Real-Time Operational Reporting with SAP HANA Live

by Dr. Bjarne Berg and Brandon Harwood

Key Concept
Understand the use case for SAP HANA Live views in relation to real-time operational reporting
on the SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA. This involves installing pre-delivered SAP HANA
views and accessing these views from BusinessObjects tools, such as BusinessObjects Explorer,
Web Intelligence, and other SAP reporting and analytics tools.

Summary/Description
Dr. Bjarne Berg and Brandon Harwood show you how to develop and implement SAP HANA
Live views for real-time operational reporting.

Abstract
Get an overview of the hundreds of SAP HANA Live (formerly part of the Composite Analytic
Framework or CAF) views that can be used to enable real-time operational reporting and
analytics. Using this approach, companies can use standard views directly as data sources for
reporting, and can form an alternative foundation for much of the operational reporting currently
done in enterprise data warehouses and data marts inside SAP BW.

Learning Objectives
Explore SAP HANA Live functionality and how it aids in real-time reporting
Learn how to build custom SAP HANA views by extending pre-delivered SAP HANA Live
views
Become familiar with the SAP HANA views and their role in reporting [/]

SAP HANA is a combination of hardware and software that optimizes database technologies to
exploit the speed of fast in-memory processing and parallel processing capabilities of multi-core
systems. SAP HANA Live (formerly known as part of the Composite Analytic Framework or
CAF) leverages this technology with hundreds of pre-delivered SAP HANA Live views. These
additional views allow companies to quickly start developing real-time operational reporting on
top of transactional data from the SAP Business Suite or SAP S/4 transactional systems, without
having to extract and move the operational data to data warehouses.

It is important to understand that reporting in SAP HANA relies on three primary views types:
attribute, analytical, and calculation views. Each view fulfills a specific function, which we
explore in detail in this article. SAP HANA Live leverages and extends these views into a virtual
data model (VDM), which then can be used in reporting. Currently, SAP provides more than 800
pre-delivered views with SAP HANA Live that you can install on your Business Suite or SAP
S/4 system.

Note
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
Educations three-day HA300 Implementation and Modeling class or the two-day HA900 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.

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. To
understand SAP HANA and SAP HANA Live views in general, you have to know the difference
between the different view types.

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.

When an attribute view is built, most developers want it to conform to many types of
transactions. For example, if you built an attribute view of customer data, you want this view to
contain enough meaningful fields so that it can be joined to other data foundations or
transactions such as sales orders, billing, and payments. In other words, the attribute view can be
reused in ways that simplify the development of analytical views.

In general, attribute views typically contain text, but they can be built to include many different
tables. For example, in Figure 1, customer data is being joined to the sales organization and the
country data tables to get a more complete view of customers.
Figure 1 An example of attribute view modeling in SAP HANA studio

Tables are simply added by selecting them from the navigator pane in SAP HANA studio and
dragging and dropping them into the scenario section in the Data Foundation box. Table joins
can be added by clicking and dragging the line options from one table to another in the Details
section.

As you can see in the output section in Figure 1, you can select which fields you want to include
in the attribute view and you can add your own calculated columns. These columns, in turn, are
where calculations are then executed in memory on the database instead of on the application
servers or in queries. This can lead to dramatic performance improvements in reports that access
these views. In other words, the more calculations you push to SAP HANA views, the faster an
application may run.

Finally, filters and new key fields can also be added to make the attribute view as useful as
possible. As shown in Figure 1, all the fields that are exposed in the attribute view are indicated
with an orange circle next to the field in the Details pane.

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. Most people quickly find this very intuitive. For example,
in Figure 2, the products and customer attribute views are being joined with sales orders to
create analytical views.

Figure 2 Example of analytical view modeling in SAP HANA studio

Experienced BW developers will find that this is logically very similar to dimensional modeling
in an InfoCube. Once the view is validated and saved, it is instantly available for reporting to
those who have been granted access. The analytical view can then be consumed by most
BusinessObjects tools, as well as other third-party tools.

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. For
example, you can see an illustration of the basic principles of a calculation view in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Schematics of a calculation view

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. For example, if you
have added a new Z-field or table in the Business Suite, they will not be found in the standard
SAP HANA Live calculation views. These have to be added as an extension.

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 (Figure 4). By using
this option, you can copy a standard pre-delivered SAP HANA Live view and then extend it.

Figure 4 Adding a new calculation view

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. Simply
right-click the view you would like to copy and select Create New Extension View. This displays
all of the underlying fields where you can select those that need to be included in the reuse and
query view outputs (Figure 5).
Figure 5 The SAP HANA extensibility assistant tool

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 can have eight to 10 nested views and custom joins).

Another feature of SAP HANA Live is that SAP has developed more than 800 views that are
delivered with this tool. These predefined views can be copied and customized to suit most
specific reporting needs of a company. Although most companies find these very useful, it is not
abnormal to still have a need to build or extend 10 percent to 20 percent more views to meet the
requirements of specific reporting and custom processes (i.e., for Profitability Analysis [CO-
PA]).

Virtual Data Models

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 (like those illustrated in
Figure 3). 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
October 2015, there were 242 query views available for reporting straight out-of-the-box when
installing SAP HANA Live.

SAP HANA Live Browser

To make it easier to locate and understand the views, SAP has created an SAP HANA Live
browser tool (Figure 6). 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.

Figure 6 The SAP HANA Live browser

This browser tool allows you to search for available views and see how they are built. For
example, in Figure 6, the focus is on MM - Materials Management (see the left selection panel).
As you can see, this allows us to see all the available views in the different categories. For
reporting, you would be particularly interested in the query views.

