SAP SQL Data Warehousing

SAP SQL Data Warehousing is reflecting modern trends in data warehousing solutions. It leverages SAP HANA Data Management Suite (HDMS) as foundation the modern data warehousing. It basically brings SQL capabilities to traditional SAP's style of the data warehousing (e.g. BW based).

Moreover, there is a need to address also things like nonSAP data majority that many customers have in their landscape, integration of 3rd party 3rd party DWH solutions, development agility, leveraging existing SQL knowledge and database skills that customers have in their IT department acquired by using non SAP solutions. All this pushes SAP to deliver SQL-based DWH solutions.

What are possibilities of running SAP SQL Data Warehousing?

1. Using SAP BW/4HANA - means combining SAP SQL Data Warehousing with SAP BW. Here best is to leverage BW/4HANA. use cases here can be a consumption of SQL based datamarts and data warehouses by SAP BW. Best case here for SAP customers is running the SAP SQL Data Warehousing and BW/4HANA on same platform/system which contributes to simplify system landscape.

2. Using SAP HANA Data Management Suite (HDMS) – See my blog about the HDMS here. In particular, this use case mostly SAP HANA XS Advanced engine is leveraged plus other tools. In addition, in design phase the future SQL DWH is modeled in SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer (EAD) which is part of HDMS. A next phase is development of the DWH. Here it is possible to clone, edit and build the DWH artefacts using SAP Web IDE for SAP HANA (again part of HDMS). In this case the development artefacts are SAP HANA content and models. The HDMS toolset covers the tools for deploying (HANA Deployment Infrastructure (HDI); Application Lifecycle Management (ALM); External Repository Services) and running (SAP Data Warehousing Foundation tools like: Data Warehouse Scheduler (DWS); Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM); Data Warehouse Monitor (DWM); Data Distribution Optimizer (DDO); etc.) the SQL based DWH as well.

More information:

Online docu SAP HANA Data Warehousing Foundation

Getting Started with SAP SQL Data Warehousing

SAP HANA Data Management Suite (HDMS)

In this year's SAPPHIRE, SAP announced a platform of tools for governing and integrating data across multiple data (federated) environments. It is built on top of existing SAP products (components of HDMS) as below:

1. DB platform: SAP HANA: The HDMS leverages HANA platform which means all of its components runs on HANA with all benefits of the HANA like in memory computing, advance DB capabilities, different engines (spatial/graph processing, text analysis, search and mining, predictive/machine learning, streaming, series data storage and processing), etc.

2. Orchestration and governance: SAP Data Hub is used to centralize metadata management cross different systems. Main function of this component are:

- Data Pipelines – flow based applications consisting of reusable and configurable operations, e.g. ETL, Preparation, Code Execution, Connectors 

- Workflows – orchestrate processes across the data landscape, e.g. executing data pipelines, triggering SAP BW Process Chains, SAP Data Services Jobs and many more.

- Governance – metadata repository of information stored in the connected landscape. Offering discovery, profiling and search capabilities.

3. Multi-modal modeling: SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer (EA Designer or EAD) is used as component of the HDMS to model systems in landscape and processes around it. Is it to use for conceptual, logical, and physical modeling of SAP and non-SAP data.

4. Cloud services: SAP Cloud Platform Big Data Services component is used to deliver full-service big data cloud based on Hadoop and Spark.

Tools of SAP HDMS:

SAP HANE Extended Application Services (XSA/Cloud Foundry)

SAP HANA Web IDE

SAP HANA Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

SAP HANA Deployment Infrastructure (HDI)

SAP HANA EIM Services (SDI/SDQ); SDI = Smart Data Integration; SDQ = Smart Data Quality

SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer

SAP HANA Processing Engines & Services

SAP HANA Data Tiering

SAP HANA Data Warehousing Foundation (DWF)

SAP Agile Data Preparation (ADP)

SAP HANA Based Services on SCP

Open Source Tools like Git, Jenkins, etc.

The HDMS is part of SAP’s initiative called Intelligent Data and it shall support its customers in transition to an Intelligent Enterprise. The term Intelligent Data can be described as data (data ingestion from various sources, smart data streaming for event capture, high data quality) in a single and unified view.  Together with smart data integration that enabling innovative/ advanced applications and data management. 

More information:

Intelligent Data

All pictures - courtesy of SAP SE from its marketing materials.