Using Design Studio with SAP HANA end to end-Part 1

In this blog post I would like to share my experiences in installing and configuring the HANA front end in order to consume 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. This is part 1, it covers the installation of SAP HANA Client and Studio for local connectivity from Design Studio to SAP HANA. 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.

I am using Design Studio 1.1 and HANA SPS 05 Revision 58.

Here our overall plan:

In order to connect to SAP HANA system, you will need to install two programs (around 300 MB in total):

-SAP HANA Client. This installer will provide the needed connectivity (e.g. a special ODBC connector) 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 construct like a calculation view.

In order to download the software, go to the SAP Service Market Place 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 we need the 32-bit connectivity for 32-bit Tools, e.g. for ODBC local connectivity from Design Studio, Information Design Tool, or Microsoft Office Excel which in my case is 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:

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:

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 nice instructions with lots of useful screenshots:

BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.1 SP01 is now GA - Installation by M. van Foeken

BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.1 SP01 is now GA (Part 2) - Installation BI Platform Add-on on SUSE Linux SLES by M. van Foeken

How to Install BI Platform Add-on For Design Studio 1.1 by Tammy Powlas

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, you will need the 32-bit ODBC Data Source Administrator available form following location in windows 7:

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

Once there, choose to create a new system DSN and select the HANA ODBC driver (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:

Afterwards 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 the folder you will find your analytic and calculation views:

Thanks for reading part 1 of this blog post and stay tuned for part 2 where I connect through the BI Platform and use some features from HANA like variables and Hierarchies in Design Studio.

Related Links:

-HANA Help documents: http://help.sap.com/hana_platform

-HANA Installation and Upgrade Information: http://help.sap.com/hana_platform#section2

-HANA Academy - Installing the SAP HANA Studio and SAP HANA Client tools: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkhixj-ELFw

-KBA 1859686 - HANA Studio does not start: http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1859686

-Design Studio 1.0: Connect to SAP HANA: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-33567