Using Table Functions in SAP HANA for custom calendars

It is a common case that every company have different projects and some of them needs custom calendar implementation for their project. A default approach would be to create a persistent table and populate it with the required custom calendar data. But, this will need continuous maintenance/Updates as the years pass through.  Also, it might need some type of procedure or data procurement methods to populate the data.

This one is particularly interesting as this approach eradicates the need for continuous maintenance or update of calendar tables. neither will it be based on a persistent table. I will move on in explaining the approach using an example.

Generation of QR code in SAP S/4 HANA

Significance of QR code in SAP industry

Nowadays QR codes are everywhere, from products to websites and their marketing. Many businesses and applications have increased the use of QR readers and scanners. Smartphones and tabs come with built-in QR readers these days. Unlike barcodes which are vertical stripes, QR codes are made up of square-shaped patterns. Barcodes are read in one direction from top to bottom hence only a small amount of information can be stored. QR codes are read in two directions which makes it two -dimensional from top to bottom and right to left. This means it can store more data. When compared to bar codes, QR codes are protected against duplication and less error-prone. Consumer-facing marketing campaigns have increased usage as smartphones and tabs with digital cameras can easily read and interpret using this technology. It is also because of the major advantage of QR code that it can be scanned from both papers and from a screen, unlike barcode which can be only scanned from paper.

Blending Models with SAP Analytics Cloud

What is Blending?

Blending models lets you join a primary data source (such as ‘travel expenses’) with secondary data sources (such as ‘employee headcount’) that contain common linked dimensions (such as ’employee’). A new model is not created when you blend models, and the original models are not modified. Links between models that are blended only occur within a story. Blending can be done within individual tables and charts.

Some common uses for blending

◉ Comparing data of actuals from a corporate SAP source with plans stored from a non-SAP source.

◉ Comparing sales results against market benchmarks, or marketing campaign results available in .csv files, or data provided by a 3rd party consulting firm.

◉ Creating custom calculations based on key performance indicators from different data models like public census data.

◉ Using Smart Predict to output predictions in a dataset, and blend these predictions with other data sources, in the context of a story.

Run Modes of SAP BW Streaming Process Chains

This blog post will focus on the streaming process chain run modes and provides URLs to additional sources in the end. I use the general term “SAP BW” which refers to both SAP BW 7.5 and SAP BW/4HANA (any release).

In general, acquiring data as fast as possible should not be regarded as first choice. Instead, SAP recommends leveraging virtualization and data federation wherever possible. In combination with SAP HANA, BW provides multiple suitable modeling options, mainly based on SAP HANA integration services (SDA, SDI), SAP HANA modeling options (Calculation Views), and Open ODS Views or CompositeProviders as virtual InfoProviders on the BW application side.

Connect Client systems to the “Solution Manager”: Easier, faster and better – Via Outside Discovery with saphostctrl

Introduction

Why should I configure the hostagent, secure and with Outside Discovery enabled?

Because it is easy and It only takes a little to connect correctly the satellite systems to the LMDB with all data suppliers.

And least but not last: to get better Landscape Data in your LMDB to make better Upgrades! (see further Information, at the bottom)

Overview of SAP HANA Operators in SAP Data Intelligence

Prerequisite

Your SAP HANA database must be connected to your DI system via the connection management of DI.

1. Standard SAP HANA Operators in DI

The following section lists standard operators for integration with SAP HANA. The list is based on the categories in which the operators are grouped in DI. The focus is on the categories “Connectivity” and “SAP HANA“, as these are probably the most relevant for newcomer scenarios.

7 Reasons to Run SAP HANA on Azure

There is a growing trend to migrate SAP HANA databases to the cloud. In particular, many users are preferring Microsoft Azure, due to its strong security and compliance features, and its tight integration with SAP solutions. Azure provides a Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI) capable of running heavy-duty SAP workloads, and also provides a range of VM sizes certified to run SAP HANA and other SAP applications.

Connect from SAP HANA Cloud trial to SAP HANA, express edition, in AWS via the Cloud Connector

My case

…was slightly different. I have a few instances of SAP HANA, express edition, deployed to cloud vendors. Let’s focus on the one example, where it is deployed to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

SAP XSA: Basics and how to create synonyms

Making applications for SAP in the past, has always been rooted in proprietary tools and frameworks. However, with the onset of the “cloud” movement, SAP is providing its customers and developers, a completely new services-oriented application model, that leverages containers and the latest open source standards, for cloud-based applications.

More Info: C_HANAIMP_16 Certification

Developers have been able to provide web-based SAP applications, through the use of WebDynpro for a long time. However, that came with its own set of drawbacks. Newer alternatives now use Fiori-based UI, with an OData service from the backend, that transports data back and forth. This approach provides us with ample amount of flexibility on the UI side, but for the backend, we are still dependent on ABAP and the NetWeaver application server, to execute the business and processing logic for us and the database server to perform queries and send data to the Netweaver AS. We also know this as the SAP R3 architecture, where we divide things into the presentation layer, application layer and the database layer.

