SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics – A detailed Walkthrough (Part 1)

What is S/4HANA Embedded Analytics?

It is a set of Analytical Features integrated in SAP S/4HANA, that enables users to perform real time analytics on the live transactional data. It comes with a set of inbuilt representations of operational data, called VDM (Virtual Data Models) which will allow users to arrive at better decisions from the available data.

It doesn’t require a separate installation or implementation or any other licenses. It is a part of the S/4HANA Software and is generally available with the new S/4HANA releases.Customers can extend the existing CDS Views VDM’s and build new ones.

Please be informed that SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics will not replace any existing SAP Solutions and S/4 HANA has an Embedded Analytical engine, but certain steps/activation needs to be done for making this engine to work.

Most of the operational reporting can be done with S/4HANA Embedded Analytics.BW would be required for EDW, which will help to analyze the historical data, data consolidation from multiple sources.

SAP Best Practices for Analytics with S/4HANA: (RDS now be renamed as Best Practices) (Available in SMP since March 7th 2016-- http://service.sap.com/analyticswiths4h) (V1.0)

SAP Best Practices for analytics with SAP S/4HANA provides a comprehensive portfolio of analytical content based on SAP S/4HANA. It provides guidance on how to get started with SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics and how to integrate with best in class analytical platform and solutions from SAP for ex: SAP BI platform, SAP BW etc.

3 Options/Scopes:

1) Embedded Analytics with SAP S/4HANA (Mandatory)

--> Set up of SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics with CDS views and various analytical apps based on CDS views.

2) Integration between SAP S/4HANA and SAP BO (Optional)

Enhance analytical use cases by integrating between SAP S/4HANA and SAP BI platform. Pre-built reports and content built in SAP BI client tools ex: Design Studio 1.5 (Ex: --> Core Finance, P2P, O2C), Webi (Ex: Sales revenue, Sales Analysis), Crystal Reports can be leveraged and extended based on business use cases. (Based on BI 4.2 Version, works on 4.1 aswell).

Procurement of a separate License for BO platform would be required, the Best Practices would have only the configuration content.

3) Integration between SAP S/4HANA and SAP BW (Optional)

Consolidate data from SAP S/4HANA in SAP BW and build analytical use cases based on enriched data environment from other data sources in SAP BW.(using SDA Concept)

My Personal opinion here is with SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics, SAP BW (Embedded BW) has got a lot of significance.

Now we will go through the various S/4HANA Embedded Analytics options:

1)  QUERY BROWSER

Launch into a Fiori Launchpad of a S/4 System.

You will have a tile called Query Browser, which basically displays the available CDS Views. The CDS view output can be accessed through “Open in Design Studio”.
Take the SQL View name from the Annotations tab.
Double click the Package name to Open the Package Hierarchy
Remember this name and open the Backend System in HANA Studio ABAP Perspective.
In case if you want to preview the data, please do the same by right clicking(Context Menu) on the CDS View.
Since we have defined the view with Parameters, the CDS view will prompt for the  parameters(as shown in the below picture). Provide the necessary values and proceed further.
The Following screenshot shows the Data preview of a CDS View.

In some Cases, you might face some issues while trying to open the Design Studio Flavor of the CDS.,

You will have to activate an object in the Embedded BW System to make this work.

Please follow the below document for the same

-->  Solution for 0ANALYSIS Issue while trying to access ‘Open in Design Studio’ option of S/4HANA CDS Views

Once your Analytics is completed, you have the flexibility of saving the same as a Tile as well.

If you want to explore the CDS code behind, Double click on the View name, to see more details.

Go to the Annotation tab

Go the Backend system in the SAP Logon PAD.

Take SE11 --> Provide the SQL View name in the Views part and click display.

Right Click on the system and click “Add a Package”.

Select the package name that we took earlier and click OK.

We can now find the CDS View definition within the Data Definitions  Folder

Alternately, You can use the Following Button in ABAP Perspective to directly navigate to the CDS View.

Double Click on the same and the CDS View definition is displayed.

There are many other options in the context menu, which is out of scope of this blog.Sometimes, you might get the below error.

