SAP EWM on HANA Analytics Scenarios – SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) and BW/4HANA

This blog post will be focused on the “How” part, showcasing a few technical scenarios, components and integration between them, serving as a landing page to anybody that is looking for preliminary guidance.

Further to say this reading requires understanding of HANA development and modeling, specifically CDS Views and Calculation Views, BW/4HANA (with LSA++) and SAP Analytics Cloud, as we are not going to deep dive into these concepts/ tools.

CAP: Consume External Service – Part 1

Prerequisites

- SAP Business Application Studio / Visual Studio Code
- SAP Cloud Platform Account – Cloud Foundry Environment

Real-time data replication to Data Warehouse Cloud

I will follow the steps below:

1. Create Graphical View
2. Replicate data from SAP HANA to Data Warehouse Cloud in real-time
3. Create a story for checking record count
4. Update the data on source system and confirm the data is replicated in real-time

How to build and deploy a new Hana application in five minutes

Having worked with all the various SAP offerings around Hana development, the speed and ease of development were never satisfying. Therefore I am promoting a slightly different approach here.

Goal

My customers wanted to create a Hana application. So they needed the table definitions, deploy that table, load it with initial data and then wrap an UI5 application around. Finally maintain the user authentication, specify authorizations down to the row level security and move all to production.

Changes in Sales & Distribution (SD) in SAP S/4HANA w.r.t ECC

‘Order to cash’ process is the backbone for most of the industries. Many a time, we face the questions from the existing SAP ECC customers ‘Why to migrate to S/4HANA’ when there is no change in Sales order type or item category or Fiori app for creation of sales order etc in S/4HANA. We, as a consultant should be aware of the changes in Sales & distribution (SD) in S/4HANA w.r.t SAP ECC and the corresponding business benefits to the customers for migration to S/4HANA.

SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation & SAP Conversational AI – Part 2

Introduction:

I have used SAP Intelligent Robotic process automation to create a record which automates a SAP UI5 Application. This is same app which was built in the previous step using SAP Cloud Application Programming Model. This app is running on LOCALHOST on my desktop and wanted to see SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation bot in action which will help to automate the tasks.

Index for Development Details:

Introduction, Prototype briefing, Details of Technical Implementation of SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation, SAP HANA Graph on ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 1909 and SAP Conversational AI are mentioned in the following Blog Posts.

SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation & SAP Conversational AI & SAP Cloud Application Programming Model- Part 1

Introduction:

I had a chance to explore SAP Cloud Application Programming Model, SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation, SAP Conversational AI, SAP Cloud Platform OData Provisioning, SAP HANA Graph on ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 1909 and Amazon Alexa and to tie all together.

I have attempted to build a prototype with Step Zero learnings of different concepts. An absolute ease of using different languages, programming models, libraries, tools and technologies.

Working with Esri shape files, Python and SAP HANA

Working with SHP files is not always as easy as it seems to be.

For example, we have a lot of interesting geo-spatial capabilities embedded in SAP HANA, but in one way or another we need to ingest this kind of information to the system. Usually, this spatial information is distributed on what is known as Shape files. Taking wikipedia definition, a shape file is:

The shapefile format is a geospatial vector data format for geographic information system (GIS) software. It is developed and regulated by Esri as a mostly open specification for data interoperability among Esri and other GIS software products. The shapefile format can spatially describe vector features: points, lines, and polygons, representing, for example, water wells, rivers, and lakes. Each item usually has attributes that describe it, such as name or temperature.

Transferring large amount of data to SAP HANA Cloud

Overview

In this blog, I will transfer large volume of data from On-Premise SAP HANA to SAP HANA Cloud. I will use Smart Data Integration (SDI), which is ETL function of SAP HANA Cloud, to transfer data.

Environment:

◉ SAP HANA 2.0 Revision 42 : On-Premise、running on AWS us-east
◉ Data Provisioning Agent 2.0 SP04 Patch24 : running on AWS us-east
◉ SAP HANA Cloud on SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry : running on AWS Frankfurt

Testing virtual table replica feature of SAP HANA Cloud

Introduction

SAP HANA Cloud can virtually integrate data to be positioned as a "gateway for enterprise data" within the enterprise. Specifically, it is possible to virtually integrate various data sources via a virtual table created on HANA Cloud (data federation).

