
concepts, HANA Studio, and different options in HANA studio. If you are not aware of these
concepts, then we recommend that you first go through our short tutorials on SAP HANA
and Basis.

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Table of Contents
About the Tutorial .................................................................................................................................... i

Audience .................................................................................................................................................. i

Prerequisites ............................................................................................................................................ i

Disclaimer & Copyright............................................................................................................................. i

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................... ii

1. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ INTRODUCTION .................................................................. 1

2. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ REPORTING & DASHBOARD TOOLS..................................... 3

3. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ DIFFERENT BO TOOLS CONNECTION TO HANA................... 6

4. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ CREATING A RELATIONAL CONNECTION............................. 7

5. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ CREATING AN OLAP CONNECTION ................................... 11

6. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ HANA MODELING VIEWS .................................................. 15

Features of HANA Modeling .................................................................................................................. 15

7. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ INPUT PARAMETERS IN HANA .......................................... 17

8. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ USING ATTRIBUTE VIEW ................................................... 20

How to Create an Attribute View? ........................................................................................................ 20

9. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ USING ANALYTIC VIEW ..................................................... 24

How to Create an Analytic View? .......................................................................................................... 24

10. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ USING CALCULATION VIEW .............................................. 27

How to Create a Calculation View? ....................................................................................................... 27

Calculation View with Star Join ............................................................................................................. 28

Calculation View Without Star Join ....................................................................................................... 29

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11. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ USING TABLES IN HANA DB .............................................. 30

How to Access the SQL Editor? .............................................................................................................. 30

How to Create a View in HANA DB? ...................................................................................................... 32

12. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ CONNECTING WEBI TO HANA .......................................... 34

Using Universe on Top of HANA Modeling Views .................................................................................. 34

Direct Webi Connection with HANA Modeling Views ............................................................................ 38

SAP HANA Online Connectivity.............................................................................................................. 39

Using Free-Hand SQL ............................................................................................................................. 40

13. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ UNIVERSE DEVELOPMENT ................................................ 41

14. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ USER PROMPTS & FILTER IN IDT ....................................... 45

Using LOVs ............................................................................................................................................ 46

15. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ WEBI REPORT DEVELOPMENT .......................................... 48

16. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ LUMIRA CONNECTION TO HANA ...................................... 51

17. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ DASHBOARD DEVELOPMENT IN LUMIRA.......................... 53

18. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ DASHBOARD DESIGNER CONNECTION TO HANA .............. 56

How to Create a Query to Add Universe? .............................................................................................. 56

19. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ DASHBOARD DEVELOPMENT IN DD.................................. 58

20. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ CONNECTING CRYSTAL TO HANA VIEWS .......................... 59

21. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ CRYSTAL REPORT DEVELOPMENT ON HANA..................... 61

22. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ BW ON HANA CONNECTION............................................. 65

23. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ DESIGN STUDIO CONNECTION WITH HANA...................... 69

How to Create a New Connection? ........................................................................................................ 70

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24. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ DEVELOPMENT IN DESIGN STUDIO .................................. 72

How to Create a New Analysis Application? .......................................................................................... 72

Connecting to a Universe Based on HANA ............................................................................................. 75

25. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ PUBLISHING BI REPORTS ON HANA .................................. 77

26. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ BENEFITS OF USING HANA ............................................... 78

27. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ CONNECTING HANA WITH OTHER BI TOOLS .................... 79

Connecting Tableau to HANA ................................................................................................................ 79

Connecting MS Excel to HANA ............................................................................................................... 81

28. SAP HANA BI DEVELOPMENT ─ INTERVIEW QUESTIONS.................................................... 83

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 1. SAP HANA BI Development ─ SAP HANA BI Development
Introduction

SAP HANA is an in-memory database which also provides HANA Modeling, Data
Provisioning, and BI reporting features in a single application. SAP HANA is mostly used
as a Data Warehouse for many organizations with Transaction system. SAP is providing
HANA as a backend database for various different ERP and CRM based applications.

Following are a few common HANA based modules:

 S/4 HANA (S/4 HANA Finance and Logistics)

 SAP Business One
 SAP Fiori

SAP HANA Data Modeling helps the user to model the application data and perform
database functions such as creating schemas, tables, and views at run time. HANA data
models are stored in HANA Repository and objects are activated at run time.

This is SAP site link for HANA Product details that shares all key features HANA provides -
https://www.sap.com/products/hana.html

According to SAP - “Deployable on premise or in the cloud, SAP HANA is an in-memory

data platform that lets you accelerate business processes, deliver more business
intelligence, and simplify your IT environment. By providing the foundation for all your
data needs, SAP HANA removes the burden of maintaining separate legacy systems and
siloed data, so you can run live and make better business decisions in the new digital
economy.”

