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SACM21
SAP Analytics Cloud: Modeling and
Data Transformation

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PARTICIPANT HANDBOOK
INSTRUCTOR-LED TRAINING
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Course Version: 42
Course Duration: 2 Days

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Contents

vii Course Overview

1 Unit 1: Explaining the Basics of Data Structures in SAP Analytics Cloud

3 Lesson: Explaining Where the Data Comes From

7 Lesson: Introducing SAP Business Data Cloud
13 Lesson: Identifying the Differences Between Model Types
17 Lesson: Creating Datasets
19 Exercise 1: Create a Standalone Dataset

31 Unit 2: Designing and Creating Dimensions

33 Lesson: Defining Dimensions

35 Lesson: Identifying Dimension Types
39 Lesson: Describing Properties
42 Lesson: Designing and Creating Hierarchies
45 Exercise 2: Create the Stores Dimension, Hierarchy, and
Properties
51 Lesson: Importing and Preparing Master Data for a Dimension
55 Exercise 3: Import and Prepare Data for the Stores Dimension

71 Unit 3: Creating Import Models

73 Lesson: Creating an Import Model

77 Exercise 4: Create an Import Analytic Model
83 Lesson: Importing and Preparing Transaction Data in a Model
93 Exercise 5: Import Data into an Analytic Model
101 Lesson: Scheduling Data Imports
103 Lesson: Creating Formulas and Calculations
107 Exercise 6: Create a Calculated Measure in a Model
113 Lesson: Translating Currency
119 Exercise 7: Configure and Translate Currencies
130 Lesson: Designing and Creating Time Hierarchies
133 Exercise 8: Create a Custom Time Hierarchy

149 Unit 4: Working With Live Models

151 Lesson: Using Data Analyzer to Preview Your Live Data Structure
152 Lesson: Creating Live Models
157 Exercise 9: Create a Live Model Using SAP Data Source
Systems
171 Lesson: Working with SAP Datasphere

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181 Unit 5: Working with Geographic Data

182 Lesson: Configuring Geographic Data in a Model

185 Exercise 10: Create and Use Geo Data

195 Unit 6: Defining Data Security

196 Lesson: Defining Data Access

201 Exercise 11: Apply Data Access Controls

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Course Overview

TARGET AUDIENCE
This course is intended for the following audiences:
● Data Manager
● Data Consultant
● Industry / Business Analyst Consultant
● Database Administrator
● System Architect

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UNIT 1 Explaining the Basics of Data

Structures in SAP Analytics
Cloud

Lesson 1
Explaining Where the Data Comes From 3

Lesson 2
Introducing SAP Business Data Cloud 7

Lesson 3
Identifying the Differences Between Model Types 13

Lesson 4
Creating Datasets 17
Exercise 1: Create a Standalone Dataset 19

UNIT OBJECTIVES

● Describe the data source options.

● Describe the key functionality of SAP Business Data Cloud in relation to data analytics.
● Identify the different model types.
● Explain the types of datasets and the difference between datasets and models.
● Create a dataset.

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Unit 1: Explaining the Basics of Data Structures in SAP Analytics Cloud

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Unit 1
Lesson 1
Explaining Where the Data Comes From

LESSON OBJECTIVES
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
● Describe the data source options.

Connection Types
SAP Analytics Cloud enables access to both on-premise and cloud data sources via either live
or import connectivity – two ways of accessing your data located anywhere in your
information-system landscape.
Depending on your environment, there are different requirements for establishing live and
import data connections to SAP Analytics Cloud. For more information, see the System
Requirements and Technical Prerequisites Guide
You must decide which connection type your organization needs, based on your user
requirements. As you evaluate which connection type to use, consider the following criteria:
● Functional needs
● Data privacy constraints
● Data volume constraints

It is possible that you will need a combination of both live and import connections, and SAP
Analytics Cloud makes satisfying that requirement very easy to support and manage.

