Core Data Services (CDS) have fundamentally transformed how SAP customers design, model, and consume data within the SAP ecosystem. From their inception as a semantic layer for SAP HANA to becoming the cornerstone of SAP’s data modeling strategy across all products, CDS have evolved significantly—enabling advanced analytics, streamlined development, and real-time insights. This article explores the evolution of CDS and its profound impact on the SAP landscape, especially within SAP HANA Live environments.
CDS is a data modeling infrastructure introduced by SAP to define semantic layers on top of database tables, providing a business-centric, reusable, and declarative approach to data modeling. Unlike traditional database views, CDS views embed business logic, annotations, and metadata, enabling easier consumption by applications, reporting tools, and analytics platforms.
Initially, CDS was introduced as part of SAP HANA to enable in-database semantic modeling. These early CDS views focused primarily on creating reusable database views enriched with business logic. This development allowed SAP HANA Live to deliver real-time operational reporting without extracting data from transactional systems.
To leverage CDS in ABAP-based applications, SAP extended CDS to the ABAP environment with ABAP CDS views. This integration brought powerful modeling capabilities to ABAP developers, allowing semantic data models to be consumed natively within the ABAP stack.
With the introduction of SAP S/4HANA, CDS became central to data modeling and reporting. All transactional and analytical data models were exposed as CDS views, enabling:
SAP enhanced CDS to support extensibility and data federation, allowing customers to adapt standard models and integrate external data sources without compromising upgrade paths.
CDS has established a single source of truth in SAP environments, standardizing how data models are defined, consumed, and reused. This unification reduces inconsistencies and simplifies development and reporting.
Developers and business users benefit from:
By tightly coupling CDS with SAP HANA’s in-memory technology, SAP HANA Live offers real-time insights directly on transactional data. This eliminates delays associated with batch data processing and replication.
CDS supports fine-grained access control annotations, enabling secure data access aligned with business rules and regulatory requirements.
CDS is the backbone for SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Fiori Elements, and other SAP intelligent enterprise tools, facilitating:
While CDS has been transformative, challenges remain:
SAP continues to innovate CDS with enhancements in performance, metadata management, and integration capabilities to meet future enterprise needs.
Core Data Services have revolutionized data modeling in the SAP ecosystem by providing a semantic, extensible, and integrated approach to business data. CDS has become the foundation of SAP’s strategy for real-time analytics, application development, and enterprise intelligence, especially within SAP HANA Live scenarios. As SAP evolves towards the intelligent enterprise vision, CDS will remain a critical enabler of agility, consistency, and innovation across SAP landscapes.