HANA View data visualization from SAP Lumira

I tried Lumira on one of our live HANA system. The HANA view that I am going to use in this blog is having 1,670,000,000+ General ledger records and data was replicated from SAP R/3 with help of SLT.

This view was created on top of BIG tables BSEG, BKPF, CSKS and others to provide comprehensive GL reporting with flexible filters or deep level aggregations. Example, results for G/L Account number, Cost Center, WBS Element, Company Code, Fiscal Year and Document Details.

1. Enable connection to SAP HANA

Select “SAP HANA One Online” as data source (We can also try offline with same steps).

Enter server name, Instance number, credentials and click on ‘Connect SAP HANA Instance’.

We can see text in right side window once we have successful connection. Selected one of the view from right side window:

2. HANA View data visualization:

As we can see in below screen shot, there are 73 attributes including ‘company code’, ‘gl account number’, ‘fiscal year’ etc., and 4 measures. (Best part is, it automatically identified measures and attributes from view).

Click on ‘Visualize’ button to create visual reports.

We can simply drag fields from view into below panel as per the requirement.

Below tool will help us to create various reports with different charts/options.

Let’s try the first one…

As we can see in below screen shot, I have placed ‘Group Currency’ & ‘Quantity’ on Y-Axis and ‘Cost Center’ on X-Axis. We can do mouse over on results to see details about particular line/record.

Filter option is available to show results for one or multiple cost centers (in above case). Note, the panel where we have Y-Axis and X-Axis may not be same for all as each chart will have it’s unique behavior.

For example, using Pie charts for combination of negative & positive values is theoretically not correct.  I got below results when I tried with my data.

Sector with ‘Warning’ icon indicates that it’s negative amount. Also, if we look at below area charts and word charts, there is no traditional X-Axis and Y-Axis concept. This indicates, selecting and using right option for our business/client requirement can enrich the experience.

Above chart actually indicates that there is highest number of transaction amount in USD currency. Let’s place ‘Fiscal year’ instead of currency and filter data with ‘Fiscal Period’.

We can also exclude selected values by selecting “Exclude Values” radio button in “Filtered Values” sub window. You can see below results with corresponding title.

3. Response Time and Data Volume

I am happy user to say that there is no extra time to generate reports even though I am dealing with high volume of data. Of course, each time I change attribute or measure or chart type, it is taking around 30 secs that is to get data from HANA.

I received below error when I tried to display charts for ‘accounting document number’ vs ‘amount’..(FYI-There are more than million unique records). I totally agree with below message and I don’t think someone need report with more than that limit.

4. Conclusion

This is powerful and quick visualization tool and we can create much… much better charts/reports with good understanding on business. No doubt, it has got all latest options by leaving things to our creative brains!

I like all these options! It took hardly 1hr time for me explore up to this this level! Prior to this GL data example, I tried Lumira with expensive movies list data for which word chart looks pretty cool. 😉

Thank you!

Naveen Inuganti