Develop on SAP Datasphere using SAP HANA Deployment Infrastructure(HDI)

A previous version of this blogpost was called “Develop on SAP Datawarehouse Cloud using SAP HANA Deployment Infrastructure(HDI)”. With the launch of SAP Datasphere on March 8,2023 the following steps also apply to SAP Datasphere tenants as SAP Datasphere is an evolution and the next generation of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. All references to SAP Data Warehouse Cloud or DWC below are replicable with SAP Datasphere.

In this blog post I will do a quick walkthrough of the steps needed to make SAP Data Warehouse Cloud (DWC) tenant access and use views created using SAP HANA Deployment Infrastructure (HDI).

SAP HDI provides services to manage and deploy database artefacts, which can be found in the reference manual here. That combined with the power of SAP WebIDE provides version controlled management of design time artefacts via integration with git.

With SAP DWC you can access and consume the artefacts created as HDI objects and use it for further data modelling via Data Builder and dashboarding via Story Building or through embedded SAC in DWC.

Note: The access works only for SAP DWC tenants and SCP spaces in the same datacenter.

The below high-level architecture that supports the above is very well described in this blogpost from Axel Meier

In the example below we will use SAP WebIDE tooling to create an HDI container the contents of which can then be accessed by the SAP DWC tenant.

Step 1 : Open ticket to connect your SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) space to your SAP DWC tenant

First you will need enable access from SAP DWC Space Builder Area.

In the Schema Access area, go to HDI Containers and click Enable Access. A pop-up window appears informing you that you need to open a support ticket so we can map the HDI containers with your SAP Data Warehouse Cloud space. The details required for the ticket are described here.

Step 2 : Create an HDI container and build and/or deploy it in the HANA Cloud (HC) instance of the  SAP DWC

Once the ticket confirms that your SCP space is mapped to your DWC tenant, you can create or deploy an existing HDI container to the HANA Cloud instance of you DWC tenant.

Using SAP WebIDE we have here a sample project which provides the minimum needed to create an HDI container that can be accessed via DWC.

Sample HDI MTA Project

DWC_access is an MTA(Multi Target Application) project with a single HANA DB Module called dwcaccess_db.

In the mta.yaml file you need to edit the config for database_id and provide the database id of the HANA Cloud tenant from DWC. This can be obtained from the DWC tenant Space Builder, the hostname provides the id needed by the mta.yaml file above.

Get HANA Cloud Database Id

In addition the project must provide the following DWC access roles to enable the HDI container to be accessible from DWC

DWC_CONSUMPTION_ROLE.hdbrole

DWC_CONSUMPTION_ROLE_WITH_GRANT.hdbrole

Then Build your HDI Project. Once your project is successfully built it is ready to be access from DWC.

Step 3: Access the HDI content from SAP DWC

In the SAP DWC Space Builder HDI Containers you can now add the HDI container using the + option

Once you have added the HDI Container, it is available as a Source in the Data Builder in SAP DWC and can be used to build views etc for consumption.

HDI Source

Thats it for now, happy DWC developing with the power of HDI!