SAP HANA

Data Modelling for BW-on-HANA

In SAP BW, evaluations usually take place at InfoCube level to ensure fast processing. InfoCubes already depict multidimensional structured data and data relationships. With SAP BW-on-HANA, you can perform queries just as quickly at the lower level of DataStore objects (DSO). InfoCubes are often no longer required.

When transferring a business warehouse to SAP HANA, you can transfer existing InfoCubes to InfoCubes adapted for SAP HANA. This means that the existing data modelling does not need to be revised. The optimized tables of the adjusted DataCubes ensure good query performance.

Queries in SAP BW (BEx queries) are not based directly on InfoProviders, but preferably on MultiProviders that merge data from different data sources. The data model on which BW is based can be adapted to integrate new InfoProviders as required. BW-on-HANA uses the CompositeProvider developed especially for the platform, which makes data modelling more flexible and accelerates data integration.

HANA transfers runtime-intensive processes in the business warehouse, for example the activation of DSO requests, to the HANA database. There, not only processes are processed faster. The amount of data to be transferred between the BW server and the database is also reduced. As part of this procedure, known as the “code push-down” principle, further data transformations take place directly in the SAP HANA database. This leads to significantly faster processing times and a reduction in the load on the BW server.

To map data with all its attributes and relationships, BW required a great deal of effort in data modelling. The development of a reliable, stable data model inevitably involved the creation of a large number of BW objects. Instead of these InfoObjects and transformations, BW-on-HANA now uses less complex InfoProviders in the form of “Open ODS Views”. They enable direct access to the tables of databases without intermediate steps via InfoObjects. The runtime is also calculated in SAP-HANA.

SAP-HANA also improves the processing of successive sub-processes. Certain sub-processes are no longer necessary. SAP-HANA ignores steps that still exist but are no longer required in existing process chains. Thus it is no longer necessary to create or delete InfoCube indexes or roll up data into an aggregate.

BIG DATA – large data volumes in SAP HANA

Experts use the term big data for large amounts of, as a rule, unstructured data that are generated daily on social networks, among other things. Big data also includes the applications and systems that allow companies to analyse and use this data. One example is Hadoop, which is an open software program for data storage and processing in distributed computer systems.