Thursday, April 27, 2023
Webinar Summary – BTP Presentation – Expanded Live Connectivity for SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Datasphere with APOS Live Data Gateway
SAP’s BTP Adoption Program Team recently hosted a presentation and panel on expanding live data connectivity for SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud and SAP Datasphere. APOS Chief Operating Officer and APOS Solution Consulting Manager Alan Golding delivered the presentation on Expanded Live Connectivity for SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Datasphere with APOS Live Data Gateway.
The recording of this webinar is available only to the attendees, but here I provide a summary of the presentation and discussion.
Allan Pym first noted that APOS Live Data Gateway is cited as a live data connectivity option for SAC in the SAP Help Portal.
You can view this page here. APOS Live Data Gateway is available on the SAP Store site.
The focus of APOS Live Data Gateway is on live data connectivity for non-SAP data sources. The image below shows just some of those data sources. See a complete list of supported data sources here.
Allan gave a brief definition of APOS Live Data Gateway and its primary benefits.
Allan briefly mentioned a number of customer success stories.
You can view these and other use cases here.
Alan Golding then presented the architecture of APOS Live Data Gateway, which consists of three layers:
- Data Virtualization Layer
- Data Preparation Layer
- Data Consumption Layer
The key functions of each layer are shown in the slides below.
Allan and Alan proceeded to explain and demonstrate the simple steps users follow to create connections from the data source, prepare the data, create a connection from SAC to Live Data Gateway, create and model the data set in SAC, and create a SAC report using the live data connection.
The level of expertise required for each step varies, but once the connection to the data source has been created in the Data Virtualization Layer, and a View on the data has been created in the Data Preparation Layer, SAC story creators and SAC consumers can use the live connection to build their stories and practice self-service Analytics.
In fact, the Web-based user interface for data modelling is mostly a simple drag-and-drop operation, and does not require significant data modelling expertise. However, access to self-service data modelling is controlled by the Live Data Gateway administrator.
Users creating self-service models in the Data Preparation Layer (which is essentially a Semantic Layer) will take advantage of Semantic Layer Views, while more experienced data modellers will benefit from Freehand SQL Views and OLAP Views.
You create data transformations using the same Web-based user interface, which uses SSO connectivity to simplify the process.
Data modellers can add:
- Date dimensions
- Custom hierachies
- Variables
- Geospatial data
Basic functionality for these is shown in the slides below.
APOS Live Data Gateway’s Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities make it largely transparent to SAC users. The solution’s broad SSO support is described in the slide below.
SSO also makes it possible to establish shared connectivity. A master connection can be created with multiple child connections to create a single point of connection for SAC users and remove the need for multiple SAC connections.
Data Warehouse Cloud and its new iteration, Datasphere, can also benefit from APOS Live Data Gateway’s live data connectivity, specifically for Power BI users.
Power BI uses a live connection technology called DirectQuery, but DWC/Dataspher does not support DirectQuery. APOS Live Data Gateway has DirectQuery support to enable live connectivity between DWC/Datasphere and Power BI, expanding how DWC/Datasphere data can be leveraged.
Finally, Allan summarized how APOS Live Data Gateway enables connectivity across the SAP solution landscape…
…and how APOS Live Data Gateway provides a unified semantic layer for SAP Analytics and other analytics and data platforms.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, the recording of this webinar is available only to those who registered for the webinar. However, there are some APOS on-demand webinars you may find useful: