SAP ABAP Programming Made Easy - Theory & FAQs

Creating HANA views (Attribute, Analytic and Calculation) involve creating HANA artifacts in the HANA database layer (from SAP HANA Modeler Perspective). These views are then consumed in our ABAP reports either through ADBC, or external views. Hence it is a BOTTOM-UP approach. Such Bottom-Up approach is not recommended because of the difficulty in creating and transporting the HANA artifacts (through Delivery Unites). In case any underlying HANA artifact is not included in the transport (via Delivery Unit and Transport Container), then there will not be any errors at the time of releasing the Transport. For this reason, SAP recommended TOP-DOWN approach. The TOP-DOWN approach is equivalent to creation of HANA views, is CDS (Core Data Services) Views. These are created from ABAP perspective, can be saved directly in a TR and consumed in ABAP reports through open SQL. Creating CDS Views: In the following example, we will create a CDS view that takes as input the Client, a Target ...

SAP HANA supports SQL as a means to define, read, and manipulate data. On top of SQL, many technologies introduce higher-level models to add semantics and ease consumption, such as OData EDM models, the semantic layer in the BI platform, JPA and enterprise objects in Java, and the business objects frameworks in ABAP. These higher-level models share many commonalities, but are usually specific to their technology. This prevents their re-use across stacks and increases effort for application developers. To address this, SAP introduces a set of domain-specific languages and services, called CDS, for defining and consuming semantically rich data models. The Core data Services (CDS) views are collection of below three domain specific languages and services for consuming semantically rich data models. Data Definition Language (DDL):  The DDL part of CDS can be considered an enhancement of SQL that allows you to define semantically rich database tables and views, often referred to...