SAP HANA: Introduction to Data Modeling

·         Modeling refers to an activity of refining or slicing data in database tables by creating views to depict abusiness scenario. The views can be used for reporting and decision making.

·         The modeling process involves the simulation of entities, such as customer, product, and sales, and the relationships between them. These related entities can be used in analytics applications such as SAP

·         BusinessObjects Explorer and Microsoft Office. In SAP HANA, these views are known as information views.

·         Information views use various combinations of content data (that is, non-metadata) to model a business use case.

Content data can be classified as follows:

● Attribute: Descriptive data, such as customer ID, city, and country.

● Measure: Quantifiable data, such as revenue, quantity sold and counters.

Attributes

Attributes are the non-measurable analytical elements

Attributes	Description	Example
Simple Attributes	Individual non-measurable analytical elements that are derived from the data sources.	For example, PRODUCT_ID and PRODUCT_NAME are attributes of product data source.
Calculated Attributes	Derived from one or more existing attributes or constants.	For example, deriving the full name of a customer (first name and last name), assigning a constant value to an attribute that can be used for arithmetic calculations.
Local Attributes	Local attributes that you use in an analytic view allow you to customize the behaviour of an attribute for only that view.	For example, if an analytic view or a calculation view includes an attribute view as an underlying data source, then the analytic view inherits the behaviour of the attributes from the attribute view

Measures

Measures are measurable analytical elements. That are derived from analytic and calculation views.

Measures	Description	Examples
Simple Measures	A simple measure is a measurable analytical element that is derived from the data foundation.	For example, PROFIT.
Calculated Measures	Calculated measures are defined based on a combination of data from other data sources, arithmetic operators, constants, and functions.	For example, you can use calculated measures to calculate the net profit from revenue and operational cost.
Restricted Measures	Restricted measures or restricted columns are used to filter attribute values based on the user-defined rules.	For example, you can choose to restrict the value for the REVENUE column only for REGION = APJ, and YEAR = 2012.
Counters	Counters add a new measure to the calculation view definition to count the distinct occurrences of an attribute.	For example, to count how many times product appears and use this value for reporting purposes.

You can model entities in SAP HANA using the Modeler perspective, which includes graphical data modelling tools that allow you to create and edit data models (content models) and stored procedures.

With these tools, you can also create analytic privileges that govern the access to the models, and decision tables to model related business rules in a tabular format for decision automation.

You can create the following types of information views:

● Attribute Views

● Analytic Views

● Calculation Views

Supported Object Types

In SAP HANA Modeler perspective, the SAP HANA Systems view lists both the active and inactive objects available in default workspace.

SAP HANA Modeler perspective supports the below object types:

● Package

● Attribute Views

● Analytic Views

● Calculation Views

● Procedures

● Analytic Privileges

● Decision Tables