SAP HANA Reporting & Auditing

As we discussed earlier different types of information views in SAP HANA Studio such as analytic views, attribute views and calculation views. These views can be used for creating varied reports using reporting tools like SAP Business Object, SAP Lumira, Design Studio, Office Analysis and even third party tool like MS Excel. This reporting facility is a great boon and backbone for Business Managers, Analysts, Sales Managers and senior management employees to analyze the historic information to create business scenarios and to decide business strategy of the company. Generally, SAP HANA reporting is done with BI platforms tools that consume both SQL and MDX queries with help of Relational and OLAP connections. There is a wide variety of BI tools like − Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, Dashboard, Explorer, Office Analysis and much more.

What are the common reporting tools used in SAP HANA?

Among several other SAP HANA reporting tools, Web Intelligence, and Crystal Reports remains to be top BI tools for the platform. Web Intelligence reporting tool is known for using semantic layer defined as ‘Universe’ which helps the tool to connect with the different data sources while retrieving data for reporting. These semantic layers are designed with the help of Universe design tool UDT or with Information Design tool IDT. IDT supports multisource enabled data source. However, UDT only supports Single source.

In addition to those tools, Design Studio and Dashboard Designer are also used for developing interactive dashboards for reporting. Design Studio is the future tool for designing dashboard, which consumes HANA views via BI consumer Service BICS connection. Dashboard design (celsius) uses IDT to consume schemas in HANA database with a Relational or OLAP connection.

Auditing

SAP HANA specifies a certain set of audit policies that helps restrict the actions and auditing those actions in an effective methodology. These audit policies define who the activities are performed in HANA system and who has performed those activities at what time. Monitoring actions are also featured by the SAP HANA system. These audit policies in the SAP HANA system must be activated before using it. When an action is performed, the policy triggers an audit event to write to the audit trail. You can also delete audit entries in Audit trail.

How to activate audit policy in SAP HANA system?

• To define Audit policy in HANA system, you should have system privilege − Audit Admin.
• Go to Security option in HANA system → Auditing
• Under Global Settings → set Auditing status as enabled.
• You can also choose Audit trail targets. The following audit trail targets are possible −
• Syslog (default) − Logging system of Linux Operating System.