Understanding on SAP ABAP CDS and HANA CDS

Core Data Services, known for “one concept, two flavors” by the SAP community around the world, is an incredible infrastructure to define and consume various rich data models available in SAP HANA. At the same time, ABAP CDS also trending for its connectivity to CDS. How they both work? Let examine the ABAP CDS and HANA CDS

What is ABAP Dictionary?

It is very essential to model the data to develop any kind of Business application. In the world of ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming), the ABAP Dictionary or various other tools like the data modeler are used for years to mean on the ABAP application server. The ABAP Dictionary was known for its platform independent metadata repository (a repository for database tables) and database views that can be accessed using Open SQL in SAP ABAP platform. The definition of the database entities is done in the form based ABAP Dictionary tool on the application server and the according DDL is passed to the database via the DBI (Database Interface).

HANA CDS

With the dawn of SAP HANA and t

The possibility to develop applications directly on the database is made possible by the SAP HANA, without the need of an application server. And the need arose to create a meta model repository which reside directly on the database. As with the ABAP Dictionary located in the application server, there should be more inside the box than utilizing native SQL's CREATE TABLE or CREATE VIEW. Especially, this is true when it comes to the need of enriched technical definitions and its semantics. And that's one of among the core reasons for SAP's Core Data Services with HANA

ABAP CDS

Since its inception, the CDS (Core Data Services) was not designed only for HANA appliance. It was also meant to benefit the ABAP application server from the enhanced capabilities that are offered by the DDL of CDS while comparing with the form based ABAP Dictionary tools. Since the ABAP Dictionary has its extensive capabilities to define tables, views and various data types, the tradition way of integrating CDS on the ABAP application server is by adding it to the SAP ABAP Dictionary. An ADT-based code editor enables you to create the DDL sources. Once activated, the CDS entities defined in the DDL resource will become full citizen objects of ABAP Dictionary. This would ultimately enable you to create various data models in the ABAP Dictionary from scratch using ABAP CDS only.