Core Data Services (CDS) views have become a cornerstone of modern SAP data modeling, providing a powerful semantic layer for building reusable, consistent, and high-performance data models in SAP HANA and S/4HANA environments. However, as CDS views proliferate across landscapes, managing their lifecycle effectively is critical to ensure quality, maintainability, and alignment with evolving business needs.
This article highlights best practices for managing the entire lifecycle of CDS views—from design and development through deployment, maintenance, and retirement—in the context of SAP-HANA-Live projects.
¶ 1. Planning and Design Phase
¶ Understand Business Requirements Thoroughly
- Collaborate with business stakeholders early to capture precise reporting and analytical requirements.
- Define clear scope and purpose for each CDS view to avoid unnecessary complexity.
¶ Follow a Modular and Layered Architecture
- Organize CDS views in layers such as basic, composite, and consumption views.
- Use basic views to represent raw database tables.
- Create composite views that join or aggregate multiple basic views.
- Build consumption views tailored for specific analytical or reporting needs.
This layering supports reuse, simplifies debugging, and improves maintainability.
¶ Naming Conventions and Documentation
- Adopt standardized naming conventions to categorize views by purpose, module, or business area.
- Embed comprehensive annotations and metadata within CDS views for documentation and tool integration.
- Maintain external documentation repositories aligned with development standards.
- Develop CDS views in transport requests to ensure version control and promote traceability.
- Separate development, quality assurance, and production transports to maintain environment stability.
¶ Enable Code Reviews and Quality Checks
- Implement peer reviews to validate business logic, performance considerations, and security settings.
- Use SAP tools like ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC) for static code analysis and adherence to development guidelines.
- Minimize unnecessary joins and use appropriate annotations such as
@Analytics.dataCategory to optimize query execution.
- Leverage calculated columns and filters efficiently within CDS to push processing to the database layer.
- Test performance with representative data volumes to detect bottlenecks.
¶ 3. Deployment and Testing
¶ Automated and Manual Testing
- Develop unit tests or automated validation scripts to verify data correctness and consistency.
- Conduct integration tests to ensure CDS views align with dependent applications like SAC or SAP BW/4HANA.
- Define and validate access controls using analytic privileges and authorization checks.
- Confirm that CDS view security aligns with organizational policies and regulatory compliance.
¶ 4. Maintenance and Evolution
- Use SAP HANA monitoring tools and SAP Solution Manager to track query performance and usage patterns.
- Identify unused or underperforming views for potential optimization or retirement.
¶ Versioning and Change Management
- Adopt a formal change management process for modifying existing CDS views to avoid disruptions.
- Use version comments and transport request documentation to track changes over time.
- Before changing or deprecating CDS views, perform impact analysis to identify dependent applications and reports.
- Communicate planned changes to stakeholders well in advance.
¶ 5. Retirement and Cleanup
- Establish criteria for retiring obsolete CDS views, such as lack of usage or redundancy.
- Archive or delete views following governance policies to reduce system clutter and improve maintainability.
- Document retirement actions and update any affected downstream systems.
¶ 6. Governance and Collaboration
- Set up a governance team responsible for CDS view lifecycle management, including standards enforcement and audits.
- Foster collaboration between business analysts, developers, and IT operations for aligned objectives.
- Provide training and enable knowledge sharing to maintain high-quality CDS view development.
Managing the CDS view lifecycle effectively is vital to harness the full potential of SAP HANA and S/4HANA’s advanced data modeling capabilities. By applying best practices across planning, development, deployment, maintenance, and retirement phases, organizations can ensure their CDS views remain robust, performant, secure, and aligned with business goals.
For SAP-HANA-Live initiatives, disciplined CDS lifecycle management supports rapid innovation while maintaining the stability and reliability of the analytics environment. Continuous improvement and governance are key to sustaining long-term success with CDS views.