SAP HANA CDS ( Core Data Services )

With SAP HANA platform, there has been a major shift in the way database is looked at. Traditionally, ABAP developers brought most of the data back to application server and manipulated based forming the core logic of the application.With HANA, the emphasis has been to do more in the databse ( akka code pushdown ).

However, there are some major drawbacks:

– It relies on development in two areas : HANA views / procedures which are then consumed in ABAP.

– Two separate mechanisms for ALM with ABAP and HANA transports.

With SAP NW 7.4 SP5, ABAP open SQL has been enhanced and views can be created using DDL. This is known as CDS ( Core Data Services ) .

Looking at an example: Create a basic view.

And the view can be consumed in ABAP – Need to add @ annotation .

These can be extended so that if DDIC additions are made, the view gets them automatically.

And the views can be made more complex.

and even more complex.

This to me looks like a step in the right direction as:

– it’s open SQL and hence is dB agnostic. Hence, it can be supported for other vendors databases in future.

– No separate development done in HANA reducing complexity of application development