SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Suite enables customers to make better, more informed decisions with access to real-time insights on a single, scalable platform. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Plarform 4.3 was recently released, and connections to SAP HANA Cloud are now supported !
Find all technical capabilities of the product on the Product Availability Matrix for SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform

In this blog, I will explain how to create a connection from SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform to SAP HANA Cloud, using the Information Design Tool.

There are different ways to connect from SAP BusinesObjects BI Platform to SAP HANA :

Option 1:Using a Universe on top of SAP HANA tables/views and build web intelligence reports with that universe

Option 2:Webi connecting with SAP HANA tables/views directly

Option 3: Using SAP HANA Online connectivity

Option 4: Connecting SAP HANA views using Free-hand SQL

Learn more about the different connections here.
In this blog, I focus on Option 1: Using a Universe on top of SAP HANA Cloud tables.
The steps required to connect to SAP HANA Cloud are actually very similar to the steps to connect to SAP HANA on-premise.

Note: HANA Calculation views via JDBC/OBDC are not supported in relational universes on SAP HANA Cloud. Only HANA tables available on SAP HANA Cloud are supported in relational universes via JDBC/ODBC connections.

Prerequisites

• SAP HANA Cloud (it works also with a SAP Cloud Platform trial account)
• SAP BusinessObjects Business intelligence 4.3 installed on Windows Server

Download and install the HANA client to your Windows server

Download the latest SAP HANA client. Run the executable file on your Windows server to install the client.

Once it is installed, ODBC drivers for SAP HANA will become accessible.
Open ODBC Data Sources (64-bit) to create a new SAP HANA source.

Create an ODBC configuration for SAP HANA

Select “Add“,then choose SAP HANA in the list that comes up.

In the ODBC configuration, enter a Data source name, your SAP HANA Cloud host name and the port number. You can find this information in the SAP Cloud Platform Cockpit.
Check “Connect to the database using TLS/SSL” and “Validate the TLS/SSL certificate“.

Connect SAP BusinessObjects to SAP HANA Cloud via ODBC

Open the Information Design Tool on your Windows server, and create a new project. 

Within your new project, create a new Relational Connection.

Give your connection a name.

Select SAP>SAP HANA database 2.0> ODBC Drivers

Insert the name and password of the user you want to use for communication, and select the existing data source you created in the last chapter.

Keep default parameters, and click finish.

Now that the connection information is defined, we need to define the data foundation. Right-click your project and create a new data foundation.

Give your data foundation a name.

Select “Single source”.

Select the connection you created at the last step.

Within your data layer, you can select which tables/views/virtual tables you want to access. You can access all schemas, including the ones created through a HDI container.

In order to expose our data to Web Intelligence, let us create a new Business layer.

Select Relational Data Foundation.

Give your business layer a name.

Select the data foundation you created at the last step.

This business layer will expose the data to reporting tools.

You can use the same method to connect other products of the SAP BusinessObjects suite to SAP HANA Cloud, such as SAP Data Services or SAP Information Steward.

Thanks to Ryoichi Oiwa and Jared Yabanci  for their help in setting up the connection.