Connection Screen
On the Connection screen, an administrator creates and maintains data source system
connections. Connections are categorized as either a live connection or an acquired data
connection. It is also possible to filter the list of available connections by data source type or
by category.
The following figure shows the connection screen in SAP Analytics Cloud.

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Unit 1: Explaining the Basics of Data Structures in SAP Analytics Cloud

Figure 1: Connection Creation in SAP Analytics Cloud

Live Data
You can create models from data sources in on-premise or cloud systems without any data
replication. Live data models do not support any data transformations or model-based
calculations. However, creating calculations in a story that uses a live model is possible. Live
models are typically used when:
● You need data in a story that is real-time.
● You do not need to transform or calculate the data in SAP Analytics Cloud.
● You cannot have data on the cloud due to security or privacy considerations.

Data access for the model is controlled by the source system security, not SAP Analytics
Cloud security.
Currently, the data sources for live models are limited to SAP systems and include:
● SAP BPC Embedded - Connect to a configuration model.
● SAP Business Warehouse - Connect to a BW query.
● SAP HANA - Connect to a HANA view.
● SAP S/4HANA - Connect to a query or CDS view.
● SAP Universe or WebI document - Create a universe query or connect to an existing Web
Intelligence document.

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Lesson: Explaining Where the Data Comes From

Figure 2: Live Model Data Sources

Acquired Data
As with live models, you can create models from data sources in on-premise or cloud
systems; however, with acquired data, the data is imported (copied) to SAP Analytics Cloud
from the source system. This replication allows the imported data to be transformed/
manipulated and/or additional calculations created. Import models are typically used when:
● Data in stories does not need to be real-time.
● Source system performance issues preclude the use of live models.
● You need to transform data.
● You need to combine data from multiple source systems.
● You need model-dependent calculated measures.
● You need to submit planning data.

One very important consideration is that changes made to the data in the source system do
not affect the imported data. Because of this fact, imports from sources systems can be, and
typically are, scheduled to occur on a regular basis. However, if data is imported from a file
into a model, the import cannot be scheduled.
Data access for the model is controlled by SAP Analytics Cloud security.
There are many data sources for imported models, both SAP and non-SAP.

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Unit 1: Explaining the Basics of Data Structures in SAP Analytics Cloud

Figure 3: Import Data Connections

LESSON SUMMARY
You should now be able to:
● Describe the data source options.

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Unit 1
Lesson 2
Introducing SAP Business Data Cloud

LESSON OBJECTIVES
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
● Describe the key functionality of SAP Business Data Cloud in relation to data analytics.

The Advantages of SAP Business Data Cloud

In this lesson, you'll discover the main advantages provided by SAP Business Data Cloud and
its key innovations that meet the challenges of organizations that want to make data-driven
decisions.

Figure 4: SAP and the New Era of Enterprise Management

Organizations that make data-driven decisions today face three big challenges:

1. Uncover the hidden potential in their business by unlocking seamless access to critical
insights.

2. Boost confidence in their data quality and integrity to empower data-driven decisions.

3. Harness the power of fragmented, unstructured data sources and turn them into valuable
business insights.

SAP Business Data Cloud was built to address these key challenges.
SAP centralizes data from SAP and non-SAP sources into a unified semantic layer, unlocking
a new dimension of insights, advanced analytics, and AI capabilities. By integrating cross-
company data, businesses gain actionable intelligence to bridge transactional processes and
drive AI-powered growth. SAP’s AI agents leverage accurate, context-rich data from both SAP

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Unit 1: Explaining the Basics of Data Structures in SAP Analytics Cloud

and non-SAP systems to deliver advanced automation, seamless cross-solution

collaboration, and innovative decision-making, enabling businesses to adapt, innovate, and
thrive at scale. Every part of the business is deeply connected, driving today’s digital first
world.

Note:
Feel free to get a comprehensive overview of SAP Business Data Cloud and
discover its features: Demo: SAP Business Data Cloud

Figure 5: SAP Business Data Cloud

Let's introduce the core innovations of SAP Business Data Cloud that drive these changes.

