Easily create data snapshots from ABAP environment's CDS Views in SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA Database

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Background

One of my colleagues introduce a new Smart Data Access (SDA) ABAP adapter wTaking Data Federation to the Next Level: Accessing Remote ABAP CDS View Entities in SAP HANA Cloud”. The adapter is available from QRC 01/2024 onwards. The blog explained the following steps in detail using SQL statements.

• Creating a remote source to an ABAP system based on SAP ABAP Platform 2108 or later with CDS views bound to SQL Services.
• Virtualizing a remote CDS view entities as virtual tables for federated queries.

To simplify the use of CDS views, the Data Replication application found in HANA Cloud Central is extended to support creating scheduled snapshots from such ABAP systems including S/4HANA. The Data Replication application in SAP HANA Cloud Central is the successor for Replication Service application available in SAP HANA Cockpit for SAP HANA Cloud which is no longer maintained.

The Data Replication now extends the source system to include S/4HANA on-prem, S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition by selecting SAP S/4HANA as source. Additionally, S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition or SAP BTP ABAP environment by selecting SAP S/4HANA Public Edition as source.

The two additional sources are nearly identical for setting the remote source except that SAP S/4HANA requires some additional information such as the cloud connector setup configurations and the client id. For SAP S/4HANA Cloud, it doesn’t require those additional information. The details of how to setup SQL Services and bind a CDS view entity can be referenced in the “Accessing ABAP-Managed Data Using SQL Services for Data Integration Scenarios” section.

How to configure the snapshot

Once the type of remote source is selected either as S/4HANA or S/4HANA Cloud, the connection properties needs to be entered to establish a connection to the remote source and get its metadata information.

The Service Path normally is fixed to “/sap/bc/sql/sql1/sap/s_privileged” but can be extended by ABAP team for future expansions.

Keep the default settings for Type Map = semantic and Uid Type = alias.

Setup Cloud Connector when trying to connect to S/4HANA on-prem or S/4HANA Private Edition that are behind firewalls.

As the connection is created successfully, Data Replication will get the list of CDS view entities. Select the entity to create a data snapshot in the SAP HANA Cloud environment as shown below.

After selecting the object, click confirm to start creating the snapshot(s). It will start loading all data of the CDS view to the replica table and the status will be shown as “Loading”.

As the data is all loaded, the status will change to “Completed” with Replication Schedule as “Manual Refresh”. The data can be manually refreshed again by clicking the circular arrow icon next to the Replication Schedule dropdown selection. Keep in mind that the exisiting data will truncated and the latest data loaded for each refresh.

If the snapshot(s) needs to be updated on a regular basis, select the object(s) and click “Set Replication Schedule” in the top right. The snapshot frequency can be setup as daily, weekly or monthly.

Conclusion

We have covered how to do the following in the Data Replication application available in SAP HANA Cloud Central

• Create a data snapshot from CDS views 
• Configure a schedule to periodically take snapshots

Combined with the snapshot data from CDS views and using the latest features available in SAP HANA Cloud for Intelligent Data Applications

The snapshot can use any CDS views that is binded to SQL Services. For real-time replication scenario, the Data Replication application plans to support it once it become available in the ABAP adapter layer. For SAP Datasphere scenarios, please refer to Creating replication flow for SQL Service exposure