In this document, I will provide a high level of the steps involved to extend an Analytical App. Unlike Transactional Apps, Analytical Apps require SAP HANA and make direct XSOData calls to HANA via XS Engine. Most often you will find Analytical Apps using Virtual Data Models (VDM). These are pre-delivered HANA contents which reside in the SAP Suite on HANA server.
These contents can be extended to include additional/custom fields that are part of your SAP implementation.
Query View: These are HANA views which are meant for direct consumption by the reporting tools.
Value help views: Provide lookup values for all fields which require F4. They would refer to the base table and provide a name/value pair.
Reuse View: As the name suggests, these views are meant for reuse and have been designed in such a way that they encapsulate and expose the business contents in a well-structured format.
Private Views: These views talk directly to the physical tables and are very private.
Reuse views would use Private views and likewise, Query views would consume Reuse views. It’s always the Query view/Value Help views which are directly consumed by reporting tools.
Tip: Always analyse the contents of the VDM to see how much can be used AS-IS in your implementation. There may be contents which may not be required for your implementation. Hence, you could save a lot on performance by getting rid of things which are not required. You could use the contents of VDM as building blocks, which you could use to quickly create your own queries.
To find out the classification of each of the delivered view, you could use the HANA Live Browser located at https://<host:port>/sap/hba/explorer
Below are the High level steps to enhance Analytical Apps.
Enhance the HANA Views
Identify the Query view which is used by the Analytical App and prepare it for extension.
During extension, customers would need to a copy of the Query/Reuse views to customer namespace and make modifications. Below is the standard location for HANA Live contents for CRM. Notice that all calculation views which end in Query are Query views.
More details on How To Extend HANA Live contents.
Enhance the XSOData service
You would need to create a new OData service to expose the new Query view which has been developed. This would need to refer to the newly created Query view as shown below in the sample
Also, ensure that you have created hdbroles which provide enough authorization to execute the new queries. Below is a sample which I used.
Enhancing the Fiori App
There might be requirements for you to enhance the Fiori App to bring some visual changes. There would be Fiori App specifically delivered for each of the Analytical Applications. Look for documentation in SAP Help to find out all the extension points provided for the specific App. For example, if you are working on Project Systems (PS) and dealing with Overdue WBS Element App, you could find details on extension points out here.
There are lot of materials on SCN to help you on this. I have previously written an article on how to enhance Fiori Apps.
Modeling KPI’s using the New KPI Modeler
To bring a new tile on the Fiori Launchpad, you would need to model KPI tiles. For KPI Modeling there are set of standard tiles which can be accessed from the Fiori Launchpad. Using the KPI Modeler, you can bring a tile on the Launchpad which refers to your extended Analytical App.
I shall cover the below items in a separate article.
- SAP Managed Tags:
