Integrating Predictive Analytics from HANA Express Edition into a Google Spreadsheet

Having SAP HANA, express edition, a few clicks away from running in Google Cloud Platform is like adding whipped cream to a Nutella ice cream with molten chocolate. You get the idea, two great things coming together in a way that can only produce an even greater result.

To celebrate the announcement, I built a quick demo to show how these two platforms so perfectly complement each other. They are the binary equivalent of Princess Leia and Han Solo or Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.

Parting from the functional requirements from Thomas Grassl, I got a Google Spreadsheet consuming the result of the Forecast Smoothing algorithm in the Predictive Analytic Library in my own SAP HANA, express edition, running in the Google Cloud Platform.

The final result is a custom menu in Google Spreadsheets that displays the forecast for expenses based on the actual expenses for 8 months.

I will dig into the technical details of the two sides of such synergistic pair in different blog posts:

• SAP HANA Express and the Predictive Analytic Library through oData
• Google Sheets and Google Script calling SAP HANA Express 

Before we go into the technical details, let me tell you the requirements first: We have a (fake) dataset with trips and their expenses on different concepts such as the hotel, the ride from the airport and meals. Thomas wanted to know how much Craig and his team of evangelists were going to spend in the next months. I used the Forecast Smoothing algorithm to forecast the budget based on the first 8 months of transactions.

The documentation for this, and many other algorithms can be found in the SAP Help, together with very useful examples you can quickly adapt to your needs.

Of course, our catalog has some comprehensive step-by-step tutorials, blogs by my friend Abdel Dadouche and even CodeJams if you are interested.