Explore the data of SAP Business ByDesign using SQL

[VVancalbergh]

Is there a way to explore the data (read-only if needed) in the SAP Business ByDesign HANA Database using SQL Statements? Maybe connect to the database using SAP HANA Studio with a limited account?

Right now I am trying to find a CustomerInvoiceRequest that actually has a ItemAccountingCodingBlockDistribution node and I have to do this using trial and error in the Repository Explorer or write an ABSL script to loop all objects.

This issue returns for every single time we want to understand how SAP ByDesign works inside.

[william_xing · Accepted solution]

Hi Vincent,

I do not think it is a possible way to use SQL Statement in SAP Cloud Applications Studio.

To do a conditional select you may able to use query function.

Thanks,

William

[VVancalbergh · Accepted solution]

It's the sad truth that this is accepted among the community. How old is SAP ByDesign? 10 years? Please, someone give us HANA SQL access and we'll write a better Data Explorer!

Thank you for your reply.

[marlene_katzschner]

Hi Vincent,

William is right. ByDesign uses Business Objects with queries, nodes and actions. The underlying tables are know to the developers, but also here the access is through the queries.

Maybe a different approach. Instead of searching for a item with filled ItemAccountingCodingBlockDistribution node, maybe you simple create a new manual invoice and fill the fields and then you query exactly this CIR?

Best regards
Marlene

[VVancalbergh]

Hi Marlene, Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. But I wasn't looking for a solution to this specific issue. I was looking for tools to handle future similar cases. Expand my toolbox so to speak.

My point is that navigating using the queries in the Repository Explorer is horribly inefficient for anything more complicated than scrolling down a list or filtering down to an exact object (without too many underlying objects). We need something faster and more robust. Something where we can save our searches and redo them 3 weeks later.

As a developer that is used to being able to automate nearly anything this toolkit is worse than... ANY point in my 20 years of working with ERP systems and databases.

[marlene_katzschner]

Hi Vincent

I understand (being more then 20 years in ERP development, too) 😉
Nevertheless you can either user Queries or Data Sources, but table structures are not transparent to a customer.

Best regards
Marlene

[VVancalbergh]

If you give the community freedom to create awesome tools they will almost do your work for you. You made this laggy & restrictive Repository Explorer, but if you would have used a comprehensive and documented xml format and gave us direct (even if read-only) access to the data someone would've made one for you. Don't get me wrong, the Repository Explorer is ESSENTIAL to develop solutions. I use it constantly, but it also annoys me constantly.

I hate drawing comparisons, but Microsoft NAV added some command line functionality to the dev client and it opened the door for the community to develop all kinds of amazing tools. Their recent migration to VS.Code was another huge leap and NAV-focused VS.Code extensions are popping up all over the place.

I just hope someone at SAP is looking into this.