cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Usage of Open ODS View vs Composite Provider while consuming HANA Views.

KonradZaleski
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Till now in our project we were using SAP HANA Native for creating views, which were then consumed by Analysis For Office (AFO) directly.

Now we may plan to expose all these view through BW4HANA system. And now I'm wondering what is the best way of doing that. My initial plan was following:

<em>HANA View</em> -> <em>Composite Provider</em> -> <em>Query </em>-> <em>AFO</em>
This seem to be working fine, however I noticed that there is also possibility to consume HANA Views using Open ODS Views.

The differences (which I see) for consuming calculation views between Composite Provider and Open ODS view which I discover for this kind of implementation are:

  • In Composite Provider we can UNION/JOIN multiple data sources which makes it more flexible
  • In Composite Provider there is a possibility to map input parameters from HANA View

  1. So if the Composite Provider is more flexible than Open ODS View, then what is the use case for consuming HANA Views via Open ODS View ?
  2. Considering I have a calculation view without input parameters, which InfoProvider should I use?
MustafaBensan
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Hi Konrad,

Some further questions related to your comment to extend the discussion:

"The main reason of that decision is that we already have another team working on BW and we wanted to have a single point of reference both for HANA reports and BW report (now users need to login separetely to BW and HANA system depending on the reporting need)."

Since the users login separately to BW and HANA, I am assuming this is because you have implemented different front-end BI tools for visualising and reporting on the data. If this is the case, I'd be interested in knowing which BI tools you are using to consume the HANA views vs which tools your are using to consume the BW Queries.

Thanks,

Mustafa.

KonradZaleski
Active Contributor

Hi Mustafa,

Actually we are using the same reporting tool - Analysis for Office. Difference is that, for HANA reporting we are only using standard ECC/CRM tables (no custom data) and our report returning real time results.
BW team uses materialized data (i.e. coming from ADSOs) as a source for the reporting, and these data are not real time. Additionally BW team can create custom data flows, and load data from sources other than SAP.

Accepted Solutions (0)

Answers (1)

Answers (1)

MustafaBensan
Active Contributor

Hi Konrad,

Recently I have been investigating this very same scenario. Other community members may also have suggestions but here are my conclusions so far:

1. Using Open ODS Views seems to be a cleaner approach if the requirement is purely to consume a HANA-based virtual data model in BW (also considering that your Calculation Views do not have any input parameters). In this case you have a one-to-one relationship between a reporting HANA View and an Open ODS View which is subsequently consumed by a BW Query;

2. As you have pointed out, a Composite Provider allows you to combine multiple data sources. However, if your data sources are only HANA Views then I think it would be better to apply a consistent modelling approach and just create new HANA Views as needed to feed Open ODS Views. On the other hand, if you have a requirement to combine your HANA Views with other data sources such as data persisted in BW ADSOs then the Composite Provider would be more appropriate.

Also, I would be interested to know what has lead to the decision to consume your native HANA virtual data model in BW/4HANA? Some reasons I can think of are to take advantage of BW features such as:

- master data hierarchies and attributes

- BW authorisation concept

- BW Query features such as Structures, Cumulative Key Figures, Totals, BW Variables (standard and custom), Cell Selections and Formulas etc

Regards,

Mustafa.

KonradZaleski
Active Contributor

Hello Mustafa,

Thanks a lot for your response.

The main reason of that decision is that we already have another team working on BW and we wanted to have a single point of reference both for HANA reports and BW report (now users need to login separetely to BW and HANA system depending on the reporting need).

Additional advantages of exposing those views in BW are similair as the one which you mentioned:
  • BW Authorization (getting rid of maintaning HANA authorizations)
  • More flexibility when creating queries (using BADIs and AMDPs for variables, additional options as hiding result rows, adding default fields to the output of the report)

For master data we are not sure to what extend we will use them, since we have many custom fields and it would be very big effort to create and maintain master data for all of them.

Let's see if other community members suggest anything else for this topic.

Thanks,
Konrad

MustafaBensan
Active Contributor

Hi Konrad,

Thanks for your feedback. This is building quite a good use case and validation for combining native HANA models with BW. Yes, let's see what other suggestions are offered. It could make for an interesting discussion 🙂

Regards,

Mustafa.

0 Kudos

If I may, I'd like to ask what is the distinct difference between the composite provider and Opens ODS view apart from you have modelling capability with a composite provider. What value does the Open ODS view have if you can't model in it? Or is this just another virtual provider tool?