Technical Articles
BW/4 HANA mixed scenarios with Native HANA HDI Containers
Mixed scenarios in general are supported in BW on HANA and BW/4 HANA with Native HANA models(XS classic), there has been a lot of documentation on this topic available in SAP community, for example, Blog
With the introduction of XS advanced in HANA, regarding the mixed scenarios, there has been no support in BW on HANA and very little support in BW/4 HANA 1.0. In the newer releases of BW, it is getting improved. In this blog, I am going to describe how the integration scenarios work in BW/4 HANA 2.0 SP 02 or 03 with Native HANA XSA.
1. BW Models in Native HANA :
In the integration scenarios, BW objects can be generated as external calculation views and then consumed in Native HANA models to utilize HANA platform capability for further modeling. In XS classic, using HANA studio/Eclipse BW objects like ADSO, Composite providers will be generated as external Calculation views, they are available in HANA repository automatically for further use in CV modeling. However, it is not same in XS Advanced HDI containers. the below picture explains the process,
In XS advanced, HDI containers are created for DB modeling, with all the objects tables, views, procedures, functions and Calculation views are created inside the HDI container. These HDI containers are isolated from Classic database schemas. So with that, HDI container can’t have direct access to the generated CVs from BW objects.
For that, a custom user provider service(cups) will be created from HDI container to classic Database, which gives the access to _SYS_BIC schema, then a synonym will be created in HDI container for the generated CV and then synonym will be used as local objects in HDI container for further modeling of CVs. Finally HDI container CVs will be consumed by BI tools.
Note: Data base user which is used to set up cups must have authorization on _SYS_BIC schema in order to grant the access to HDI container user. This process of access scenario is explained in this blog, Classic DB access
Note: There is no future plan to support direct deployment of BW/4 generated CVs into HDI containers, reasons can be found in the SAP note 2463312.
2. Native HANA HDI models in BW/4 HANA:
In integration scenarios of XS classic, native HANA CVs can be embedded in BW/4 objects like Composite provider and open ODS views and then further modeling and query creation can happen in BW/4 HANA, then finally BI tools will consume the queries. However with XS advanced, CVs in HDI containers are not directly consumable in BW/4 HANA. So the process to achieve that is explained in below picture
In XS advanced, CVs will be created in HDI container, it is isolated to other containers and also to classic database as explained above. In order to provide the access on HDI container, .hdbrole will be created inside the container, that will be granted to DB schema user who wants to access container objects in this case BW managed schema in HANA. The container hdbrole can be granted in Web IDE DB Explorer admin console by running the standard Stored procedures, you can follow the blog, hdi container roles to classic user
Even after granting the role, container CVs are not visible to consume in Composite provider, for that customization setting required to be done in BW/4 HANA system. Please note that, this is only possible in BW/4 HANA 2.0, can’t be possible in BW/4 HANA 1.0.
SPRO -> SAP Reference IMG -> SAP BW/4HANA Customizing Implementation Guide -> SAP BW/4HANA -> Data Modeling -> Settings for Consumption of SAP HANA Views
With this above setting, HDI containers will be made available to consume in composite providers. for more information refer to SAP note 2810348.
if you still can’t access HDI container CVs in BW/4 objects, please refer to the troubleshooting guide in the SAP note 2824206.
In the future coming releases of BW/4 HANA, more integration is planned for XS advanced HDI containers.
Thank you.
Sreekanth Surampally
Hi Sreekanth Surampally
Thanks a lot for this information. To me, this is the starting point of a task that I need to fulfill inmediatly. Can you give me some general guidense?
I want to create a HDI in web ide (XSA), wich should replicate the information from a Virtual Table that is in the BW4HANA database scheme, transform a little the information; and put the transformed data into a table / view that can be accesed from BW4HANA (like in a composite provider).
The general scenario is: We have a new implementation of a SAP BW4HANA 2.0 SP4 (over a SAP HANA Enterprise, on premise). I know that the is some technical configurations missing in my landscape (I will point out that with some examples later).
What we want to achieve is replicate some tables from a MS SQL server with SDI with a little logic in the process. Thats way we thought that flowgraph come in handly.
We have succesfully implement the SDI replication. To test these I created a simple flowgraph in the old wed editor and everything worksed fine. But I noticed that a lot a features were missing compare with the new version in the sap web ide from XSA.
So right now, I am trying to create the flowgraph in web ide. We updated the XSA, the runtime tools, the web ide in our system.
I dont have to much experience in the new web ide, so I am following some documentation, where its explained that a HDI must be created, in order to have the flowgraph in there.
Doing these, I have the following questions:
In my landscape, the are two xsa spaces: DEV and SAP. Which should I use? DEV dont have any services, but SAP have a lot (like if everything is ready to go to develop).
The sapce SAP is map to the SYSTEMDB, should I map to the tenant database (BW4HANA Database) in order to develop things there?
