SAP HANA - front end/screens for users to update HANA tables directly

[Former Member]

Hello,

I have some custom configuration tables in HANA and I need a user interface to allow the users to update the data in these tables directly without requiring any assistance from IT.  The ideal scenario would be to have some screens where the users will be able to insert/update/delete data.  These screens could have check boxes and radio buttons.

Does HANA have such user interface?  If not, is there some other software that may be connected directly to HANA and used to build the user interface screens?

Thanks,
Victoria

[lbreddemann · Accepted solution]

Please check out the HANA developer guidelines and documentation.

There are examples for how to create a Web-UI for things like that.

Also the SHINE educational content might be helpful here.

However, typically editing tables directly doesn't make too much sense for end-users.

Most of the times they are concerned about business related topics, like sales, customers, measurements, counts and the like. Just giving them an "MS Access" on HANA is very likely not satisfying the end user demand.

And if it actually does - why not give them MS Access as a front end?

- Lars

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Lars.

I am building SQL scripts in HANA to perform master data quality analysis, similar to what the Information Steward does.  The Information Steward was a bit expensive and insufficient for my company's needs, hence the in-house development.

The front end screens are required for the users to be able to maintain the data quality rules within HANA for each master data table/column they wish to evaluate.  The SQL scripts would be built around these rules, hopefully I can make them so dynamic that no code change would be required every time a rule is created or modified.

I am unable to use MS Access as the front end tool as it's against my company's IT policy, MS Access is not a software my IT department currently supports.  So I am looking for a different front end solution, screens that would behave like MS Access or Oracle Forms.

I am going to be looking into Web-UI and SHINE as you've recommended, thank you for that.

As I am still relatively new to HANA, any other recommendation you might have would be greatly appreciated.  Actually HANA development is new to my entire company so there currently is a limited in-house expertise and I have to rely on the SAP Community Network for advice.

Thank you,

Victoria

[lbreddemann · Accepted solution]

Hi Victoria

thanks a lot for providing such an open description of your current situation and what you try to achieve.

I find that very interesting to hear and think it would be awesome, if you'd come back and write (blog) about your experiences, design decisions, issues faced/solved etc.

When it comes to the advise part, it gets tricky, since I don't really know enough of the context here.

The MS Access "hint" was actually not meant to be taken too seriously. I consider Access and Excel to be the epitome of shadow-it and would't really consider using them for anything but UI.

What I like to clearly dis-encourage is the approach of trying to be overly "dynamic" with your coding.

"Dynamic" SQL, "flexibel schemas" and entity-value data storage are sure fire ways to make your application hard to maintain, difficult to debug and they prevent the vast majority of DB-optimization techniques to be effective.

Have a look at how decision tables work - SAP HANA generates the actual runtime objects here instead of some clever dynamic coding. That's what I would recommend to consider for your project, too. Generate the explicit objects (tables, views, procedures, etc. ) instead of creating dynamic coding.

- Lars

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Victoria,

you could look into exposing the concerning tables with ODATA, and write a web-GUI in javascript consuming these odata services.

If you have web developers in your company, they probably know their way around in jquery/datajs if the sap tools are not to their liking.

And also, what Lars said

[thomas_jung · Accepted solution]

This might be too technical of a tool for end users, but in SPS 10 the SAP HANA Web-based Development Workbench catalog data preview now allows for the create/delete/edit of records generically for most any table.