In today’s interconnected digital ecosystem, seamless data exchange between diverse systems and applications is essential. OData (Open Data Protocol) has emerged as a widely adopted standard for building and consuming RESTful APIs that enable such integration. Within the SAP landscape, especially in the context of SAP-HANA-Live, OData services play a pivotal role by providing standardized, real-time access to SAP HANA data models for reporting, analytics, and application development.
This article provides a foundational introduction to OData services, their importance, and how they integrate with SAP-HANA-Live.
OData is an open web protocol designed to simplify the creation and consumption of queryable and interoperable REST APIs. It defines a standardized way to:
The protocol is based on widely used web technologies such as HTTP, REST, and JSON/XML for payload formats, making it accessible and easy to use across platforms.
SAP leverages OData extensively for exposing business data and functionality as services that can be consumed by multiple clients such as SAP Fiori apps, third-party tools, mobile applications, and analytics platforms.
SAP-HANA-Live provides predefined virtual data models built on CDS views that expose operational data in real-time. OData services are generated on top of these CDS views to make the data accessible outside the SAP system.
An OData service typically includes:
Example of a basic OData query:
GET /sap/opu/odata/sap/ZCUSTOMER_SRV/Customers?$filter=Country eq 'DE'
This query fetches customers from Germany from the OData service ZCUSTOMER_SRV.
With CDS, developers can annotate views to automatically generate OData services without manual coding:
@OData.publish: true
define view ZSalesOrder as select from sales_orders {
key sales_order_id,
customer_name,
order_date,
total_amount
}
The annotation @OData.publish: true triggers the automatic exposure of the CDS view as an OData service.
OData services form the backbone of modern SAP data consumption strategies, enabling real-time, standardized, and flexible access to SAP HANA data models. In the SAP-HANA-Live context, OData bridges the gap between live operational data and business users, applications, and external systems, facilitating smarter decisions and integrated workflows.
Mastering OData services alongside CDS and SAP HANA equips SAP professionals to design efficient, scalable, and future-ready SAP solutions.