BI development is always a challenge for organizations with massive amount of historical

data. Traditional databases or DW systems - SQL Server, BW or Oracle - doesn’t support
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live reporting, as they are not capable of running the transaction system and Data
Warehouse on the same system. In many organizations, transactional system and Data
warehouse are kept separate, as running complex OLAP queries affect the performance of
the systems significantly. ETL processes are used to perform extraction, transformation,
and data load from SAP ECC to Data Warehouse.

When large number of concurrent OLTP transactions are made along with OLAP queries,
there is a possibility of the system getting crashed. SAP HANA supports real-time data
replication from the transaction system using SLT method, which is a trigger-based
approach of data replication.

SAP HANA is an in-memory database, hence the data read is 1 million times faster as
compared to traditional systems. Complex OLAP queries in a Business Intelligence report
takes less time to run when DW system contains huge amount of historical data. HANA
supports all aggregations on fly, and hence, there is no need to save aggregated table in
the database. Due to different compression algorithms and column-based storage of table,
HANA database requires less space to store more data as compared with other RDBMS
systems.

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2. SAP HANA BI Development ─ Reporting & Dashboard
Tools

SAP provides BusinessObjects as BI reporting and dashboard tool, used by many

organizations who have SAP ERP implemented as the transaction system. SAP
BusinessObjects consist of multiple tools for Business Intelligence reporting and
dashboard:

 Web Intelligence
 Dashboard Designer (Earlier known as Xcelsius)
 Universe Designer (For Semantic Layer)
 SAP Crystal Reports
 SAP Lumira
 SAP Design Studio
 BusinessObjects Explorer
 Analysis for OLAP

All these tools are closely integrated with SAP BW and SAP HANA and support all data
modeling and ETL features of SAP system. Web Intelligence is used for detailed reporting
and uses Query Panel and Universe Designer as the semantic layer to connect to non-SAP
data sources. Dashboard Designer is the dashboard tool which provides lot of predefined
templates for creating static and dynamic charts.

Universe Designer (UDT/IDT) is a tool to build the semantic layer for non-SAP data
sources as well as to build data models for HANA database objects. Different features such
as parameters, filters, creating/deleting objects, business layer views, predefined queries
for testing, aggregations and variable mapping can be defined using the semantic layer.
When the semantic layer is finalized, it can be published to BO server repository and can
be used in different Webi reports and Dashboards.

SAP Crystal Reports is used for pixel perfect reporting where users want to take printout
of sales invoices, bills, sales orders, etc.

SAP Lumira is one of the emerging data visualization tools that provide the users with an
option of ad-hoc dashboarding feature.

SAP Design Studio is also an advanced level dashboard tool and supports server side
programming to create interactive dashboards for customers.

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is a self-service BI tool to create dashboard views and

data visualizations, and share them with other users in the team.

Analysis for OLAP is also a self-service multidimensional analysis tool and is suitable for
reporting on SAP BW and SAP HANA.

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The above picture shows all BI tools with solid lines, which can be directly connected and
integrated with SAP HANA using an OLAP connection. The tools that need a relational
connection using IDT to connect to HANA are shown with dotted lines.

SAP BusinessObjects was an individual product earlier. In 2008, SAP acquired this product
and added it as one of the key tools for SAP BI reporting.

Following is the version history of SAP BO tool in reverse chronology:

 SAP Business Objects Business Intelligence 4.2 Service Pack 04 (Release Date, 2017)

 SAP Business Objects Business Intelligence 4.2 Service Pack 03 (Released Date,
September 2016)

 SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.2 (Release Date, 18-May-2016)

 SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.1 (Release Date, 23- Nov-2013)
 SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0 (Release Date, 16-Sep-2011)
 SAP Business Objects XI R3.0
 SAP Business Objects XI R3.1
 Business Objects XI R1
 Business Objects XI R2
 Business Objects 6.x
 Business Objects 5.x
 Business Objects 4.x
 Business Objects 3.x

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 SAP HANA BI Development

Few of these tools can be directly accessed using a web interface known as BI Launchpad.
BI Launchpad is a Java or HTML based interface of BusinessObjects tool to perform
analytical reporting and data analysis. You can set the preference for your BI Launchpad
that determines, which tool interface is launched via Launchpad.

Using Web or Internet Application to access Webi interface via BI Launchpad, you can
perform the following tasks −

 Create, edit, and refresh all the reports in Web Intelligence.

