Expose CDS view associations to reporting tool (e.g. embedded design studio)

[former_member509411]

Given that we are building a consumption/analytical view for any reporting tool, e.g. the SAP Fiori Design Studio application, how would we properly expose associations?

Any association exposed via:

fielda,
fieldb,
_assocx

in the consumption view, is disregarded in Eclipse (warning) and the associations fields are not visible to the reporting tool.

We can workaround that by adding the single fields to the statement, such as:

fielda,
fieldb,
_assocx.fieldc
_assocx.fieldd

Given that the idea behind using associations is partially to build "bigger" cubes that still perform well, because the fields are only pulled "on-demand", the workaround (exposing single fields) seems to breach with that approach.

Additionally, by exposing the additional fields manually

1. the lean syntax suffers
2. the maintainability suffers (in the event of removed/added fields in the lower view stack)
3. we hit ABAP dictionary object limitations (e.g. total field length of view <4096)

Is there a proper way to do this?

[dmitry_kuznetsov1]

Jan, it is disregarded in Eclipse only, in reporting tools it is visible. It is, indeed a good idea not to expose fields in CDS Query unless absolutely necessary.

Please also see a related answer of mine https://answers.sap.com/answers/12661448/view.html

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Dmitry Kuznetsov

BI Consulting