Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Next, we'll create an analytic view, which allows us to work with numeric information from
the database.
Step 4 - Creating an analytical view
In the previous section, we created an attribute view—a projection of non-numeric data,
allowing us in a simple way to extract only the necessary information from the database.
As we saw, attribute views can only work with characteristic attributes—that is, meta-information,
or information describing other information, such as a name, an address, and so on. Attribute
views cannot work with any numerical data, such as an order amount, or a salary.
To extract figures from the database, an analytic view must be used. This view will provide a
projection of numeric data, combining it (if necessary) with one or more attribute views. In this
way, the analytic view will extract the figures from the underlying table, and combine them with
the meta-information in the attribute view, to describe the numeric data. For readers familiar
with SAP's BW platform, this is analogous to a BW Cube (analytic view) and its dimensions
(attribute views).
Here, we'll create an analytic view that will use the attribute view to provide the customer's
name, which can then be presented alongside the order amount value. This is much more useful
to users than simply showing the order amount alongside the customer's ID.
Creation of an analytic view is done in the same way as an attribute view. From the
Quick
Launch
pane of the
Modeler
perspective, click on
Analytic View
and then click on
Create
to be
presented with the
New Analytic View
creation dialog:
An analytic view needs to have a name and its description filled in the
Name
and
Description
field respectively. Additionally, we need to indicate to SAP HANA in which
Package
we want to
store our view (our package is called
topic
).
In much the same way as an attribute view, we can create our analytic view either from scratch,
or by copying an existing analytic view.
