SQL Consumption of #BWonHANA Data and Models

Below, there is a 3 min screencam of a demo that shows how a BW infoprovider – in this case a composite provider – is exposed as a HANA view. The latter is then consumed via SQL from SAP Lumira. Thereby, BW security is also transferred to HANA. Furthermore, a change in the BW infoprovider – see step 12. – is automatically translated into the corresponding adjustment on the HANA end, meaning that the BW data model lifecycle is available for the generated HANA views too. Fig. 1 provides an overview of the benefits.

Figure 1: Generation of HANA views from BW models in SAP BW 7.4 on HANA

The demo script is the following:

1. It starts in the new Eclipse-based editor for BW composite providers. A composite provider POS is picked.
2. [0:16] By selecting the Overviewtab the general settings for the composite provider become visible. The checkbox External SAP HANA View is checked.
3. [0:23] The the composite provider gets activated.
4. [0:31] The perspective SAP HANA Modeler is selected in order to look into the HANA content catalog.
5. [0:39] Under the default location Content → system-local → bw → bw2hana → Calculation Views a new view POS– same name as the related infoprovider – shows up.
6. [0:45] POS is selected and it’s outline can be seen in the central panel.
7. [0:52] Switch to Lumira; the latter is connected to the HANA instance underneath the BW-on-HANA system.
8. [1:06] The generated view POSis selected.
9. [1:20] In Lumira, a simple drill-down is executed on top of the generated HANA view.
10. [1:35] We move back to the BW Modeling perspective in Eclipse.
11. [1:42] Inside the composite provider editor, the Output tab is chosen.
12. [1:45] An additional navigation attribute is activated for the characteristic Store and the composite provider is (re-)activated, thereby automatically (re-)generating the associated HANA view.
13. [2:08] Switiching to Lumira and reloading the HANA view definition (as it has changed).
14. [2:30] A new attribute Countryis now available …
15. [2:35] … and used for a geographical drill-down using a map-based graphic.

Credits go to Patrick Winkler who has created this demo. For more details on the limitations of this feature and approach please check this page. You can follow me on Twitter via @tfxz. This blog has been cross-published here.