How to Connect Web Intelligence to SAP HANA in 4 Ways – Seamless Process

Now, it’s time to connect Web Intelligence (Webi) to SAP HANA and retrieve data from it. Webi is a reporting tool which is a part of SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform. The data fetched from SAP HANA will be used for creating reports and conducting the analysis.

Firstly, let’s learn the working of Webi with SAP HANA.

Web Intelligence and SAP HANA

Webi i.e. Web Intelligence is an advanced reporting tool having capabilities for ad-hoc reporting, detailed reporting, using query panels, data visualization, creating/modifying queries, etc. Webi access data from semantic layers from universes created using IDT tool.

The semantic layer is created on top of a non-SAP data source. You can also create universes from UDT. With IDT, you can access multiple data sources, whereas, with UDT you can only access one data source at a time.

Webi is a part of SAP BusinessObjects Platform client tools. It connects to the SAP HANA system using JDBC or ODBC connection.

How to Connect Web Intelligence to SAP HANA?

In this section, we will learn to connect Web Intelligence (Webi) to SAP HANA in four different ways.

1. Universe Connection

To begin with, let’s find out how to connect to SAP HANA from Web Intelligence via a Universe.

Step 1: Open Web Intelligence Rich Client. Click on the document icon to create a new document/connection.

Step 2: Select a Data Source

In the next dialog, select the Universe as the data source. Click OK to continue.

Step 3: Select a Universe

Select your preferred universe from the list of available universes. Click on Select to continue.

Step 4: Query Panel

The Query Panel will open, having all the measures and dimensions. You will have a list of objects of the selected universe in the Universe outline section given on the left.

You can select measures and dimensions for this panel and add it to the Result Objects section. Drag and drop the measures and dimensions in the Result Objects section.

2. SAP HANA Direct Connection

Follow the steps to directly connect to SAP HANA from Web Intelligence Rich Client:

Step 1: Select a Data Source

Open Web Intelligence rich client. Click on the document icon given on the topmost bar, to create a new document/connection.

Select the SAP HANA as the data source. Click on OK.

Step 2: Now, select the SAP HANA connection name from the list of connections. Click OK.

Then inside that connection, select the folder containing the information views you require. All the objects within that folder will appear on the right window. Click OK.

You can cross-check in the SAP HANA Information Modeler, all the information views under the folder you selected in Webi are the same.

Step 3: In the Query Panel you will find the list of all the attributes (dimensions) and measures available in the selected view.

The list is available in the Universe Outline panel on the left in Query Panel.

3. SAP HANA Online

Follow the steps given in this section to make an SAP HANA Online connection.

Step 1: Select a Data Source

Open Web Intelligence rich client. Click on the document icon given on the topmost bar, to create new document/connection.

Select SAP HANA Online as the connection type. Click on OK.

Step 2: Select the SAP HANA specific connection from the list of connections available. For instance, we select a folder DTF_HANA. Click OK.

Step 3: Select the data folder from the list under the Folder section. Then select the view which you want to use for report creation from the left section. Click OK.

Step 4: The SAP HANA Online type connection does involve a Query Panel and it directly opens the reporting interface. On the reporting interface, you can instantly create reports using data from your SAP HANA data folders/views.

4. Free-hand SQL Connection

The fourth type of connection is a Free-hand SQL connection where you get to write an SQL script to establish a relational connection to the data source.

Step 1: Select a Data Source

Open Web Intelligence rich client. Click on the document icon given on the topmost bar, to create new document/connection.

Select Free-hand SQL as the connection type.

Step 2: Now, select the connection specific to HANA from the list of available connections. Click on OK.

Step 3: Then, a Query Script editor will open where you can write your SQL script. You can use the data tables and views from HANA in your SQL script.

A sample script is shown below:

SELECT
"DTFProject_Title”,
sum("Current_Phase”) AS "Current_Phase™,
sum("Schedule_Status”) AS "Schedule_Status”,
sum("Est_Capital”) AS "Capital”,
sum("Est_Expense”) AS “Expense”,
sum("Total_Cost") AS "Iotal_Coat”

Developing Reports in Web Intelligence

Once you have established a connection to SAP HANA through one of the four ways we just learned, we are ready to create reports in Webi. The reports are created from the dataset we fetched from SAP HANA.

Step 1: To create a report, select the measure and attribute fields from the list available of the contents of the information views. You can find this list in the Universe Outline section of the Query Panel.

Drag the measures or attributes and drop them on the Result Objects section to finalize for the report.

Step 2: You can also access the Query Script and make changes in it if you prefer. The Query Script can be opened from a script icon present on the top bar of the Query Panel.

A sample of query used in Query Script editor is given below:

SELECT

Table_1."PRODUCT",
Table_1."NAME",
Table_1."CATEGORY”,
Table_1.“UNITSSOLD”, 
SUM(Table__1.“GROSSAMOUNT”)

FROM

"_SYS_BIC”."9QBEXSQL/ZAV_SALES_USING_AT_001" Table_1
GROUP BY

Table_1."PRODUCT",
Table_1."NAME",
Table_1."CATEGORY”,
Table_1.“UNITSSOLD”,

Also, you can apply query filters on the selected data fields from the section Query Filters on Query Panel.

Step 3. Once you made all the selections, click on Refresh in the Data Preview section. You will get a preview of the data fields you selected in tabular form.

Step 4. Click on Run Query to execute the query.

The data will appear in reporting view in a tabular representation.

You can work on the report further using the tabs like Report Element (to add visualizations), Format, Data Access, Analysis and Page Setup.

Summary

We hope you liked our tutorial of steps to connect SAP HANA to Web Intelligence.

If you have any queries or suggestions regarding this or any SAP HANA topic, do leave a comment in the comment section below. We will be glad to help.