Welcome to the SAP HANA Academy my
name is Bob and in this series of videos
we'll be looking at SAP S/4HANA. In
this video series we'll be looking at
how to extend S/4HANA with external
data and we're going to start the series
with an overview of the architecture.
Please note that this video set shows
certain features in the SAP HANA
database which may require specific
licenses even if you are using
S/4HANA. If you are using your own S/4HANA
system and are not using the S/4HANA trial
please contact your account executive or
partner manager to see if you are
licensed to use these SAP HANA database
features. They are SAP HANA smart data
access SAP HANA smart data integration
creating a virtual table in SAP HANA
and creating a calculation view in SAP
HANA.
So in the previous series of videos
you've been using two machines
essentially. You've been using a remote
desktop windows which has SAP
HANA Studio on it and on that you've been
building some views using an S/4HANA
system which connects to a series of S/4HANA
tables. Of course then you've been
exposing that via OData to a series
of analytical tools. So in this series
we're going to look at extending S/4HANA
by connecting to external
data and so the idea is that you're
combining SAP and non SAP data
together. Now that external data can be
anything really it can be from a SAP
HANA Vora system, to a Hadoop system, to
Oracle, all the way down even to a CSV
file or an OData service and in our
example we're going to connect to a
remote Hadoop system. Now if you haven't
got a Hadoop system, we've got a series
of videos which show you how you can
install your own Hadoop system running
on Hortonworks data platform using a
installation tool called
and Ambari. Within Hadoop there’s a system
called
Hive which is kind of like a database
which lets you connect to what's called
HDFS. So your files are stored in the
Hadoop distributed file system and you
can access any of your files via this
database called Hive and the language
which you access Hive is very similar to
SQL. So within SAP there are many ways
in which you can access Hadoop data from
SAP HANA and if you want to find out
all you need to do is launch a browser
and go to SAP HANA Academy then
you'll see a link to our YouTube channel.
Now on the channel if you scroll right
to the bottom there’s section called smart
data access within the provisioning
section and this lists the different
ways we can connect to Hadoop. So one of
them if you look at the video list is
using what's called the SAP HANA Spark
Controller. That's one method. You can
also use these UDF's to connect to
Hadoop and HDFS data and those are the
ways by installing drivers on the SAP
HANA server. Now the method we're going
to utilize is using Smart Data
Integration, Smart Data Access but
we're going to utilize a tool which you
can install and that tools called the SAP
HANA Data Provisioning Agent. Now the
great thing about using the Data
Provisioning Agent is that you can
connect to not only Hadoop but other
data sources such as Oracle, DB2, Facebook
and Google Circles and also CSV files. So
we're going to use what's called the
Data Provisioning Agent within Smart
Data Integration. We're going to install
that agent on a Windows machine and it
will be the same Windows machine that
you've been using to connect to S/4 from
the SAP HANA Studio. Now on that Windows
machine there will be a folder called
Lib and essentially to connect to the
Hadoop system all we need to do is place
a specific jar file in a specific
folder in order to enable connectivity.
Now after you've done this you're able
to then create a connection using Smart
Data Access which enables you to create
a virtual table which can connect to
that remote Hive system
and of course once you've got that
virtual table within S/4HANA you're
then able to combine that into a view
within your core data services in order
to access the data through OData. Now
the way we do that is that we'll build a
HANA calculation view which is then
later consumed in an external view
within the ABAP dictionary. Then a basic
level CDS view will be built which then
consumes the external view and finally
we'll extend an existing S/4 consumption
level CDS view to use the CDS view of
our external data. Again of course an
OData service will be published which
then combines both the existing S/4 data
with our new external data. So although
this series of videos doesn't go through
the installation of Hadoop in Hive we're
going to point you to a series of videos
which will enable you to install a
Hadoop system within AWS within less
than an hour. You won't need to pay for
Hadoop or Ambari but of course within
AWS you'll have to pay any hosting
charges. So those Hadoop installation and
configuration videos are in the
SAP HANA Vora 1.3 playlist on our
channel and you only really have to go
through five videos which you can see
here and there will also be a link in
the description as to where those videos
are. Additionally let's say you can't
get access to your own
Hadoop system or you haven't got the
means to install it within AWS. The great
thing about using Smart Data Integration
and Smart Data Access enables you to
connect to a wide variety of non HANA
data sources. So we're going to choose
the simplest one as a backup. So in
addition to connecting to Hadoop we're going
to show you how to connect to a CSV file
which resides on your Windows desktop.
When you've done this the process is
more or less the same as if connecting
to a Hadoop system. You need to configure
the Data Provisioning Agent in order to
connect and then ultimately you create a
virtual table which connects to that CSV
file through the Data Provisioning Agent
and again you can combine that virtual
table which connects
to a flat file with your ERP tables
which reside in S/4HANA.
So again there'll be two option. One is
connecting to Hive on Hadoop and we're
going to have another video which is
connecting to a CSV file on your Windows
remote desktop. You can choose either
approach. Again ultimately the aim is for
you to combine both S/4 and non S/4HANA
data in a single CDS view. Which
ultimately will be exposed to your analytical
tools via OData. Lastly if you want to
follow along with this video series and
you want to do the steps yourself all
the scripts used are in our GitHub
repository. So all you need to do is go
to SAP Hana Academy GitHub S/4HANA.
Do a search for that on Google and then
you'll get access to any scripts used in
this video series. If you go into that
link you'll see that we've got a link
SAP HANA Academy and then you'll see a
list of all our repositories and of
course all you need to do is go to
repositories and choose the S/4HANA
repository. Also if any tweaks are needed
for the videos we’ll put those changes and
indicate where the changes need to be
made within these GitHub files. So let us
go onward to the next video which is
part 1 in the series where we look at
what you need to have on your S/4HANA
remote desktop and also how to load data
into Hive.