SAP HANA Database Views - Use in SAP HANA Modeling components

[Jonathan_Haun]

I just wanted to confirm that a database view in a SAP HANA schema cannot be used in an Attribute View, Analytic View or graphical Calculation View. Has
anyone else experienced this limitation? I was able to use them in a stored procedure and then use that procedure's column view in a calculation view.
While that did work, it requires a significant amount of development just to use a database view in a model.

I'm running both Studio and SAP HANA v 45 (SPS5)

[lbreddemann · Accepted solution]

Confirmed. This is not possible.

The problem here is this: what you create with the modelled views are in fact not just fancy SQL statements, but rather complex combinations of rather basic operations present in the different execution engines in HANA.

These cannot be mapped 1:1 between SQL (the SQL you would have in your views) and the other engines. Technically you would have to execute the view completely, maybe without even pushing filters down, and work further on a potentially large intermediate result set.

As the main objective of HANA modeling is high performance, this approach is not feasible (it's similar to mixing SQL and ce_-functions in your scripted calc view).

So SQL views are out of the game here. (and before you ask: synonyms are as well - but I don't know the technical reason for that...)

- Lars

[Jonathan_Haun · Accepted solution]

Lars,

Thank you for the quick answer. This makes perfect sense based on your detailed explanation. Suffice it to say, the Procedures then become the best mechanism to de-normalize (on the fly and in real-time) any highly normalized data that needs to be made available via the multidimensional models. Otherwise, Data Services's ETL based replication will have to be utilized to create fully
de-normalized persistent columnar tables.

With that said, does anyone know if SLT or Sybase replication allow for complex transformation during replication? Are they simply Extract and Load (Incrementally)?

Regards,

Jonathan Haun

[justin_molenaur2 · Accepted solution]

I know this is an old thread, but I thought this might be useful in terms of your questijon on SLT. From what I gather and have seen, there is very little transformation possible with SLT. It seems limited to some string/date transformations on a column level. No other typical ETL functions (aggregate, etc) seem feasbile.

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/media/uuid/503a4b69-7ab3-2e10-d187-bf6228efd82d&overridela...

Regards,

Justin

[impraveen0192 · Accepted solution]

Hi Jonathan,

Talking from SLT point of view , Transformation logics like change in Fields metadata, addition of new fields, table partitions are allowed using Transformations Rule (event based rule and parameter based rules

Also it allows to add ABAP logic,  either via single line of code or we can also include ABAP program.

When it comes to comparing SLT transformation logic to already existing SAP EXTRACTORS , SAP EXTRACTORS richer than SLT transformations .

also BODS(data services ) provides  flexibility of adding more complex logic than SLT.

Regards

Praveen Kumar