However, in actual operation, there may be cases where you want to retain data in SAP HANA Cloud due to network speed and performance / load on the source system side.

Single Sign-On (SSO), personalized user access to SAP APIs and the application you can build with it

Introduction

One of the features of a SAP S/4HANA system is the availability of a wide variety of available SAP standard oData-APIs. Since APIs are mostly understood only by technical oriented people I wanted to show the power of APIs by building a small application iPhone application that combines usability by providing image recognition functionality with business context based on the underlying SAP system.

SAP HANA Daily Operation best practices

I am a former Infrastructure Consultant and I worked in operations, outsourcing and even in support.

I would like to share my best practices on SAP HANA Operation and Maintenance. I will focus on infrastructure setup and high availability topics.

Keep in mind that those ideas are my best practices and may not fit to your landscape.

All comments are for production systems, but  might help with non production systems,too.

SAP HANA Turns 10 Giveaway Contest

We’re inviting YOU to join the SAP HANA Turns 10 Giveaway Contest! Share a video of yourself (and others so long as you’re respecting social distancing!) wishing SAP HANA a happy 10th anniversary on either Twitter or LinkedIn for a chance to win one of the limited editions #SAPHANATurns10 swag items.

Transform into an Insight-Driven Business using SAP Data Warehouse Cloud – Part 2

In the previous blog post, I had covered the concepts around connecting to remote HANA systems and modeling the views so that they are ready to be consumed by analytical tools. In this blog post, I will show how you can use the embedded SAC as well as 3rd party tools to connect to the modeled views.

Business Catalog:

The Data builder, provides the technical layer in DWC where we can create tables and model the views. The Business Catalog gives access to the business layer of DWC. This is where business users will be able to browse through existing business entities, view how they are all connected and also understand the business purpose and metadata which would help them build their reports.

Transform into an Insight-Driven Business using SAP Data Warehouse Cloud – Part 1

In this blog, I wanted to focus on Data Warehouse Cloud (DWC) which is a scalable, persona-driven DWaaS tailored for IT and business users.

Secure connection from Python to SAP HANA

I used the program from that tutorial to connect to the SAP HANA Cloud instance. As discussed before this communication has to be secure. The same requirement applies as well if connecting to an HDI container in SAP Cloud Platform trial, as I showed in our live streaming with Maximilian Streifeneder recently.

So, let’s just slightly modify the program pythonQuery.py and make sure sslValidateCertificate=True is set and try it on Windows 10, Linux (Ubuntu), and MacOS Catalina.

Connecting SAC to HANA Cloud the Easy Way – Using Application Studio to Deploy the HAA (Hana Analytics Adapter)

Finding this information can be hard, it is often good to refer to a text/static version so I have captured the steps in this blogpost.

The are 6 main parts to connect SAC to HANA Cloud

1. Access the Business Application Studio
2. Hana Analytics Adapter Configuration
3. Create Role Collection
4. Assign Role to Cloud Platform Users
5. Verify Access to InA using Application URLs
6. SAP Analytics Cloud Connection

High Availability and DR for SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP Central Services

As SAP application touches many critical parts of a company such as its’ ERP, manufacturing, business processes, customer service etc. it has become the lifeline of many enterprises that depends on it for their business to operate properly. As such, high-availability has became one of the top concerns of company managements when it comes to their SAP systems.

In this article, we will discuss at a high-level what is HANA system replication, how it works, what are the limitations when it comes to high-availability, and how we can overcome them. We will also discuss about the options for SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA and SAP Central Services’s high-availability and what are the key differences, so that you can choose the right tool for the right job.

Sendgrid SMTP Replay Configuration Using Postfix in SAP S/4HANA

Overview

In this blog post I have explained about how to use / configure Sendgrid as SMTP relay in SAP S/4HANA using postfix mail package in Redhat linux.

Environment Details :

Linux Version : Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.6

Transpose Row-set into Column Name – Dynamic Table Creation in SAP HANA 2.0 SPS04

Introduction

During BI implementation of a project, there could be a reporting requirement where row data need to be transposed as column name. In various BI landscapes, usually data is ingested from sources on which data cleansing/massaging is performed and then data get loaded into table which feeds to reporting layer.