When I try to create a services of HANA with the hdi-shared plan in the DEV space mapped to my tenant databse I get an error. The error is clear beacause is trying the inject the code into the wrong port (30015 and the tenant databse is in 30041) .Do you know where is getting these configuration the XSA Cockpit?
Thanks a lot,
Regards
Hi, you are questions are more on how to start doing HDI objects creation in Web IDE for HANA. First one, SAP space comes up with standard applications which are installed as part of XSA, it is mapped to SYSTEM DB which is fine. The other space DEV, is the one which you are going to use for your objects, that will be mapped a specific tenant (not the SYSTEM DB). Lastly the mapping of tenant to space is done in XSA cockpit. I would recommend to follow the SAP hana academy tutorials to get started on this configurations.
Thanks for the reply.
I am following the SAP HANA Academy tutorials, but something is missing. For example, when I try to create a hana services with the plan hdi-shared in the DEV spaces, its fails with the same error as when I try to build a new hdi artefact. The error is that is pointing to a wrong port
You can see the full explanation here
https://answers.sap.com/questions/13020561/xsa-sap-hana-database-module-template-fail-to-buil.html
Thaks for all the guidense.
Regards
Ok, I am following your question on SAP forums. let us see, if we can get to resolution on this.
Hi Sreekanth Surampally,
thank you for the information. It was actually very useful to me.
However I have a concern regarding the license. If my HANA which the BW/4 is running on, has a runtime license (not the enterprise or full use license), could I still install XSA on it and create calculation views on HDI containers via SAP WebIDE that consume generated Calculation Views in the HANA Repository? Do you have any experience with that?
Thank you in advance
Best Regards
Hi, HANA Runtime license for BW is restricted and used as underlying database for BW objects. if you wanted to leverage XSA applications in HANA, Standard edition is required. I would say, you can check with your SAP Account Executive to confirm on the same.
Hi,
thank you a lot for the infos.
That is actually a bit wonderful. On the one hand, the runtime license allows to create calculation views in the hana repository, but SAP strongly recommends to go the new way (XSA, HDI Containers, WebIDE, etc...) as the hana repository is deprecated. So calculations Views that have been created in the HANA repository should be migrated as well. On the other hand, if we would like to migrate the existing calculation views or consume the generated ones in HDI Container, we absolutely need to buy a standard edition license. That means, that there will not be possible to implement a mixed senario (by creating calculation views) BW+HANA in the future when using a hana runtime license as the hana repository will be removed.
again thank you and best regards
That is a good point, What I meant Standard license required for XSA development in the context of Native HANA development(DB and App). For mixed scenario with XSA, may be runtime license is sufficient, not sure. I am not following SAP updates on this topic lately. So you can ask SAP rep to confirm on this.
But in general there is no direct integration from BW/4 to XSA for CVs. In this blog, Scenario 1 integration from BW to HANA XSA, still it generating _SYS_BIC views which is XS classic object, So it is not a direct integration to XSA. In my personal opinion for BW HANA mixed scenarios, I would still use XS classic even with HANA 2.0 SP 05 version and BW HANA Runtime license is sufficient for this.
Hi Sreekanth Surampally,
ok, again thank you. I will ask the SAP Rep about that.
Best Regards
hi Brice Fedjo
did you get feedback from your SAP Rep on this question?
I think this is a very important point to consider when customers are implementing BW/4.
The XS classic mixed scenario is widely used within BW on scenarios including runtime license (mix of scenarios 1 & 2 above, in the sense of doing the data load into ADSOs in the BW schema, then virtual calculations within calculation views based on the generated calculation views and finally virtual consumption in BW with the Composite Provider & BW query including the BW features like authorizations, master data & texts, ...).
My latest information was that also within BW/4 the runtime license is only allowing the XS classic scenario and no XSA modeling. Therefore I am looking forward to a more up to date information...
Kind regards Paul
Hi Paul,
unfortunately I didn't get any feedback from SAP so far.
"My latest information was that also within BW/4 the runtime license is only allowing the XS classic scenario and no XSA modeling." // was that an information from SAP itself?
Best regards
Brice
yes... Brice Fedjo
Hi Sreekanth Surampally
Thank you for the worthful post!
In my case, for scenario 2, after the spro setting, I can find and select the HDI calc view in BW composite provider and activate it succesfully. But when I create and run a query on top the CP, I get an error saying "Hana model not there". Does it come familiar? or can there be any further steps after activating hdi support in spro?
Thanks!
Hi Ceyhun,
can there be any further steps after activating hdi support in spro?
Not that I am aware of. If you are able to activate CP, then there shouldn't be any further problems in accessing HDI CV in BW Query.
Hi Sreekanth,
Thanks a lot for your response. I discovered that there was a bug with my case. OSS note 3105090 fixed the issue. Now the query works on the CP.
Thanks for the update.