SAP HANA Spatial

[sunsapblr]

Hi,

I need to work on Spatial development for ISU use cases. Do I need to do the development in modelling perspective in Eclipse?

Also, If I have the backend S4HANA system, for spatial development what I need to do the set up in Eclipse. Also do I need to install any plugin or component for Spatial development? Which third party system I need to integrate for Spatial development, google map or ESRI?

Thanks & Regards

Sunil

[former_member277290 · Accepted solution]

Hi Sunil, your question is very broad, so it's difficult to answer without knowing more details.

In general, yes - if you want to do Geospatial development in HANA you will need to use HANA Studio (Eclipse). There you can make use of native Spatial type objects and functions, create views using spatial joins, etc. This does not require any additional plugins above standard HANA Studio.
You can download HANA Studio from the SAP Downloads site.
Further information on Geospatial modelling can be found in this reference guide.

You don't necessarily have to use Google Map or ESRI, again it depends on what your desired result is. If you want to get the shapes of countries so you can overlay them on a map, for instance, then you will need some way of obtaining that shape/polygon data, and those are both possible sources. If you simply need to do distance calculations, you would not need any of that.

Hope that's helpful.

[sunsapblr · Accepted solution]

Hi Elliot,

Thanks for the reply.

My query is regarding the perspective in which we need to do the spatial development (HANA Modelling or other).

If we need a graphical output, do we need to rely on google map or ESRI? how to import this to the development environment?

Thanks & Regards

Sunil

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Sunil,

Again, it depends on the nature of what you're building. "Spatial Development" is done like any other development in HANA - you can use the Developer or Modeller perspective, and create Calculation Views like you normally would. The difference is that the tables you will be using will likely have some geospatial-relevant columns, using spatial data types like ST_POINT, ST_LINE, etc.

In terms of actually visualizing that data, graphical output is done in your front-end outside HANA. Whether that's through SAP Lumira, which has some in-built support for visualizing Geo-data, ArcGIS, or your own XS Application which may have custom rendering, (or API calls to ESRI, embedded Google Maps, reverse Geocoding, whatever) of the data processed and returned by HANA. You will need to do some research to understand the options out there and find something which suits your purpose. There are several excellent blogs which can also give you some inspiration, such as this one.

Kind Regards

[sunsapblr · Accepted solution]

Hi Baj,

The following are my requirements. Can you please suggest which is the best option for this in S4HANA system.

Also, can you please specify any add-ons need to be purchased ?

• Geo Fencing i.e map the coordinates to show area where the assets are present or area of field work or water reservoir etc.
• Maintain geo coordinated of various Functional locations ( customer premise ) and assets ( meters or transformers etc. ) and display them on map
• Display various work orders created in the system based on the address information or geo coordinates maintained in Functional Location
• Identify the nearest “X “ service provider from the geo coordinate maintained functional location/assest
• Derive the weather data based on geo coordinates and show on map

Regards

Sunil

[former_member277290 · Accepted solution]

Hi Sunil,

Much of the groundwork can be done in HANA natively.

Identifying nearest (location) to (other location) is something that can be done easily in HANA with standard functions like ST_DISTANCE..

Displaying work orders: You can build an information view to return the work orders table, joined on some other table which contains geo coordinates, and filtered using an input parameter or whatever depending on your specific use.

Deriving weather data will depend very much on the source of your data. If you have some sensors on assets, they can be used but will usually require some kind of preparation such as averaging over time periods, which can also be done in HANA. If you don't already have weather data, this can be a little tricky as you will want to find a high-quality weather station or service close by the assets you are interested in. This in turn will depend on the time granularity that's relevant.

For geo-fencing, all this really means is maintaining a list of polygons which you can compare other points against. If you don't already have this list, for relatively few points of interest, such as a handful work areas which are only relevant to the business, then these will probably need to be manually created. You can actually do this through free tools like Google Maps, drawing out the area you want and exporting the resultant shape file. John-Paul Boyd has a great blog which covers that here.

To display these on actual maps, as I mentioned you could try a tool like Lumira using Galigeo for your custom regions (see this post by Vincent Dechandon for more details); otherwise, you can look at ESRI's own tools like ArcGIS and assess whether they suit your needs.

Hopefully that helps. I'm afraid any more information beyond these general ideas would be getting into the realm of actual consulting work and solutionizing; so I suggest you discuss these points with a solution architect, read through the guides I've pointed you to and this should be enough for you to get started.

Kind Regards,

Elliott

[sunsapblr · Accepted solution]

Hi Elliot,

Thanks a lot for the reply. This gives me some clarity and insight.

Thanks & Regards

Sunil