Visualise HANA Spatial Clusters with an SAC Choropleth Map

In this blogpost I will describe how you can use the SAP Analytics Cloud choropleth layers to visualise HANA spatial clusters, such as grid, k-means or hexagons.

With that in place the steps are pretty easy

1. Create database view (or table) to encapsulate spatial clustering

2. Expose database view as Dimension Calculation View

3. Update SAC Custom Regions Metadata

4. Visualise with SAP Analytics Cloud

5. Other Possibilities, Voronoi Regions

1. Create database view (or table) to encapsulate spatial clustering

The spatial clustering require spatial data with an ST_POINT datatype, this can be calculated from longitude and latitude if necessary.

Figure 1.1: Database Explorer data preview

Figure 1.2: Database view with Hexagon Clustering

VIEW "view::LAD_2019_HEX15" AS

    SELECT COUNT(*) AS LAD_COUNT, ST_ClusterID() AS ID, ST_ClusterCell() AS SHAPE_HEX 

    FROM LAD2019_ST

    GROUP CLUSTER BY ST_POINT USING HEXAGON X CELLS 15

2. Expose database view as Dimension Calculation View

SAP Analytics Cloud requires a dimensional calculation view with 4 fields exposed

◉ NAME

◉ ID

◉ SHAPE

◉ IS_LEAF

The output of the Calculation view should contain these fields.  ID and IS_LEAF are required as column names

Figure 2.1 Calculation View

Figure 2.2: Data Preview

3. Update SAC Custom Regions Metadata

You need to update the metadata to tell SAC that a new choropleth layer is available.

INSERT INTO "SAP_FPA_SPATIAL_CUSTOM_REGIONS"."sap.fpa.services.spatial::custom_hierarchy.CHOROPLETH_CUSTOM_HIERARCHY" VALUES (

'Hexagons', 5, 'CLUSTER_NAME', 'name', 13, 1, 'Hexagons 15', 'SHAPE_HEX', 'cv::ENGLAND_HEX_15', '', 'COVID', '0');

SELECT * FROM "SAP_FPA_SPATIAL_CUSTOM_REGIONS"."sap.fpa.services.spatial::custom_hierarchy.CHOROPLETH_CUSTOM_HIERARCHY";

You can check the metadata looks as expected

Figure 3.1: Preview SAC Custom Spatial Regions

4. Visualise with SAP Analytics Cloud

Within SAC you can create a Geo Map with a Choropleth / Drill Layer and you should see the newly exposed view as a hierarchy.

Figure 4.1: Create Choropleth / Drill Layer

Figure 4.2: Hexagon Spatial Clustering in SAP Analytics Cloud

5. Other Possibilities, Voronoi Regions

Using exactly the same techniques you can access other spatial techniques such as Voronoi regions, as suggested by a colleague James Giffin Voronoi regions/cells sound more like a beer or wine to me, makes for an interesting visual.

VIEW "view::LAD_VORONOI" AS

SELECT "objectid" AS ID, "lad19nm" AS NAME, ST_VoronoiCell(ST_POINT, -1.0) OVER () AS VORONOI_SHAPE FROM "LAD2019_ST"

Figure 5: Voronoi Cells / Regions

Source: sap.com

Real-time Replication task using SAP Business Application Studio

SAP Business Application Studio is a comprehensive browser-based IDE available on SAP Business Technology Platform for the development of complex applications comprised of web-based or mobile UIs, business logic, and extensive SAP HANA data models.

Designed to support developers who use SAP HANA, SAP Business Application Studio provides various tools, such as syntax-aware editors for code and SAP HANA artifacts, and calculation views, as well as inspection, testing, and debugging tools.

Spend Insight to Action Scenario with Manage Supplier Line Items Fiori App

This blog explains how to create a custom copy of the app with with Status All Items selected by default.

BW4 + HANA (Hybrid) Modeling Optimization Steps

Basic rule of thumb on any system development of a 2 tier architecture, is that complex formula or logic be push down to the Database rather than the application layer. As Databases are designed to handle more complex formulas. In the SAP environment this was commonly practiced in ABAP programming but not in the Legacy BW (none HANA). As most BW report logics were ran in the application layer and high complex computation were processed in BW’s ETL. BW Developers didn’t have the option to run their report logics directly on the Database & was reliant on BW modeling. This caused a lot of performance issues & Data redundancy in the past.

SAP HANA Calculation View Union Node Data Pruning – Using MATDOCOIL, MATDOCOIL_INDEX Tables Example.