The above issue is seen mostly on the older versions of HANA Studio. Upgrade the studio to solve this issue.

2)  MULTI DIMENSIONAL REPORTS

Multidimensional reports are based on Webdynpro grid application that we have as a template. It renders all sorts of analytical CDS queries. All queries can be rendered in the same way. Functionality is the same for Analytical reports.

Example: Incoming Sales Orders

Thanks for going through the Document. Do let me know your Reviews and Suggestions.

It’s Not Too Early to Move to SAP S/4HANA

I went on a quest the other day, trying to answer a burning question that had been bothering me for some time: What is the number one misconception in the world?
After an incredibly comprehensive and thoroughly exhaustive search that took me all the way to the second page of Google’s results, I finally gave up. And although my five-minute quest wasn’t successful, I stumbled upon a dozen or so misconceptions that I personally believed were true but turned out to be utter nonsense.

No, I won’t be sharing these misconceptions here; I want to avoid any embarrassment the next time we meet. Instead, I will be debunking unrelated, but equally nonsensical, misconceptions out there about SAP S/4HANA.

I couldn’t find a better misconception to start with other than: It’s too early to move to SAP S/4HANA. There are some out there that bought into the myth that SAP S/4HANA is still not mature (either technology, or scope, or both) and as a result have decided that it’s too early to move or even consider it.

“The dynamics of the adoption curve shouldn’t be confused with the maturity of the new technology itself.”

So let’s straighten this one out. The fact that some customers want to wait before moving to SAP S/4HANA is totally expected and fully respected. There are always going to be a wide spectrum of customers, from early to late adopters and everything in between. This is why SAP has extended its support for SAP Business Suite running on any database until 2025. But the dynamics of the adoption curve of a new technology should not be confused with the maturity of the technology itself.

Yes, SAP S/4HANA is a new product, with a new code line based on a new technology architecture, but it inherits many of the best practices, as well as the deep industry and line of business process expertise that made SAP Business Suite the leading ERP software in the market, with over 35,000 customers. SAP HANA, the underlying database, has been in market for over five years with thousands of live and successful deployments and, in less than a year from its launch, SAP S/4HANA had crossed the 2,700 customer mark with many customers sharing their experiences like Airbus, Swiss Properties, HPE, Wipro , MEMEBOX and many more. From a scope perspective, SAP S/4HANA now covers 10 lines of business bringing it to parity from a business scope perspective with SAP ECC 6.0.  And it’s not all just about SAP. To date, there are over 5,000 partners and resellers supporting the solution worldwide and partnership agreements in place with strategic partners such as IBM, Accenture, and HPE.

“SAP S/4HANA is a new product that inherits the expertise that made SAP Business Suite the leading ERP software”

I can go on and on about how and why it’s not too early to move to SAP S/4HANA but that would be too boring. Instead I want to introduce you to Phil, someone much more entertaining than me. Over a series of short videos, Phil will be busting some of the most popular misconceptions out there surrounding SAP S/4HANA starting with today’s myth.

Make sure to bookmark the SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist and watch out for my next blog (sometime next week) where I’ll share Phil’s second SAP S/4HANA myth busting video. And if there is a particular SAP S/4HANA myth that has been bothering you just email it to me and I’ll pass on to Phil. He might just take it on in one of his next videos.

One last thing, Phil has some self-esteem issues so please make sure to hit the like button on YouTube to boost his confidence and encourage him to bust more SAP S/4HANA myths.

Very First Steps to Access Data in Native HANA Application

In this tutorial you will make your very first steps to access data on HANA. This tutorial will write a native HANA application, using the Web-based Development Workbench.

Learn:

• How to create a simple schema and table.
• Importing data automatically via a CSV file.
• Preparing and executing a very simple SQL query on the table.

Step 1: Open the Web-based Development Workbench

Using the SAP HANA Developer Edition or SAP HANA Cloud Platform

The workbench allows you to develop on HANA without the need to set up a local development environment.

Login to the HANA Cloud Cockpit with your free developer edition account.

Choose Databases and Schemas, and choose then the instance that you created in the previous tutorials. From here you can access the Workbench.

You are now in the Editor and can immediately start developing in HANA.

