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:

1. 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
2. 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

If you enter the hostname and user information correct, you will see the connection is successful.

1-4. Connect Tableau to HANA Cloud

  Select ODBC

 Select ODBC data source setup before.

Enter user and password

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

I could also query HANA calculation view CV_ORDER in the same HDI container

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.

2-2.Query data on HANA Cloud

After connect to HANA Cloud, let’s try to query the same physical table.

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