Leveraging HANA Graphical Modeling for Analytic Reports Webcast Recap

This was an SAP User Group webcast from last week

Abstract:

SAP HANA Calculation View is a powerful option that many SAP customers use to prepare data for various analytic reporting front-ends. In this session we will highlight graphical modeling and Calculation Views in particular from several aspects. One aspect will be the unique features that Calculation Views offer for analytic modeling. A short demo will illustrate how easy it is to develop models by using an intuitive interface. This graphical interface helps to hide the complexity involved and allows to focus on the modeling task itself instead. Another aspect will be how Calculation View modeling integrates into the new development environment of SAP Web IDE. Finally, the way forward, how to migrate Calculation Views into the new development environment, will be discussed.

Links:

Recording

Demo

PDF

Source: SAP

Source: SAP

The legal disclaimer applies

Figure 3: Source: SAP

Agenda

Why graphical vs. SQL view

Figure 4: Source: SAP

Easier to model

Example: star join, means to express it graphically

Graphical – easier to communicate model

Look at right – union, aggregation

Performance can be better

Features

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Integrate SQLScript

Code inside

Load data for warehousing

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Push down filters

Control what you want to do exactly

Way to add semantic information – join pruning – define knowledge of data structure; helps optmizer at run time to run faster

Union pruning – additional information on modeler

Column pruning – large view with a lot of columns, and if you only need a few columns, not all columns are processed, which is faster

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Debug view – see how it is processed

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Way to autodocument model to share knowledge to others

Options to do lineage analysis

Various options to do data previews (not for reporting, for understanding of models)

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OLAP features, pivot columns

Calculated columns – on the fly during query run time

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Support hierarchies

History tables

Support client handling (ABAP feature)

Analytic privilege support – security on a record level

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When features were introduced

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Anonymization

Non-equi joins – join based on dates

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Fuzzy search – search for not just exact matches, typos

Easy to switch to upper case

Unified modeling environment

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Web IDE for SAP HANA- one integrated environment

New features are only available in Web IDE

Old DEV environments have been deprecated

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Benefits – move to the cloud environments

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Deprecated views

Only support calculation views

Need to migration to new environments

Question & Answer

Q: Does the new Web editor require XSA

A: In cloud, don’t need it, it runs in Cloud Foundry

Q: What is the front end screen for end users to consume analytics generated by SAP Web IDE

A: Depends on needs – Analysis Office, Lumira

Q: Can we connect the Web IDE on SAP cloud to on premise HANA ?

A: Not possible yet

Q: is it the same as the web IDE as the Web IDE in HANA XSA ?

A: no but feature wise similar

Q: can you suggest learning materials for HANA Web IDE beginner

A: Blog, what is changing is how you develop, https://developers.sap.com/india/topics/sap-webide.html#tutorials

https://blogs.sap.com/2018/12/13/overview-modeling-in-sap-web-ide-compared-to-sap-hana-studio