SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) has become a cornerstone for business intelligence and planning in the SAP ecosystem, providing rich visualization and real-time analytics capabilities. When integrated with Core Data Services (CDS) views—especially those designed in SAP HANA Live environments—SAC enables powerful, live access to enterprise data without cumbersome data replication. This article highlights the best practices for integrating SAC with CDS views, ensuring optimal performance, data governance, and user experience.
Core Data Services (CDS) views are semantically rich data models built on top of SAP HANA that provide a unified and business-friendly representation of transactional and master data. They are foundational to SAP HANA Live, enabling real-time analytics directly on operational data.
SAC leverages these CDS views to deliver:
- Live Data Access: Eliminating the need for data duplication and reducing latency.
- Consistent Business Logic: CDS views encapsulate business rules centrally, ensuring consistent reporting.
- Advanced Analytics: SAC’s advanced visualization, planning, and predictive features on trusted data sources.
- Annotation Usage: Use relevant annotations such as
@Analytics.query, @OData.publish, and @AccessControl.authorizationCheck to expose CDS views properly for consumption by SAC.
- Simplify Complex Logic: Break down overly complex CDS views into reusable, modular views to enhance maintainability and performance.
- Define Aggregations Carefully: Define aggregations and hierarchies explicitly in CDS views to improve query performance and facilitate drill-down in SAC.
- Filter Early: Push filters to the CDS view level using parameterized views to limit data volume retrieved by SAC.
- Use Efficient Joins: Prefer inner joins over outer joins where possible, and avoid Cartesian products.
- Indexing and Partitioning: Ensure underlying database tables are properly indexed; use partitioning for very large datasets.
- Limit Data Exposure: Expose only necessary fields in the CDS views to reduce payload and improve response times.
- Authorization Checks: Implement CDS-based access control using annotations like
@AccessControl.authorizationCheck: #CHECK to enforce user-specific data visibility.
- Leverage SAC Security: Complement backend security with SAC’s role-based access control to restrict content consumption at the visualization layer.
- Naming Conventions: Follow consistent naming standards for CDS views to enhance discoverability and ease of use in SAC.
- Version Control: Maintain version control of CDS views and document changes to align with SAC content updates.
- Metadata Synchronization: Periodically refresh metadata in SAC to reflect changes in CDS views, avoiding stale metadata issues.
- Live Data Connection: Use SAC live data connections to ensure reports reflect real-time data from CDS views without replication delays.
- Modeling in SAC: Limit heavy data transformations within SAC models; instead, embed logic in CDS views for performance and consistency.
- Planning and Predictive Analytics: Exploit SAC’s planning and predictive capabilities on CDS-based live models for enhanced business scenarios.
- Overloading CDS views with too many calculations or complex logic can degrade performance.
- Ignoring security configurations can expose sensitive data unintentionally.
- Neglecting metadata refreshes leads to broken or outdated SAC stories.
- Using SAC import connections instead of live connections when real-time data is critical.
Integrating SAP Analytics Cloud with CDS views in SAP HANA Live environments unlocks the potential for real-time, governed, and scalable analytics. Following these best practices ensures that enterprises deliver high-performance, secure, and user-friendly analytics experiences. By carefully designing CDS views, optimizing performance, and leveraging SAC capabilities, organizations can accelerate data-driven decision-making and maximize their SAP investments.