Technical Articles
Connect Tableau and SAP HANA Cloud
SAP HANA Cloud was released last year and some customers who are using Tableau might wonder if Tableau is able to connect to SAP HANA Cloud and how. In this blog post, I will show you how I did this.
**I apologize that I’m using Tableau in Japanese and this might make you confused and uncomfortable. I’ve added English translation into some important screenshots. Please also feel free to add your comments.
There are 2 connections ways. One is ODBC driver (HANA Client) and the other one is Tableau native data source connection type of SAP HANA.
My conclusion are:
- If you are not using HANA Views, you can choose any of them. Tableau native connection is easier to implement than ODBC driver since you don’t need install HANA Client
- If you have HANA Views and your Tableau is going to query HANA Views, then ODBC is necessary.
Now I’ll show you how I connected Tableau to SAP HANA Cloud.
My environment is: Tableau Desktop Professional Edition 2021.1.2 , SAP HANA Cloud QRC1 2021.Both are free trial.
I’ll show you both ODBC connection and Tableau native connection.
1.ODBC
1-1.download latest HANA Client and install into the OS where I installed Tableau desktop.
1-2.setup ODBC driver and press OK button
For secure ,check in “Connect to the database using TLS/SSL”
You can check your HANA Cloud hostname from HANA Cloud cockpit.
1-3.Test connection
Select ODBC
It will take a few seconds for Tableau to get HANA Cloud server node information . After this, click Sign In button
1-5.Query data on HANA Cloud
After sign in ,I could query physical table CUSTOMERS in my HDI container OMO_PROJECT_HDI_DB_1
2.Tableau Native SAP HANA Connector
Now ,let’s have a try of Tableau native SAP HANA Connector.
With this , you do not need to install HANA Client .
2-1.Start Tableau and find server connection type SAP HANA.
No problem.
But when I query HANA View there is an error which hints me Tableau could not find object CV_ORDER in OMO_PROJECT_HDI_DB_1.
By checking SAP Note 2980910 – Enable graceful error handling for MDX statements from 3rd party analytics tools, this is due to Tableau throw a MDX statement to query HANA View but now HANA Cloud does not support MDX statement.
So, based on these, both of ODBC connection and Tableau SAP HANA connector are available to connect to HANA Cloud. But if you want to use data based on HANA View , you have to install HANA Client and set up ODBC. Installation of HANA Client is very easy and you do not need warry about it.
What I did in this blog post is very simple but hope will help you.
And you can also register a free trial SAP HANA Cloud to explore more.
https://www.sap.com/cmp/td/sap-hana-cloud-trial.html
In Tableau, select Connect to Server and choose SAP HANA from the list. Enter the connection details (i.e. Host Name, Port, Username, Password) you received in the management area for your space in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud in the Schema Access section for the Space user. GOLDPRICE
Hi Moyan,
Seemingly both methods are not satisfactory because they do not support calculation views with input parameters.:
you get a message:
Instantiation of calculation model failed;exception 306106: Undefined variable: $$xxx$$. Variable is marked as required but not set in the query.
Thanks
Jon