Technical Articles
Using Text View and Association to enable Multi Language support for Master Data in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud
With the release 2021.12 we introduced in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud the new Text View and Association with which you can enable multi language support for master data. Users can now display the analytical reports and stories in their preferred language of choice.
In this little blog I want to describe the required steps for modeling to utilize this feature.
SAP’s Language dependent Text Tables
The Multi Language concept in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is very similar to the S/4HANA and BW/4HANA, where we have dedicated models, which carry the texts of the master data in various languages.
The typical structure of such a model looks like:
| Name | Primary Key | Description |
| ID | X | Identifier of the master data model |
| LANGUAGE | X | Language in ISO-639-1 , e.g. en, de, fr, etc. |
| TEXT | Text and content in the language |
Note: S/4HANA and BW/4HANA tables uses one digit language codes (e.g. E, D, F) which will be converted implicitly in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud into ISO-639-1 for processing.
Text Views and Associations in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud
In SAP Data Warehouse Cloud we have to model a so called Text View for that, which has to be associated later by a Dimension View. Here is a typical Entity Relationship diagram to depict the associations between the various views:
Here are the detailed steps, that you need to apply:
- Go to the Repository Explorer or Data Builder and create a new Graphical View with semantic usage Text:
- Set the primary keys:
- ID
- LANGUAGE
- Adjust the semantic types
- Annotate the Language column
- Annotate the Text column
- Bind the Text column to the ID column
- Associate the Text View from the Dimension View (in my example it’s V_PRODUCTS):
Map the Dimension View and Text View by the identifiers, e.g. PRODUCTID
To view the results, you have to create an SAP Analytics Cloud Story (SAC Story), which can utilize this new Text semantics.
- In the user profile settings, you can set the Data Access Language to the your preference
With this little guide, you have learned the required modeling steps to support multi languages for master data in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud.
Links
I have started a comprehensive tutorial on Modeling in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, which describes in a practical manner different modeling aspects by guiding users through different exercises.
The Text Association is part of Exercise 2 of the tutorial:
https://github.com/SAP-samples/data-warehouse-cloud-modeling
Great post.
It's great to know that the DWC already includes this type of requirement.
Can you tell which alternative can be used to handle language-dependent master data when data access is performed by a 3rd party tool?
Hi Vitor, thanks for your interest in this topic.
Currently for third party, we are about to evaluate different APIs such as ODATA, which can provide rich semantic interface for 3rd parties. Having that in place we could cover also multi language for Non-SAP clients.
Stay tuned regarding this topic. I will forward this request towards my colleagues in Product Management.
Best regards,
San
Hi San,
Do we have any documentation/ reference on how this affects the overall response time of a view it is bound on?
Does SAP generally offer any documentation around performance? we know that there is a performance best practice documentation.. however no documented notes on performance of the tools themselves.
Hi Srikanth,
thanks for approaching. The extra join for the text table will certainly impact the overall execution and response time. However, there is currently in DWC no dedicated tools to measure this particular text association.
However, I am aware that there are performance related tools to come in the near future.
I have asked my responsible colleague to reply here, and give a little outlook on this topic.
Regards,
San
Hi San,
Thank you for the article.
I'm having issue with Text Association on Trial Tenant.
I created a semantic type Text view in accordance to your article. But when i create dimension view and click "add text associations", the table of possible text associations is empty. What gives?
EDIT: Interestingly, the table is visible when i change the interface language to english (UK).
Kind regards,
Chris
Hello San,
Great post, that help me so much.
But I have a problem on SAC Story, because I load on story and don't see alteration, I have that do something about config on SAC Storys? Help me please.
I'm do all config wich you do.
My Graphical View with semantic Text:
Attributes config.
My association:
And my Storys ("T_Sales_view" is my Analitycal DataSet) :
I hope you help me.
Regards,
Yago Sabino.
Hi Sabino,
I don't see any wrong setting from your screenshot.
Maybe you want to try out with the demo datasets from my modeling blog and check if the TextView is working in your system?
https://github.com/SAP-samples/data-warehouse-cloud-modeling
Regards,
San
Hi Yago,
I am having exactly the same issue.
What is the basis for your data? Is it uploaded
flatfile data directly copied to the Cloud or is it a live
connection to a on premise system and if so with
which connection type?
Kind regards,
Klaus
Hi Yago,
I saw your text data with language key value ‘E’.
However as mentioned,
”Note: S/4HANA and BW/4HANA tables uses one digit language codes (e.g. E, D, F) which will be converted implicitly in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud into ISO-639-1 for processing.”
how about changing it to ‘en’?
regards,
Eric