Using Design Studio with SAP HANA end to end-Part ...

Former Member · ‎06-16-2013

In this blog post I would like to share my experiences in installing, configuring and using the SAP HANA front end in order to consume SAP HANA views in Design Studio with or without a BI Platform in place. There are a couple of pitfalls that you will need to watch out for, so I hope this post will be useful for others with this task.

First of all let's review the available options today for the connection/deployment of Design Studio in regards to SAP HANA:

Local: The design studio application is saved in your local computer. The connection to SAP HANA is done through a HANA ODBC driver.
SAP NetWeaver: The design studio application is stored in SAP BW, the application can be displayed in the SAP NetWeaver Portal through a Design Studio iView, connections are only possible to the host BW system, therefore no connection to a separate SAP HANA box is possible
BI Platform: The design studio application is saved in the BI Platform, the connection to SAP HANA is done through an OLAP connection created in the CMC. With this option you are able to take advantage of the SAP BI mobile application to mobilize your Design Studio applications
SAP HANA: The design studio application is saved in the HANA repository. Connections are only possible to the host HANA system. At the time of this writing (Design Studio 1.1) this option is not available yet.

You are now reading part 1 of this blog post, it covers the installation of SAP HANA Client and Studio for local connectivity from Design Studio to SAP HANA. Keep in mind that local connectivity is only useful in certain situations, for instance when you do not have a BI Platform installed or you are preparing for a demo or POC. In part 2 of this blog post, I will go into into the connection through the BI Platform and use HANA variables and HANA hierarchies in a Design Studio application. Through this blog post, I will be using Design Studio 1.1 SP01, HANA SPS 05 Revision 58, BI4.0 SP06 and SAP BusinessObjects Mobile 5.0.

Here our overall plan:

Install SAP HANA Client and SAP HANA Studio for local connectivity (covered here in part 1)
Install Design Studio 1.1 Client and its corresponding BIP add-on (covered in other great Blogs by tammy.powlas3 here and by m.vanfoeken here)
Create a local ODBC connection to SAP HANA (covered here in part 1)
Create an OLAP Connection to SAP HANA in the BI Repository (covered in part 2)
Using HANA Hierarchies and HANA Variables in Design Studio (covered in part 2)
Mobilize the Design Studio Application (covered in part 2)

1. Install SAP HANA Client and SAP HANA Studio

In order to connect locally to the SAP HANA system and create an example HANA View, you will need to install two programs:

SAP HANA Client: This installer will provide the needed connectivity (e.g. a HANA ODBC driver) in order to connect from your local computer to your SAP HANA server.
SAP HANA Studio: This installer will provide the user interface to SAP HANA, so we can model data e.g. a calculation view or a HANA Hierarchy.

In order to download the software, go to the SAP Service Market Place at http://service.sap.com/support, and navigate to the following path:

-Software Downloads

-Support Packages and Patches

-Browse out Download Catalog

-SAP In-Memory (SAP HANA)

-HANA Platform Edition

-SAP HANA PLATFORM EDITION

-SAP HANA PLATFORM EDIT. 1

-Comprised Software Component Versions:

There is a 32-bit and 64-bit installer of both tools. Although my laptop runs on a 64-bit Windows 7 OS System, I will download the 32-bit version of SAP HANA Client and Studio, keeping in mind that all other BI Tools are also 32-bit, e.g. Design Studio, Information Design Tool, and even Microsoft Office Excel is in my case also a 32-bit installation.

For the SAP HANA Client, download the corresponding revision, which today for me, is revision 58, the file name is “IMDB_CLIENT100_58-10009665.SAR”:

For the SAP HANA Studio, download the corresponding revision, which today for me, is revision 58, the file name is “IMC_STUDIO100_58-20007646.SAR”:

After downloading both *.SAR files, I can uncompress them by a double click, afterwards a folder will be created for SAP Client and Studio:

In the SAP_HANA_CLIENT Folder, execute the file "hdbsetup.exe":

Confirm the standard options and go through the short installation procedure:

After a successful installation of the SAP HANA Client, go back to the SAP_HANA_STUDIO Folder, and execute the file "hdbsetup.exe":

Confirm the standard options and go through the short installation procedure:

After installing SAP HANA Client and SAP HANA Studio, we can start HANA Studio by navigating to the Windows Start menu, go to "All Programs" , "SAP HANA" and hit "SAP HANA Studio":

Unfortunately in my case, I get an error message at this point and SAP HANA Studio would not start:

The following KBA explains the reason and explains how to solve the issue: 1859686 - HANA Studio does not start

In my case, changing the -VM argument in my hdbstudio.ini file (C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP\hdbstudio\hdbstudio.ini) solved the issue:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\javaw.exe - wrong one

C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\client\jvm.dll - correct one

After making the changes to the hdbstudio.ini file, HANA Studio will now start successfully:

2. Install Design Studio 1.1 Client and BIP add-on

Design Studio is a client Tool, but right now it needs an add-on applied to the BI Platform for use in the BI LaunchPad. Follow the steps described in following blogs for step-by-step instructions with lots of useful screenshots:

BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.1 SP01 is now GA - Installation by m.vanfoeken

BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.1 SP01 is now GA (Part 2) - Installation BI Platform Add-on on SUSE ... by m.vanfoeken

How to Install BI Platform Add-on For Design Studio 1.1 by tammy.powlas3

3. Create an ODBC Connection to SAP HANA

After successfully installing SAP HANA Studio, we can go ahead and create an ODBC Connection to a SAP HANA instance. Note that this step is well covered here http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-33567, I will go through it though for the sake of completeness. With a local ODBC connection to SAP HANA, you can connect to SAP HANA from Design Studio without having a BI Platform in place. In order to create a local ODBC connection for Design Studio, I will need the 32-bit ODBC Data Source Administrator available from following location in windows 7:

"C:\Windows\SysWoW64\odbcad32.exe".

Note that you can also start the ODBC connection administrator from within the Design Studio preferences window.

Once you open the ODBC connection administrator, choose to create a new system DSN and select the HANA ODBC driver named HDBODBC32 (this driver came along with the installation of SAP HANA Client):

Give a name to the connection, and fill out with your HANA Server and port:

After creating an ODBC connection, start Design Studio in local mode (hit "skip" when being prompted to log in) and observe that a ODBC connection to SAP HANA is available from within the preferences dialog:

After clicking on "Application" and then "Add data source", we can see the newly created connection to SAP HANA along other entries from your saplogon.ini:

After logging in to the newly created ODBC Connection, you can go ahead and search for your HANA package (called Folder in Design Studio). Inside that folder you will find your analytic and calculation views. Note that Attribute views are not visible (those do not contain measures):

Note that not all Analytic and Calculation views from HANA Studio are available in Design Studio. In order to make Analytic or Calculation views available for reporting, make sure that the flag "Multidimensional Reporting" is enabled:

Thanks for reading part 1 of this blog post. In the following link you can continue reading part 2 where we will connect to SAP HANA through the BI Platform and use some features from HANA like variables and Hierarchies in Design Studio:

Using Design Studio with SAP HANA end to end-Part 2