HANA Live Real Time Business Intelligence Unifying OLAP OLTP – ASUG Webcast
This ASUG webcast was similar to BI Rapid Deployment Solutions – EMEA Webcast with some updates. The usual legal disclaimer applies that things in the future are subject to change. This is part 1. Part 2 is here HANA Live RDS – Unifying OLAP OLTP for Real Time BI – Part 2 ASUG Webcast
The SAP speaker said we are moving from large complex projects. Rapid deployment solutions come in packages, for different areas. This webcast covered the SAP HANA Live rapid deployment solution, which includes software, best practices and services. The software = SAP HANA Live – on HANA platform / database. The best practices is the content in HANA Live. Services are defined with a predefined scope.
Next Generation Business Requirements for Operational Analytics
Figure 1: Source: SAP
HANA Live uses Suite on HANA. HANA Live is a by product of Suite on HANA.
HANA Live uses the tables from SAP business suite. HANA Live uses the same set of tables and replicate for analytical information
The speaker said the virtual data models are available on HANA license (enterprise edition/suite on HANA)
Figure 2: Source: SAP
Figure 2 shows data views are available with HANA Live the suite including CRM, inventory, suppliers, etc.
The speaker said there is uniformity with HANA Live, across business suite systems and applications
Figure 3: Source: SAP
SAP Business Suite powered by HANA – SAP wants to help drive business in real-time.
The speaker said always work on a single source of truth and analysis on large parts of data
SAP HANA Live provides options for operational reporting by providing over 2K virtual data models
The RDS solution provides 100 pre-built reports based on BI Platform
Users can obtain real time operational reporting on top of large amounts of data against the business suite with the HANA Live
Figure 4: Source: SAP
Architecture of HANA Live is shown above in Figure 4.
HANA Live has a “unique way of defining access to the data model and tailored to analytical use cases”.
It uses familiar tables such as MARA and BSEG
Data models for HANA Live are optimized for transaction scenarios
It uses a layered set of database views – virtual data models
Top layer provides views consumed by BI tools – query views – SAP UI5 or BI Platform
Layered views with physical tables on top of tables use private views and reused views
HANA Live is a two-tier architecture with SAP HANA using a relational database – app server and web server is first tier, and the UI clients are the second tier
Initial shipment is characterized is applications are exposing the UI5 applications on tablets and use the query views using XS engine or the virtual data models – views on database tables
Replication is only required for side by side scenario (sidecar scenario) using SLT
Top layer of model is the query view, designed to be consumed by BI clients. They can be exposed as OData services by XS engine too.
Reuse views are the heart of the virtual data model – not meant for consumption of reports – translates source business suite into views
Private views are the encapsulation of the transformations (views/joins of physical tabes)– comparable to ABAP sub routines
Figure 5: Source: SAP
Figure 5 provides definition of the HANA Live views, discussed in Figure 4.
Figure 6: Source: SAP
The speaker said they are in continuous innovation mode
The content with SAP HANA Live – go to help.sap.com you will see the out of the box content (meaning the data models for operational reporting)
Data models are available for SAP ERP, CRM and some industry specific components such as Insurance
It is in quarterly shipment mode
SP04 for HANA Live was delivered in December 2013
SP05 will be available in 2014
Figure 7: Source: SAP
Value proposition is shown above
It is an open model, can extend models based on custom applications
SQL skills are sufficient to retrieve data
It enables common reporting
Data models hide the complexity
RDS provides guides on how to extend the models.
Figure 8: Source: SAP
Common question is how does this fit with SAP Business Warehouse?
HANA Live is a tool for real time operational reporting – lightweight modeling
BW is for strategic and technical reporting; planning scenarios
This is not replacing BW, according to the speaker
To be continued…at HANA Live RDS – Unifying OLAP OLTP for Real Time BI – Part 2 ASUG Webcast
I liked your post.But will this eliminate the data acquisition(extraction) process completely between OLAP and OLTP or will there still be extraction.
sapexplore
Depends on your use case and scenario....will post part 2 soon so you can see.
As Tammy said, it depends. If you are running Suite on HANA, then no extraction is required as all of the data is already in one place. For sidecar scenario, it's obvious that you will need to extract the data out, SLT is the most logical choice of tool for the job. HANA Live is a package of logical data models that are imported.
Regards,
Justin
thanks so much , if the data is in one place its a good concept but will it have issues with historical data performance , or is it that sidecar scenario is used for historical reports, also look forward to the second post on the scenario.
HI Tammy,
Thanks a lot for sharing this info on HANA Live
I have a question regarding HANA Live Authorization Assistant
For a ABAP user, how the Authorization Assistant generates analytic privileges in HANA
How will it know about ABAP user authorizations for a ABAP user and how it checks them
Regards,
Vivek
Hi Vivek,
I don't know the answer to this, as this was not covered in the webcast. Perhaps ask this in the discussion forum?
Tammy
Hi Tammy,
I have asked it in the forum noe:
http://scn.sap.com/thread/3483550
Regards,
Vivek
Hi Tammy,
Thanks for sharing.
The architecture and use cases appear logical and attractive for the most part, and the avoidance of massive data replication appears through the OLTP/OLAP convergence to be an advantage also at first look.
Of course the key "gotcha" is in the sentence "The speaker said the virtual data models are available on HANA license (enterprise edition/suite on HANA)" and the costs associated with such licenses, as this directly impacts the business case including ROI.
For example at the company I am currently at, they have decided (or been persuaded by their friendly SAP Sales Exec) to purchase a SAP BW on HANA license only. Therefore most of the above is now not applicable here, unless (yet another) license purchase with SAP is undertaken. The current appetite for yet such another negotiation is pretty slim, and the business case for such would appear to be pretty hard to argue...
Thanks again for sharing, and I will read Part 2 with interest.
Cheers from Oz, Phil G.