OLAP and RELATIONAL connections

[Former Member]

Hi All,

Can any one explain me diffrences between OLAP and RELATIONAL connections and which connection is prefreable and when.

Thanks & Regards

Mohit Gupta

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Agree with Mani,

The idea is basically if you need to access data from a table and regular RDBMS then your connection should be a relational connection but if your source is a application and data is stored in cube(technically there are tables involve which you normally do not see) then you would use a OLAP connection..

However there are exception like for SAP BW normal connection user is OLAP as the data being stored in cube but you also can have relational connection using JCo defined in the cube which will retrieve the same data but by using a relational query instead..

Another thing to note is relational connection (including HANA) will always produce a SQL statement to be fired from report while OLAP connection normally create a MDX statement (with exception of BW which makes native RFC calls in IDT using native BICS connection and MDX while using from UDT )

HANA is a little different however being both relational and OLAP in nature.. you can have a BW sitting on HANA so you can have a relational connection to access HANA information views and a OLAP to get the BEx queries for BW sitting on HANA and also you can have a OLAP connection for native HANA for accessing Analytic view(treated as cube) to be used with Analysis products (Analysis for office or Analysis for OLAP) which is OLAP in nature..

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

thanks Durga....

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

hey durga,

HRU?

In above expalanation. you have mentioned that for Bex queres of SAP HANA we need OLAP connection what about Bex query of SAP BW. Do we need relational or OLAP?

Thanks

[Ram7 · Accepted solution]

Hello Mohit,

adding to Mishra, I want to make it more simple to understand.

OLAP Connection - If you want to connect any BW objects (I say any so I mean, BW Objects inclusive of Bex)

Relational Connection - Any Non-BW objects/BW.

But by using Relational SQL is created using OLAP MDX is created. Better dont get confused use OLAP for BW and Relational for Non-BW.

Hope this helps.

[andreasja_schneider]

To summarize:

1. If your data source is SAP BW/SAP BEx queries do use an OLAP connection, and utilize for example Webi via this OLAP connection (direct access to SAP BEx querie via BICS that is), no universe required here.
   
   
2. If your data source is a relational database, and yes among many things SAP HANA is also a relational databsse, then create a relational universe conenction, and then a universe on top of it.
3. If your are using native SAP HANA though (not SAP BW powered by SAP HANA that is, for this refer to 1. instead) some reporting tools offer direct access to so called "SAP HANA Calculation Views" for example. For Webi this direct access (meaning: no universe required) is as far as I am aware hopefully planned in the future.

Please, forgive me but I left out any OLAP data source, which is not SAP BW ; )

[Former Member]

OLAP connection is used for cubes(BW) and analytical views(Hana).

[Former Member]

Hi all,

I have been going through this thread. I have a question. If I have to connect BI user to HANA to consume views of the analytical previlage, do I need to create

1. OLAP connection as Analytical or Calc views will be accessed or

2. Relational connection as they are just views and data is fetched from underlying tables.

Answer is appreciated.

Thanks

Naveen

[Former Member]

Hi Naveen,

You need to create relation connection to consume HANA views in BI 4.0

In BI 4.1, IDT is now able to generate a HANA Business Layer automatically based on HANA Views.

[Former Member]

Thank you Ravi.

[former_member182521]

To make you understand better, relational connections/data sources are 2D in nature and is represented in tabular form as rows and columns. These data sources are OLTP in nature. On other hand OLAP datasources are 3D in nature and is mainly used for Analysis with data is precanned in Cubes. You shoould have OLAP compatible processing tools to explore the data wwith in those cubes.

[Former Member]

Hi Mohit,

may i now which Data source you are refering?

If it is BW? please refer the below document.

[Former Member]

Hi JRK,

I want know  the diffrences for diffrent types of data source like SAP HANA , SAP BW etc.There is no specific data source.

Thanks & Regards

Mohit Gupta

[Former Member]

Please refer the IDT guide to have the more details about Connectivity for the Data Sources.

http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/boexir4/en/xi4_info_design_tool_en.pdf

The Below screenshots which i have shared are from IDT in my local system to have a overview.

Relation DBs :

For OALP :