SAP HANA Tutorial, Material and Certification Guide

If you are new to SAP HANA, we recommend to read following articles first.

SAP HANA Modeling at a glance:

SAP HANA Information Modeling which also known as SAP HANA Data Modeling is the heart of HANA application development.
You can create modeling views on top of database tables and implement business logic to create a meaningful report.
These modeling views can be consumed via Java or HTML based applications or SAP HANA native applications. You can also use SAP tools like SAP Lumira or Analysis Office to directly connect to HANA and report modeling views. It is also possible to use 3rd party tools like MS-Excel to connect to HANA and create your report.

Modeling SAP HANA Information Views are important for successfully exploiting the power of SAP HANA. These views are classified as

Attribute Views
Analytic Views
Calculation Views

At run-time these views make implicit use of optimized SAP HANA In-Memory calculation engines and thus enable for best performance.
HANA Data Modeling is only possible for Column Tables i.e. Information Modeler only works with column storage tables.

Attribute View:

Attribute views are dimensions, BW characteristics or master data.
Attribute views are used to join to a dimension or attribute view.
In most cases used to model master data like entities (like Product, Employee, Business Partner)
Highly re-used and shared in Analytic- and Calculation Views

Example : An attribute view "FLIGHT" can show together Airline Code, Airline Connection Number and flight Date into one Object. This attribute view can be used in analytic and calculation views where entities are relevant.

Generally attribute views represent master data. But, however technically there is no restriction and it's possible to make attribute views on transaction data.

Analytic View:

Analytic views are star schemas or fact tables surrounded by dimensions, calculations or restricted measures.
In the language on SAP BW analytical views can be roughly compared with Info Cubes or Info Sets.
Analytic views are typically defined on at least one fact table that contains transactional data along with number of tables or attribute views.
Analytic views leverage the computing power of SAP HANA to calculate aggregate data, e. g., the number of bikes sold per country, or the maximum power consumed per month.
It is specifically designed to execute star schema queries

Calculation View:

Calculation views are composite views used on top of analytical and attribute views.
It can perform complex calculations not possible with other views.
It can be defined as either graphical views or scripted views depending on how they are created. Graphical views can be modeled using the graphical modeling features of the SAP HANA Modeler. Scripted views are created as sequences of SQL statements.
Calculation views can be referred as combination of tables, attributes views and analytical views to deliver a complex business requirement. They offer to combine different analytical views into one source of data for reporting.

Want to know more about Calculation view? Read SAP HANA Calculation View

Want to do some hands-on? Please read

Build Your First SAP HANA Model in 10 Minutes

SAP HANA Modeling View Processing:

SAP HANA has mainly 3 types of engines that are used based on the views required by the model.