 Create and edit all the queries in no data source (Universes) but not BEx queries
in Web application.

BI Launchpad has the following important tabs −

 Home − Displays the recent messages, alerts, documents, and applications that
can be run.

 Documents − Displays the available documents and folders, making it easier to

view, organize, and manage the documents.

 Any open Document − Displays each open document.

You can use the Application tab to start an application including Web Intelligence. You can
use the Preference tab to define BI Launchpad preferences.

To get the BI Launchpad details and user credentials you can reach the BO Administrator.
BI Launchpad has the following URL http://BOSERVER:8080/BOE/BI. To login to BI
Launchpad, open the web browser and enter the Launchpad URL provided by your
administrator. The following screen pops up.

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3. SAP HANA BI Development ─ Different BO Tools
Connection to HANA

In SAP BusinessObjects, different tool connects to HANA using different type of

connections. Few of the tools connect to the Database layer - Tables, Views, etc. using a
Relational connection to HANA database, however, other tools directly connect to Data
Modeling layer using an OLAP connection.

An OLAP connection can be created in the Central Management Console (CMC) or a

Relational connection and OLAP connection can also be defined in the Universe Designer.

Relational Connection
A Relational connection is used to connect to the database layer in HANA. You can connect
to database objects - tables, views, and design Data Foundation layer in the Information
Design tool. You can also import tables and joins from the data source.

OLAP Connection
OLAP is a multidimensional connection that directly points to the business layer in a data
model. It allows you to connect to the multidimensional schema directly and later, they
can be used with SAP BusinessObjects reporting tools.

BICS Client
To connect to SAP NetWeaver BW, you can use SAP BICS client middleware to provide
access to BEx query. Connections in IDT can be locally saved or they can be secured and
published in a central repository.

Local connections are saved as .cnx files and they can be accessed by any user who is
running IDT. Once you publish the connection to the repository, they are changed to a
secured connection.

A secured connection is published into the repository and saved in the Connection folder.
You can also create secured connections using Insert Relational and Insert OLAP
connection commands from the repository resource view.

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4. SAP HANA BI Development ─ Creating a Relational
Connection

Let us see how to create a Relational connection that can be used to connect to HANA
database layer to design Data Foundation layer for BOBJ reporting in a Universe.

Navigate to Information Design Tool -> Click New -> Project -> Enter the Project Name -
> Finish. Right-click the Project name -> New -> Relational Connection.

In the next window, enter the name of Relational connection -> Click the Next button.

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To set up a connection to HANA database, select SAP HANA database 1.0 from the driver
selection screen. In the following snapshot, we have selected SAP HANA -> JDBC Drivers
-> Next.

Note that to connect to HANA database, you should have the following information:

 Host Name
 Instance Number
 User Name
 Password

You can also select from different authentication modes such as LDAP or any other mode,
which is configured for HANA system login. Click the Next button.

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In the next window, you will be prompted to enter Connection Parameters - Connection
Pool Mode, Pool Timeout, Array Fetch Size, Array Bind Size, Login Tmeout, etc. Once you
pass this information, click the Finish button.

This will create a Relational connection to source HANA database and it can be used to
connect to Database layer objects for reporting. You can see the following information on
the Connection parameter screen:

 General
 Login Parameter
 Configuration Parameter

You can also edit any of the parameter value by the click of the edit button. When this
connection is used in the Universe Designer, this will point to all database objects in HANA
database. You can import tables, views from HANA database to build a data foundation
layer of a Universe. To test the connection, click the Test Connection and you will get a
message that the Connection is successful.

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To publish this connection to BO repository so that it can be used by any tool, right-click
the connection name and select Publish Connection to a Repository. This will create a new
object in the project tab with .cns extension.

.cns - Secured Repository connection

.cnx-local unsecured - If you use this connection, it will not allow you to publish anything
to the repository.

Note: In SAP BusinessObjects, most of the tools support Universe as the data source for
reporting. Using a Relational connection, you can connect to any HANA database system,
and import tables and views for Data Foundation Layer. Once .dfx is defined, it is required
to develop a Business Layer on the top of this layer. When the Universe is published to BO
server repository, it can be used by any BOBJ tool for reporting purpose.

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5. SAP HANA BI Development ─ Creating an OLAP
Connection

An OLAP connection is used to connect to HANA Information view or a data model and to
directly import all the business objects defined in the Business Layer for reporting.
To create a new OLAP connection, right-click the Project name -> New -> OLAP Connection.

In the next window, enter the Connection name, Description (Optional) and click Next.