Using HANA on Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure

How to reduce database size by 30% in HANA

I didn't write enough blogs last year, and felt like I abandoned. Lately a few people have kindly commented that they enjoyed reading my content, which is being nicer to me than I deserve. So here's a little gift to the year off.

This script is only useful if you have a HANA system which was installed with an older revision (SPS01-07) and you have upgraded it a bunch of times and it's now on a newer release (SPS08-10).

In that scenario, it's possibly the most useful thing you will see all year for a HANA devop. In a productive HANA system we saw disk footprint reduction from 2.9TB to 1.89TB and in-memory footprint reduction by over 100GB. It will also substantially decrease startup time, decrease backup time, and increase performance.

HCI - SAP Hana Cloud Integration Agent Installation

What is HCI?
SAP HANA Cloud Integration SAP HANA Cloud Integration facilitates the integration of business processes and data across on-premise and cloud applications (cloud to cloud and cloud to on-premise integration).

HCI Architecture

Example
SAP HANA Cloud Integration for process integration allows you to integrate business processes spanning different companies, organizations, or departments within an organization. SAP HANA Cloud Integration for data services allows you to efficiently and securely use ETL (extract, transform, load) tasks to move data between on-premise systems and the cloud. SAP HANA Cloud Integration for process integration Information published on SAP site SAP HANA Cloud Integration for data services

How to Install HCI?
Installing HCI means installing SAP Data Services Agent

Where do we install HCI?
While the SAP Data Services Agent is based on SAP Data Services technology, the two are not interchangeable. Additionally, for Windows host systems, the agent cannot be installed on a host system where SAP Data Services has already been installed. (This restriction does not apply to Linux host systems.) 
Steps to Install HCI Data Services Agent
1. Extract the installation package and start the installation program.
○ On Windows, run DataServices-Agent-Installer.exe.
○ On Linux, run DataServices-Agent-Installer.bin.

Note You must run the installation program from a user account that has administrative privileges. On Windows platforms that have User Account Control (UAC) enabled, you can also choose the Run as administrator option. After the package has been extracted, the installation program starts automatically.

2. Specify the location where you want to install the software. ○ On Windows platforms, the default installation location is C:\Program Files\SAP \DataServicesAgent. ○ On Linux platforms, the default installation location is $HOME/DataServicesAgent.

3. On Windows, specify the location where the agent should store log files and settings. The logs and settings path is referenced by the environment variable. The default location is C:\ProgramData\SAP\DataServicesAgent. 

4. Specify the user name and password for the local user account that will be used to run the job service. Note For domain user accounts, specify the user name using the format \. For local accounts, only the user name is required. 

5. If you do not want to use the default ports, check Specify port numbers used by installation. Specify new port numbers as required.

6. Click Install. The installation progress is displayed. During the installation process, the installation program creates a log file at the following location:
○ On Windows platforms, %DS_COMMON_DIR%\log\Install_.log 
○ On Linux platforms, \log\Install_.log

Post Install - Configuring the SAP Data Services Agent 
Before you can use the SAP Data Services Agent to securely transfer your on-premise data with SAP HANA Cloud Integration, you must configure your instance of the agent.
1. Register the agent in the SAP HANA Cloud Integration web interface
2. Download the agent configuration file
3. Configure the secure agent connection

How to start SAP Data Services Agent configuration program?
○ On Windows platforms, run configureAgent.bat.
○ On Linux platforms, run configureAgent.sh.

Does SAP use internally BW on HANA?

Yes SAP runs SAP and BW on HANA. This is fact.

What has happened since the last blog: The setup of the SAP NetWeaver BW powered by HANA system landscape is progressing. Two BW 7.30 SP5 systems are now running on a HANA SP3 database and we are preparing the migration for the 3rd and last system in the 3-tier landscape. The focus until now was very much to successfully migrate the systems and to establish first reporting solutions. In the next four weeks we will also establish monitoring, support and operations processes for the business usage. Business go-live is not far away.

At the end we need to have an end-to-end operations framework to manage the BusinessObjects Intelligence 4.0 platform with mobile capabilities, the SAP Business Warehouse powered by HANA and HANA by-side sources in a holistic way. The business expectations on stability and performance will be very high and High Availability and Disaster Recovery capabilities are a must. It is too early to speak about the details, but I will share the concept in another blog in some weeks.

