In today’s fast-paced business environment, timely and accurate information is critical for making informed decisions. SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), combined with Core Data Services (CDS) views on SAP HANA, enables powerful real-time reporting capabilities that empower organizations to unlock deep business insights with agility and precision.
This article explores how SAC and CDS views work together to deliver seamless real-time reporting in the SAP ecosystem.
SAC is SAP’s cloud-based analytics solution that integrates business intelligence (BI), planning, and predictive analytics in a single platform. It offers a user-friendly interface for data visualization, story creation, and collaborative decision-making — all accessible from anywhere.
CDS views are a key technology in the SAP HANA environment, providing a semantic layer on top of database tables. They allow modeling of complex business logic directly in the database, offering:
CDS views form the foundation for real-time data consumption by analytical tools like SAC.
Traditional reporting often relies on batch processing and data replication, leading to delays and stale information. Real-time reporting eliminates these issues by providing:
By leveraging SAP HANA’s in-memory computing and CDS views, SAC can directly consume live data, supporting real-time dashboards and analysis.
The typical real-time reporting architecture involves:
Data Modeling with CDS Views: Business experts or developers create CDS views in SAP HANA or S/4HANA that represent business entities such as sales orders, inventory, or financial data. These views encapsulate business logic, filters, and aggregations.
Live Data Connection: SAC connects to SAP HANA or S/4HANA using Live Data Connections via OData or ABAP protocols, enabling direct query execution on CDS views without data replication.
Data Visualization and Analysis: SAC consumes the live CDS views to build interactive dashboards, reports, and stories that reflect the latest data dynamically.
This setup ensures that any change in the source system is immediately visible in SAC reports.
Real-time reporting powered by SAP Analytics Cloud and CDS views is transforming how organizations leverage SAP data for faster, smarter decision-making. By combining SAP HANA’s high-performance data modeling capabilities with SAC’s intuitive visualization and analytics tools, businesses gain immediate insight into their operations without compromising data consistency or security.
As enterprises strive to become truly data-driven, mastering the integration of SAC and CDS views will be a key competitive advantage in the SAP ecosystem.