Note: You point an OLAP connection to a specific cube or to complete HANA repository.
When this connection is used in any BO Reporting tool, you can directly import all objects
in HANA Modeling view or can also view all published information views in the repository
and select any of them for reporting.

Next, select an OLAP middleware driver. It shows a list of all available OLAP data sources.
You can select any OLAP data source as per requirement.

Note: You don’t need to create a Data Foundation, as an OLAP directly hits the Business
Layer. You can define dimensions, measures, and other properties at the Business Layer.

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Select the suitable middleware driver to connect to OLAP data source and click Next. To
connect to HANA views, select SAP HANA -> SAP HANA Client.

To connect to HANA system, you need the following information:

 Server Name
 Instance Number
 Authentication Details

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When you fill the above details and click the Next button, you have an option asking if you
want this connection to point to a specific cube or to all cubes in HANA repository.

Once this option is selected, click the Finish button at the bottom of the screen.

Now, you need to publish the connection to the Repository. Right-click Connection ->
Publish the Connection to the Repository.

When a new connection is created using Information Design tool, you have the following
connection parameters that can be defined:

 Connection Pool Mode: This is used to keep the connection active.

 Pool Timeout: When you set the Connection Pool Mode to Keep the connection
active for, it is the length of time in minutes to keep the connection open.

 Array Fetch Size: This tells the maximum number of rows that can be fetched
from the database.

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Example
Let us consider an example. You enter a value of 25 and your query returns 150 rows.
Hence, it will be fetched with 6 fetches of 25 rows each.

Array Bind Size: This field is not required for designing the Universe in IDT.

Login Timeout: It determines the minutes a connection attempts timeout and an error
message is displayed.

There are various custom parameters that can also be defined such as ConnectInit, Hint.

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6. SAP HANA BI Development ─ HANASAPModeling
HANA BI Development
Views

SAP HANA Modeling is one of the key capabilities of HANA system. This allows to create
multidimensional objects on top of HANA database objects to meet the business
requirements for reporting. You can implement complex business logic using HANA
information models to create a meaningful report for analysis.

Features of HANA Modeling

SAP HANA Modeling is one of the key concepts in HANA BI reporting.

 Using HANA Modeling, you can create complex data models as per business
requirement to provide multiple views of transactional data stored in physical tables
of HANA database.

 SAP HANA Modeling can only be done for column-based storage tables.

 HANA Modeling views can be used directly by SAP BusinessObjects reporting tools
such as Crystal Reports or Lumira using an OALP or HTTP connection.

 HANA supports different types of Modeling views such as - Attribute view is used
to model characteristics, Analytic view is used to implement Star schema and
Calculation view is used to implement complex logics, which are not possible with
other type of views (Galaxy schema).

 SAP HANA Modeling views can also be directly connected to third party tools such
as MS Excel using HANA MDX Provider.

 SAP HANA Modeling supports various features of Business Layer - Creating new
calculated columns, new measures, input parameters, hierarchies, etc.

SAP HANA provides following three types of Information Views:

 Attribute View
 Analytic View
 Calculation View

All HANA Modeling objects are stored in HANA Repository and it can be directly accessed
using any BI tool via proper authentication. When these objects are imported in any of the
reporting tools using an OLAP or HTTP connection, it also imports all the custom properties
of that model.

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SAP HANA suite also offers basic BI reporting functionalities, where you can create
interactive charts using data in HANA models.

Like other BI reporting tools, you can add dimension and measure values to Label and
Value axis. HANA provides the following options for BI analysis:

 Analysis: This tab is used to add different dimension and measure values to
different label axis. Filters can be applied as per business requirement.

 Distinct Values: This tab is used to see distinct values in data analysis for each
of dimension.

 Raw Data: This tab shows all raw data coming from data model as per Business
Layer parameters.

In a BI report, you can select from the following options: Chart, Table, Grid, or HTML.

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7. SAP HANA BI Development ─ Input Parameters in HANA

In SAP HANA, input parameters are used to filter the data by passing an input from the
user and to perform additional calculations at run time. The data is fetched based on the
input value, when a view is executed.

Example
Consider a scenario where an Input parameter is applied on the “Sold_Qty”, i.e. when the
Sold_Qty is greater than 20, then there is 10% discount on Total_Price. Otherwise, it
remains the same.

Input parameters are created in HANA Modeling views using SAP HANA Studio. When these
views are used in any BO reporting tool and the report is refreshed, users are prompted
to pass an input value for a particular field. To create a new parameter, navigate to the
Semantic section of HANA Modeling view.

Navigate to Parameters/Variables tab in the Semantic layer and click the “+” sign. Select
Create Input Parameter as shown in the following screenshot.

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