SAP HANA Direct Extractor Connection

[Former Member]

The biggest drawback of Business Objects Product Suite, when used with SAP Product Suite, was the inability of BO Products to connect directly to the ECC System and the Business Content Extractors. The BO Universes and the generation of the metadata from BW Queries/Infocubes used to work just fine but performance was an issue with most of our dashboards, because of the Excel backend of Excelcius, which could not handle many rows and created a performance bottleneck. It used to feel as if BO and SAP BW are two different products (which in fact they are from two different companies with 2 disparate technological foundations)

That functionality is now provided using the Direct Extractor Connection. Has anyone worked on HANA extracting Data using ECC Business Content Extractors or extracting directly from SAP BW ? Do you have screenshots ? How reliable is it ? Can you trace down a single record from HANA DB to ECC ? Does that extraction also use the same LO Cokpit, with the V3 Updates and the queues in RSA7 ?

Also in my past BW Expecrience, when we wanted to prove BW data is 100% correct, I used to join ECC Tables using SQ01/02/03 queries. I have done it for Inventpry Management and Purchasing. I used to wonder, why do we have such a convoluted logic in the ABAP programs of the ECC Standard Extractors. If information is coming from a very neat set of tables with some filters and selections like "cancelled indicator"/STORNO, better to get the data directly into HANA, rather than take the convoluted ECC Business Content Extractors route. Same for COPA Data.

The way to go for corporates would probably be to migrate parts of their data models into HANA, maybe the ones which are very crucial for running the business and the data in which is Strategic/tactical in nature.... and as RAM gets cheaper compared to Hard Disk Space, move te entire BW investment to HANA.

[former_member182277 · Accepted solution]

Hello Prateek,

Points from  my side..

SAP HANA Direct Extractor Connection (DXC) is available as a simple option in ETL (batch) scenarios for data replication from existing SAP Data Source extractors into SAP HANA

DXC does not require BW on SAP HANA. Also with DXC, data is not loaded into the embedded BW system. Instead, data is redirected into SAP HANA.

Hope it is useful.

Regards,

neha

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Neha... Are you working on HANA or do you have access to a HANA System ?

I have lots of questions in mind.

How does HANA handle the After Image/Pre-Image Scenarios of the SAP Extractors ?

Do you have equivalents of DSOs in HANA ?

The default behaviour of Infocubes in SAP BW is aggregation. Does HANA have similar functionality ? Because FACT tables in HANA Modeling appears to be normal table functionality with adding/update functionality.

[former_member182277 · Accepted solution]

Hello prateek,

yes, i am working on SAP HANA and have access for the same.

you can also request for the SAP HANA Sandbox:

http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/hana

you can find more documents on the  above URL.

The default behaviour of Infocubes in SAP BW is aggregation. Does HANA have similar functionality ? Because FACT tables in HANA Modeling appears to be normal table functionality with adding/update functionality.

When you are loading data into SAP HANA then data is stored in the Coulmn Store and compression is done on the data loading level. So, no need to go for the aggregation while using SAP HANA.

you can do the modelling on the SAP HANA using Attribute, analytical and calculation view and that can be leverage with SAP BO 4.0 directly.

Hope it is helpful.

Regards,

neha

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Neha.... Is there a good document on Modeling in HANA, which shows Design and Development of HANA Optimised Infocubes, DSOs and Planning Functions ? These must be equivalent of DSOs , Infocubes and Planning Functions in SAP BW.

When working with Excelcius/WebI we had observed the Metadata of Infocubes and BeX Queries being copied in BO Universes, and that is a good functionality for connecting to SAP BW, which some clients may need, but for connecting directly to ECC Extractors one needs Objects similar to what is there in SAP BW, like DSOs, Infocubes etc which behave in a very simlar manner. This is what I had asked in my previous question. This is because ECC extractors work in a typical way and you need typical Objects like DSOs and SAP BW Infocubes to have the same kind of behaviour as in SAP BW.

I have requested for the HANA access on Developer Center. Lets see when I get it 🙂

[former_member182277 · Accepted solution]

Hello Prateek,

You can find documents on below URL.

http://help.sap.com/nw73bwhana

For DXC, you need not to placed BW  in the enviornment.

See, in the BW we are using the Data Sources that are in-built in the ECC, so by using that Data sources you creating DSO's, infocubes in the BW.

But by using DXC, the same ECC datasources are replicate into SAP HANA and  you can the analytcal view (infocube in BW) and calculation view and do the modelling on the Data Sources without leverage the BW in the landscape.

After the modeling on the Data Sources you can leverage the BI 4.0 suite with HANA for reporting purpose.

and  you will get the access within a day..

Regards,

neha

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Neha.... can you connect with me please on Yahoo Messenger ? My ID is prateeks_in and my mobile is 9836023523... I work for HP and are contemplating some investments into HANA....

[former_member182277 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Send a mail on your yahoo id is
prateeks_in@yahoo.com

Rgards,
neha

[rama_shankar3 · Accepted solution]

HANA access to Amazon needs to be self driven after you accept the access agreement. SAP just confirmed to me that I will not receive any email with access informatioin. I am in the process of migrating from the cloudshare to the Amazon self-service environment.

Neha - have you used the Amazon access to HANA sandbox? Any tips in setting up access would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Rama

[former_member197602 · Accepted solution]

Hi Neha,

Can you use DXC as a simpler alternative to replicating ECC tables into HANA in batch, i.e, without having to create single data flows (jobs) with Data Services for every single ECC table you would like import into HANA?

Thanks in advance,

Raul Saet

SAP America