Information Design Tool 4.1 Tutorial

SAP Business Objects Information design tool with SAP HANA

Welcome to part 2 of the SAP Business Objects Information design tool (IDT) tutorial. If you landed on this page directly, please read the Part 1 before continuing further.

If you are done with the first part.. read on.

Step 2A: SAP Business Objects Information design tool – Creating a Data Foundation (BO Version < 4.1)

Note: This explanation is of SAP Business Objects Information Design tool version less than 4.1. If you are on 4.1 version, skip to Step 2B.

The next step to create a universe, is to create a "Data Foundation". Right click on your project folder and then navigate to New Data Foundation.

It asks you for the technical name and description of this data foundation.

I name this TMH_DF_OLD since this is the older method for creating data foundation (i.e for versions 4.1 and before).

Since there is only a single source of data, select "Single Source" and press "Next"

It now requires you to choose a relational connection to connection to the underlying data source. Choose the secured connection always which is the ".cns" one.

Press Finish when done.

As seen below, the data foundation has been created successfully. Also, a connection pane opens up. Expand the connection to see the SAP HANA schemas below.

As you see below, in this case, you don't see the SAP HANA packages and the underlying views directly. You only have access to the schemas which house the tables and view metadata as well.

If you have gone through my HANA and SQL tutorials, you would already know that the "_SYS_BIC" schema contains the metadata for all the SAP HANA information views that we model under different packages. Expand this schema as I've done in the example below.

Now scroll down and find your SAP HANA information view on which you wish to create the SAP HANA universe. This is a bit of a mess since all the information views from your entire SAP HAAN system are in this schema and it might take a while to find it. This has been made better in the consequent SAP Business Objects versions which we will learn soon but for now, double click on your view once you find it.

Press the save button once done.

Step 3A: SAP Business Objects Information design tool – Creating a Business Layer (BO Version < 4.1)

Note: This explanation is of SAP Business Objects Information Design tool version less than 4.1. If you are on 4.1 version, skip to Step 2B and 3B.

The next step now requires us to create a Business Layer. To do this, right click on the "Project" folder and select New Business layer from the context menu as shown below.

Select the type of data source as "Relational Data Foundation" and press "Next".

Again, you are now required to enter a technical name for this business layer and a description.

Since this is the older method, I name the business layer as TMH_UNIV_OLD.

Press Next when done.

It would ask you to select a data foundation. Since we only have one data foundation here, it shows up. If you have multiple, choose the data foundation on which you wish to build the report on later.

Press Finish when done.

As you press finish, the new business layer now appears.

You are now one step away from converting this Business layer to a universe by publishing it to the repository. But before we get there, let's see how to create a data foundation and business layer on Business objects versions 4.1 and above.

Once we have both these business layers, we will publish them together.

If you are not interested in the explanation of versions 4.1 and above and just want to learn how to publish the older universe version, skip to Step 4.

Otherwise, read on..

Step 3B: SAP Business Objects Information design tool – Creating a Business Layer (BO Version > 4.1)

The process here is quite similar with the exception that you do not have to create a data foundation by yourself here, system does that part for you. Just a small added luxury .. nothing to brag about.

Right click on the project again, navigate to New "SAP HANA Business Layer" this time. You won't see this option in SAP Information design tool versions <4.1 .

A window opens up asking for the Business Layer and Data foundation name – give them some meaningful technical names compliant with your project guidelines and press "Next".

We already created a relational connection earlier which we can use here. But, we needed the secure connection (.cns which we had published to the repository earlier). Instead the system only shows us the local .cnx. For now, we compromise and pick this connection as the system gives us no choice. We would need to switch the connection later once the business layer has been created.

Click the checkbox and press "Next".

Now, instead of having to go through the clutter of _SYS_BIC schema in the older IDT versions, we now have the luxury of having the SAP HANA package tree hierarchy at our disposal. Expand the schema where your view is contained.

For example, let's choose our employee view. Press finish.

As you see below, a TMH_UNIV_NEW data foundation(.dfx) and a business layer (.blx) have been auto generated. This version now saved us the time of creating a data foundation.

1

Now, since we used a local .cnx connection to create this business layer and underlying data foundation, now comes the time to switch the connection to a secure .cns type. Only then would we be allowed to publish our business layer to the repository to create the universe.

To do this, double click on the new data foundation we just created – TMH_UNIV_NEW.

The data foundation opens up as shown below. Click on the "Edit Connection" button

This shows you the list of available connections. We would need to select the secured connection here and press "Finish".

Press the "Save" button to save your changes.

Step 4: SAP Business Objects Information design tool – Publishing a Business Layer

Finally, we reach the magical step where we publish the business layers which creates a universe. This step is fairly straightforward. Just right click on your business layer and press Publish -> "To a Repository"

Here, there are different validations/check you can perform based on your project guidelines about universes, if any. Otherwise, press "Next"

Choose the folder where you wish to publish this universe. In this example, we continue the shameless self promotion and name another folder as TEACHMEHANA. We will publish our Business Objects artifacts here from now on. Double click on the folder to go inside.

Press Finish to publish your universe here.

The Business Objects Information design tool congratulates you on this monumental achievement. The universe is now saved on the repository with the same name as the business layer with an extension of .unx

Let's do the same for the business layer we created with the new process.

Ignoring the validation window, we reach the below step where I already navigated to our TEACHMEHANA folder where we saved our last universe. You can see it resting in the folder below under the unx extension as explained before.

Press finish to save this new universe as well.

IDT confirms that the publish was successful.

I started writing this tutorial on Oct-2016 and it's the mid of March-2017 as I finish this. This has been the longest one by far. Had quite a slump and grew lazy in this duration but all the support for this site and the fact that viewership has blown up in the last few months motivated me to write again and finish what I started.

This is a free to use site and supports itself on ads. Please support this initiative by sharing at least one document on social media. It helps a lot.

Thanks,

Your Loyal and lazy author.

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