Introduction:

I am working for a customer and their business is mainly in the oil and gas industry. As you may be aware of SAP’s solution IS-Oil (Industry Specific – oil & gas) is tailor-made for the oil and gas industry. With the emerging of S/4HANA many-core module database tables have been re-designed or new tables are made available for simplicity, redundancy, and performance reasons. So, we are going to take an example based on two important tables which are MATDOCOIL and MATDOCOIL_INDEX.

MATDOCOIL: It is a standard SAP Transparent table in SAP IS-Oil application, which mainly contains additional converted quantities, unit of measures, and Quantity conversion parameters. Up to 60 additional quantities (ADQNTP*) and unit of measure (MSEHI*) can be stored into separate table columns.

SAP HANA tool for CSV exports from Oracle

Overview

Recently, one of my customer’s had an interesting data movement problem. They needed to extract 150+ tables from a traditional RDBMS, with some tables having 500M+ rows, and move those tables to an SAP HANA instance. This would seem to be a straightforward exercise, but there were some gotchas:

1. The volume of the data was large and the network bandwidth between the servers was restricted due to WAN limitations.

2. The goal was to move and import all the data into their SAP HANA instance in less than one hour.

3. The only open ports between the two servers was for SSH (port 22), and this could not be changed due to security policies.

SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Essentials MBC Bank Payments Automation

BACKGROUND

The scope of the blog is to describe the high-level architecture and the configuration steps required to integrate SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Essentials with the banks using SAP Multi-Bank Connector deployed on Business Technology Platform.

WHAT IS A MULTI BANK CONNECTOR?

MBC is a combination of SAP Managed CPI version deployed on SAP Business Technology Platform that is compliant with the banking security standards and SPRO Configuration that will be activated on SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Essentials backend when you purchase 16R Scope Item on SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Essentials (SPRO won’t be available for users on S/4HANA Cloud Essentials).

Building Workflow Analytical Report

This blog post helps you to create an analytical report based on your chosen parameters . Additionally, this blog also shows you how to generate workflow reports based on the average time taken by each approver to approve a workflow item.

Users with role: Analytics Specialist can create such analytical reports.

Following is a broad overview of the major steps involved :

1. Create Custom CDS Views (App: Custom CDS Views)

◉ CDS-Views provide the necessary data for the analytical queries

2. Create Custom Analytical Query (App: Custom Analytical Query)

◉ Analytical queries define the design of the actual application

U4A IDE Platform – An Introduction

Getting explored with U4A IDE Platform 

What is the U4A IDE Platform? 

U4A IDE Platform is UI/UX IDE toolkit which has a function as an easy -to-develop UI5 application by ABAP developer. In addition, It’s called ‘UI5 for ABAP’, in short: ‘U4A’.

The U4A IDE Platform provides a combined development environment of SAPUI5, increasing ease of use, and ABAP Technology alone enables the implementation of from Application to Web UI.

Then, what’s difference with SAPUI5, and why should i recommend to use ‘U4A IDE Platform’ instead of SAPUI5?

Activation of Planning Bundle /ERP/SFIN_PLANNING for Cost Center – Plan/Actual App in S/4 HANA

Introduction :

To use Cost Center – Plan/Actual App we need to activate SAP BPC optimized for S/4HANA Finance and Embedded BW. In this blog we will see how to activate the planning bundle to use Cost Center – Plan/Actual app.

Problem :

The steps in solution section can be followed to activate the planning bundle.

We face many issues after activating the Cost Center – Plan/Actual app like :

◉ Could not instantiate data source “DS_1” for query “/ERP/SFIN_M01_Q2001

◉ Query /ERP/SFIN_M01_Q2001 is unknown

◉ Cannot activate BEX query /ERP/SFIN_M01_Q2001

Redirected restores PROD>QAS for SAP HANA tenant. Step-by-Step guide

Overview.

Consider a common problem in S/4HANA. By mistake users or functional consultants clear a portion of data in a production system. Bussines continue works in the ERP-system and a lot of new transactional data was generated (for example new sales orders, etc). So you can’t restore a production system from a backup.

This step-by-step guide can help you resolve this typical situation.

Backup and Recovery of SAP HANA Database on Azure using Azure Backup Plugin for HANA – Part III

This is in continuation of my previous blog post Backup and Recovery of SAP HANA Database on Azure using Azure Backup Plugin for HANA – Part II

5. SAP HANA RESTORE

To restore, below permission is required:

◉ Backup Operator permissions in the vault where restore needs to be done.

◉ Contributor (write) access to the source VM that’s backed up.

◉ Contributor (write) access to the target VM:

     ◉ If restoration is happening to the same VM, this is the source VM.

     ◉ If restoration is happening on an alternate location, this is the new target VM.