Open ODS View

Open ODS view (OOV) was newly introduced in SAP BW 7.4. With OOV, it is possible to do data modeling on top of source fields directly without creating InfoObjects.

InfoObjects can be associated with with the source fields and are optional in OOV. You usually do so when you want to utilize the InfoObject features like Navigation attributes, compounding InfoObject, Texts, hierarchies etc.

OOV does not contain any data and act as a virtual provider. OOV also has the facility to load the data as persistence layer to a DSO which can be automatically created and has the same structure as the OOV.

OOV can also be built on BW objects or BW objects can be included along with the source fields to get additional information.

Prerequisite: To use OOV, your BW system must be on HANA database.

Creating an OOV

Step 1: Choose your InfoArea, right click and select ‘Create Open ODS View’

Step 2: Give a name for the OOV and a description

Step 3: If your OOV is based on facts, select same in the drop down.

Step 4: Give the source details – it can be a datasource in your BW system itself or a HANA view accessed as Virtual table via Smart Data Access or a Database Table or View in ECC system

Step 5: Once you give the source and the source system, the fields of the source are shown in the ‘Facts’ tab. In the ‘View Field’ Section, you can see below folders:

• Characteristics (key)
• Characteristics
• Key Figures
• Currency
• Unit
• Client
• UTC Time Stamp

You need to select the source fields in the left side and drop them under one of these folders in the right side. Or you can right click on the source field and select the options in the context menu. If you want to move all the source fields at once, you can use the ‘Create Proposal’ icon available in the top menu.

Note: If you are going to use OOV to load data to a DSO, then you need to drop objects in Characteristics (key) folder, else no need to do so.

Step 6: Open the properties section for a field.

In the top menu, under utilities, you can select either ‘Position by single click’ or ‘Position by double click’ so that when you click on the field, its properties are shown.

You can also select a field in the ‘View Field’ section and click on the ‘Show Properties’ icon to arrive at the properties pane. There is also ‘Hide Properties’ icon available to hide the properties pane.

Step 7: Define Associations if any

For the characteristics and key figures added, give the association as ‘No Association’ if you do not want to map the field to any InfoObject otherwise select ‘InfoObject’ here. You can then use the InfoObject compounding and Navigation Attributes. Assign the field names from the source to the compounding object or navigation attribute. You can also give a description for the Navigation Attribute.

Step 8: Give other Properties if any like ‘Authorization relevant’, display options etc. Similarly, give properties for key figures like association and aggregation.

Add  units and currency source fields also the the OOV folders.

Step 9: Activate the OOV.

Once the OOV is active, you can analyse the data by creating a query on it. Display your OOV and select ‘Default query’ from the Goto tab in top menu.

The query name is automatically generated by the system. The OOV does not hold any data,  hence once the query is executed, it directly accesses the source system, retrieves the data and displays it.

You can also store the data from an OOV into a DSO. You don’t need to create DSO, transformations, DTPs etc from scratch.

Go to your OOV in change mode, Click on the ‘Generate Data Flow’ icon next to the Activate icon.

This action opens a pop up, change the name of the DSO if required and in the ‘Data Types’ field select ‘BW data types’ and keep the ‘Source Object’ settings as it is.

Click on the continue icon. This opens a ‘Create DTP’ pop  up. Click ‘Continue’. Another pop up appears asking you to create a transformation.

Continue to create default transformation between your OOV datasource and DSO. Click on yes to create all object like DSO, DTP, transformation, InfoObjects.

Refresh your InfoArea, you can see your DSO along with your OOV.