One thing I can tell already today: We are running the HANA on a certified single server as of today. We used one of the largest machines you could order at that point in time, but it will not be sufficient for our future needs. Not in terms of memory, not in terms of scalability and not in terms of failover capabilities. At least not in the production environment. Very soon we will move to a certified distributed server scenario. I can’t share hardware details yet, but you should speak to your preferred hardware vendor to learn more about the next generation.

Now let me introduce one of the new reporting solutions, which has been build (yes, it is ‘has been’, not ‘will be’) in this environment, the ‘Automated Deal Roadmap’. This is the business description: The Automated Deal Roadmap (ADRM) provides a single authoritative source for all sales forecasting for sales executives at all levels. ADRM provides full transparency of both actual recognized revenue combined with Sales pipeline to provide a consolidated view of the sales goal and potential to simplify managing and achieving sales revenue targets in an efficient and cost effective manner.

High-level source and data model picture for ADRM solution
ADRM on BI Mobile for TechEd Demo

ADRM is using the entire environment: Sales pipeline data are read out of the HANA by-side CRM (from BW application stack via 2nd connection directly from HANA DB), financial COPA data are read out of the HANA by-side ECC, master data are staged in BW powered by HANA and joined together within BW in a new type of virtual infoprovider. BW provides also some other features on-the-fly: Currency conversion and analysis authorizations. The reporting is available via BICS connection in BusinessObjects 4.0 solutions on desktop or mobile. This the perfect proof point to demonstrate a complete new generation of analytics solutions, but also to design new processes and concepts on IT side to manage those. This is truly changing the game.

SAP HANA Rules Framework

Welcome to the SAP HANA Rules Framework (HRF) Community Site!

SAP HANA Rules Framework provides tools that enable application developers to build solutions with automated decisions and rules management services, implementers and administrators to set up a project/customer system, and business users to manage and automate business decisions and rules based on their organizations' data.

In daily business, strategic plans and mission critical tasks are implemented by a countless number of operational decisions, either manually or automated by business applications. These days - an organization's agility in decision-making becomes a critical need to keep up with dynamic changes in the market.

HRF Main Objectives are:

• To seize the opportunity of Big Data by helping developers to easily build automated decisioning solutions and\or solutions that require business rules management capabilities
• To unleash the power of SAP HANA by turning real time data into intelligent decisions and actions
• To empower business users to control, influence and personalize decisions/rules in highly dynamic scenarios

SAP HANA Data Architecture and Security Concept (Part: 2)

First part of this blog can be found here:

SAP HANA - Security Concept and Data Architecture (part 1)

This second part is describing concept of roles and how to use SQL interface to define security objects.

9 Role definitions

Roles should be designed using role hierarchy ability of HANA database. First you should create elementary roles for each schema/package. These can be then directly assigned to users or can be orchestrated together to form higher level roles based on type of the user.

Role can be created using simple syntax:

     CREATE ROLE <role name>

9.1 Elementary roles - SQL privileges

We will design following roles addressing SQL privileges:

• role DATA_*_READ having privilege to SELECT
• role DATA_*_WRITE having privilege to INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and EXECUTE
• role DATA_*_DDL having privilege to CREATE ANY, ALTER, DROP, INDEX

As result we will need to crate these roles:

• role DATA_SLT_IDD800_READ
• role DATA_SLT_IDD800_WRITE
• role DATA_SLT_IDD800_DDL
• role DATA_SLT_IDE800_READ
• role DATA_SLT_IDE800_WRITE
• role DATA_SLT_IDE800_DDL
• role DATA_BODS_TESTING_READ
• role DATA_BODS_TESTING_WRITE
• role DATA_BODS_TESTING_DDL
• role DATA_MAN_TESTING_READ
• role DATA_MAN_TESTING_WRITE
• role DATA_MAN_TESTING_DDL
• role DATA_MAN_COPA_READ
• role DATA_MAN_COPA_WRITE
• role DATA_MAN_COPA_DDL