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 an enterprise data warehouse (EDW) data mart (like it is
done in SAP 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. However, other more traditional
BusinessObjects tools will normally consume the SAP HANA Live views through a universe.

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.

Creating a HANA Universe

First, begin by creating a new project folder in the IDT. Then right-click and select New > SAP
HANA Business Layer from the context-menu options (not shown). This opens the screen shown
in Figure 7.

Figure 7 Add a new business layer in the IDT for SAP HANA Live-based universes

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.

Click the Next button and, in the screen that opens (Figure 8), 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.
Figure 8 Add a connection in the IDT

Select the check box next to your desired connection, in this case, DEMO.cnx then click the
Next button to complete the connection change process in Figure 9.

Figure 9 Add a secure .cns connection in the IDT

You also need to create a secure .cns connection within the BusinessObjects connection
repository (Figure 9) to enable reports to be authored and shared on this universe within the
BusinessObjects 4.1 platform. Once this connection is defined, you can change your SAP HANA
Live connection to point to the new .cns connection in the repository. Click the Finish button and
the screen in Figure 10 opens.
Figure 10 Connect the business layer in the 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 (Figure 10). Select the view and
click the Finish button to complete the creation steps for SAP HANA business layer for your
universe.

Publishing a Universe

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 (Figure 11). 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.
Figure 11 Publish a universe based on a SAP HANA Live view to a BusinessObjects repository

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. By default, the universe
settings do not enable query stripping and limit the row count that can be returned by the
universe. It is therefore very important that you change these settings in the query properties
section in the IDT (Figure 12).
Figure 12 Change the query settings in the IDT for SAP HANA Live view-based universes

Alternatives to Using Universes

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 (a
better option than universes, in most cases). 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 (Figure
13).
Figure 13 Add a connection in Lumira to SAP HANA Live views

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.) Then click the Next button, which opens the screen in Figure 14.

Figure 14 Add a connection in Lumira to the SAP HANA Live views

Next, select the SAP HANA view you would like to use as the basis of your Lumira analysis
(Figure 14). In this case, use the same SalesOrderQuery view that you built the BusinessObjects
universe on previously, to illustrate the query views versatility.

After selecting the view, Lumira displays the dimensions and measures associated with that view
(Figure 15). By default, all dimensions and measures are selected for use in the report. However,
these dimensions and measures can be deselected, if necessary.

Figure 15 Select fields from the SAP HANA Live views to use in Lumira

After you have selected the fields to use in your data visualizations in Lumira, 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 manipulated as if it were a universe. This means that all
normal functionality, such as custom calculated fields, custom hierarchies, and other data
formatting options, are available.

It is important to note that if a calculation is used by many users and is consistent across the
organization, it is often better to add new calculated fields directly in the SAP HANA Live view
instead of in Lumira. This is because of the much faster speed offered by SAP HANA relative to
application servers.

This method of connecting to the views from SAP HANA Live streams and provides access to
the data in real time. As a result, data is updated after every refresh, directly from the
transactional data in the Business Suite on SAP HANA. Users now have the benefits of fast
performance, merged with the simplicity of graphically analyzing data in Lumira, plus the ability
to add from a vast number of fields now exposed to the front-end tool (Figure 16).
Figure 16 Accessing real-time data from SAP HANA Live views in Lumira

Modifying SAP HANA Live Views [head 2]

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 (Figure 6). Once you locate the view on which you want to
base your extensions, you are ready to begin the process.

In SAP HANA studio, right-click the package where you would like to store this custom view,
select New, and then select Calculation View from the context-menu options. In the New
Information View window that opens (Figure 17), select the Copy From check box and click the
Browse button to locate and select the view you would like to use (Figure 18).
Figure 17 Create a new information view

Figure 18 Navigate to the view

Once you select your view, it is important to take note of the views Data Category. The views
Data Category needs to be set as a Cube to ensure it is visible to the BusinessObjects reporting
tools (Figure 19).
Figure 19 Set the Data Category view

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. 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 context-
menu option (Figure 20).

Figure 20 Add a field to an existing view

To complete the process of adding the new field you need to add a new join to the view. Click
the join icon (boxed in green in Figure 21), then drag and drop the new SalesDistrict field into
the join.
Figure 21 Add a join

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. 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. Since only a single field is being
adding to the view, the join only consists of two items, the SAPClient and SalesDistrict (Figure
22).
Figure 22 Define the join

Now that the SalesDistrict join is complete, you need to propagate the new field to the semantics
layer. Right-click the SalesDistrict field in the join, and select Propagate to Semantics from the
context-menu options (Figure 23). When prompted, select the OK button to confirm that that
new field has been propagated upwards to the aggregation and semantic layers.
Figure 23 Propagate the new field

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.

Conclusion

SAP HANA Live is a new product offering for most organizations using SAP. However, the
potential use of the content in the views it provides are far reaching. Some organizations may
simply choose to push most of their real-time operational reporting into this tool, thereby
reducing the need for moving all operational data into SAP BW.

It also reduces the need for faster ETL processes to get access to real-time analytics. The data is
simply not moved at all, and stays inside the transaction system. In other words, the EDW can
become what it was intended to be: a platform for planning, budgeting, forecasting,
consolidation, summarized management reports, and what-if analysis. At the same time,
operational reporting goes back to the transaction system where it belongs. In other words, with
SAP HANA Live you can take advantage of the dramatic performance improvements of the SAP
HANA database while simplifying the reporting landscape, thereby reducing data latency
between systems and potentially shrinking the footprint of many EDWs.