Passing Values to HANA Input Parameters when using Free-hand SQL in WEBi 4.2

[sajithr]

This blog will explain how one can use WEBi 4.2 Free-hand SQL feature to retrieve data into WEBi from a HANA Calculation View of type "DIMENSION". This is purely based on the personal R&D done using WEBi 4.2 SP04 and HANA 2.0 SPS05, and noting down through this blog post since the above subject is hardly documented on the internet.

 

It is possible to call HANA Calculation Views of type "CUBE" into WEBi either using relational or OLAP connections however, Calculation Views of type "DIMENSION" are not natively visible in WEBi. An alternative way would be to use WEBi Free-hand SQL to retrieve the data from the views to create a WEBi report.

 

Although a simple Free-hand SQL statement like below is fairly simple and straightforward, complexity arises when we want to pass some values to the input parameters of the underlying Calculation View.

Simple Free-Hand SQL in WEBi

 

The answer is to use the @Prompt in WEBi and redirect the user input to the PLACEHOLDER directive as one would normally do in HANA SQL. An example is shown below.

 

Passing Value to Input Parameter via Prompt in Free-hand SQL in WEBi

 

Hope this helps someone who is looking for a similar solution with Free-hand SQL in WEBi.

For those who are interested in reading more about @Prompt and WEBi Support Matrix for HANA, kindly refer to these links below.

1. Examples: Using the @Prompt function


2. Another good article on @Prompt function


3. SAP Integration Support Matrix for SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence on SAP HANA