Tips, Experience and Lessons Learned From S/4HANA Projects (TELL @ S/4HANA – PART 1)

Hello All,

As you all are aware of, S/4HANA is the new buzz word in the SAP World and there are lot of discussions happening around on the same, here in SDN aswell.

I am really lucky to be a part of some early S/4HANA projects, here @SAP.

At times, we had faced some issues, for which we had to spent a lot of time in identifying the real solution.

Through this series of blogs, I would take all possible efforts to include all those issues and the corresponding solutions. The main intention would be to help you understand more about S/4HANA and to save your time searching around for the solution.

Disclaimer:

1) This series is exclusively for Beginners in S/4 HANA and all those S/4HANA experts here, please excuse me.

2) These are some Solutions/Observations that we have found handy in our projects and am quite sure there would be multiple ways to derive the same result.

3) These series of blogs are collaborative in nature. So please feel free to edit the Blog, wherever required!

4) I am not a core functional guy. So you might see very less of the S/4HANA Functional aspects/Simplification topics here in this blog series.

5) I will regularly update this blog with the new tips and solutions.

So, here we go 😎

1)  How to Quickly open a Standard CDS View:

Tip:

Log into the ABAP Perspective in HANA Studio and access the S/4HANA System.

Access the Button:

Provide the CDS View name:

Click on the Data Definition and you can see the underlying CDS code.

2) Sometimes, you will see the following error message while previewing the CDS View.

Error : Message Content is not acceptable.

Solution:

This happens with the lower versions of HANA Studio.

Try using the latest Studio Versions like REV102.

3) Sometimes, the CDS View will not be appearing in the KPI Modeler of S/4HANA Smart Business tiles.

Solution:

If CDS View is not available, its obvious that the corresponding Odata service will also not be available.

This can be solved with the Following 2 steps:

a)  Ensure that the corresponding CDS View has the annotation –> @ODATA.PUBLISH = TRUE.

b)  Once the above step is done, you will find an auto generated service in the gateway system.

Naming Convention for Service = <CDS VIEW NAME>_CDS

EX: Log into the gateway system and access the Tcode:

/N/IWFND/MAINT_SERVICE

Click Add service.

    Provide the System Alias.

    Click Get Services.

    Now all the related Services will be available.

    Search with the naming convention, EX:

Click on the required Service and add a Package and the Transport Number

Now you can see that the service and Metadata was created successfully.

    Now the CDS and ODATA Service will be available.

4)  Error reading Info provider for CDS View error while activating the CDS View.

Solution:

This basically happens when you provide the wrong name in the Select from Statement.

Additional Tip: In a CDS View, we have 2 concepts:

DDL SQL View and DDL Source View.

The select from should always happen on DDL Source view name.

5) Annotation; @ODATA.PUBLISH = TRUE will create a Service automatically.

But when we try to activate the service, we get the following error.(Unknown or Deleted Query)

Solution:

This is basically happening due to incorrect CDS Definition.

Ensure that you have the right DDL source view in the Select From Definition.

6) Annotation; @ODATA.PUBLISH = TRUE will create a Service automatically.

But when we try to activate the service, we get the following error.(Unknown or Deleted Query)

(Only Queries with an easy Query layout are supported by this version)

We have a Tcode(/n/IWFND/ERROR_LOG) in the gateway system, which give lot of information about the error message.

But in this case, even the Tcode did not help us.

Solution:

My CDS View Initially did not have a measure been defined.

Later when I added a measure to my CDS View, the issue was completely solved.

7) An Alternative solution for activating your CDS View:

Tip:

Log into the S/4HANA Backend System and access the following program.

RUTDDLSACT

Provide the CDS View name and Execute.

8) An alternate option to view your CDS View Content.

Tip:

TCODE –> RSRTS_ODP_DIS

  If you click on Standard Query Button, You can see Bex Query Output Format.

9) An alternate option to see the CDS Definition:

Tip:

We can use Graphical Editor. You can find that option in the Context Menu of the CDS View name.

USEFUL LINKS:

1) CDS Annotations –> https://help.sap.com/saphelp_hanaplatform/helpdata/en/6f/cd6e5883f04de5b618a6d91141afb4/content.htm

USEFUL NOTES:

1) 2269696 – OQ: Brain 501 “Unknown or deleted query”

2) 2257830 –  OQ: OData query with tracing

Hopefully, the above points were useful.

Thanks for Reading.

I will be regularly updating this blog with the new tips and solutions.So stay tuned for more updates on this topic. 😎

BR

Prabhith