One solution for all data and analytics requirements

SAP Business Data Cloud is a Software-as-a-Service solution equipped with data and
analytics services needed in a modern world. Together with SAP Business Technology
Platform providing foundational services, SAP Business Data Cloud combines strategic
solutions such as SAP HANA Cloud, SAP Datasphere, and SAP Analytics Cloud and their
capabilities in one single solution.

Single solution for diverse audiences and use cases

What makes SAP Business Data Cloud so powerful, is that it offers the tools and technologies
to meet all data and analytics requirements of a modern and agile organization. It uses the
latest technology to support scenarios such as:
● Out-of-the-box reporting.
● Machine learning and artificial intelligence.
● Advanced data modeling and data warehousing.
● Powerful planning and reporting.
● Intelligent data management.

SAP Business Data Cloud provides data warehousing features including a manual data
integration and data modeling approach, AI and machine learning based extensions of data
models as well as innovative out-of-the-box reporting capabilities side-by-side. With this wide

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Lesson: Introducing SAP Business Data Cloud

range of functions, it covers all the requirements of a modern data and analytics solution and
thus serves different target audiences with different requirements.

End-to-end data lifecycle managed by SAP

One of the core innovations of SAP Business Data Cloud is that SAP's role as a provider goes
beyond the tasks that maintain security, availability, and performance in a Software-as-a-
Service landscape. Rather, SAP uses its knowledge and experience to bundle, integrate,
harmonize, and transform customers' business data across different business applications
such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP Customer Experience or SAP SuccessFactors in an
unprecedented approach. To prepare for seamless use across all SAP Business Data Cloud
scenarios and third-party tools, the business data that is managed by SAP is integrated into a
hyperscaler environment, and undergoes cleansing, harmonization, and enrichment.

Out-of-the-box reporting
A key highlight of SAP Business Data Cloud is its out-of-the-box reporting capability, featuring
Insight Apps, which create business insights with a single click, empowering informed
decision-making. The concept of this feature is based on predelivered artifacts and objects
that may remind you at the first glance on the well-known business content in SAP BW/
4HANA, SAP Datasphere, or SAP Analytics Cloud. But there's a significant difference to the
existing concepts. Unlike before, all artifacts, objects, and process steps for a ready-to-
consume full-stack application are included and fully managed by SAP. Specifically, here is
what happens when you install an Insight App:
● Automated creation of artifacts across all tools and components.
● Automated data management steps.
● Automated data provisioning from data source to dashboard.
● Automated ready-to-consume business insights.

In this lesson, you learned about SAP Business Data Cloud's core innovations with the wide
range of functionalities such as the out-of-the-box reporting with Insight Apps, and the main
advantages provided by SAP Business Data Cloud.

Architecture of SAP Business Data Cloud

This lesson offers an overview of SAP Business Data Cloud's architecture, introducing you to
the core components and their respective tasks, and helping you understand how they work
together to enable business insights and decision-making.

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Unit 1: Explaining the Basics of Data Structures in SAP Analytics Cloud

Figure 6: SAP Business Data Cloud Architecture

As illustrated in the graphic, the SAP Business Data Cloud system landscape consists of
different interconnected components. Each component plays an important role in SAP
Business Data Cloud, with specific tasks that are outlined in the following sections.

Source Systems
We start by examining the source systems, which encompass both SAP systems (for
example, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition or SAP SuccessFactors) and non-SAP
systems. With SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition serving as an example, the data journey
begins when SAP bundles customer business data, making it available for various analytical
use cases within SAP Business Data Cloud. Entities such as tables and views are combined
and made available to represent a specific business scenario (for example, working capital)
before the data is replicated to SAP Business Data Cloud.

Foundation Services
When analysis is required, the bundled data from your source system (for example, SAP S/
4HANA Cloud Private Edition) is replicated into the Foundation Services of SAP Business
Data Cloud. This data is then harmonized with other relevant business data from other
business applications, transformed, and enriched to become a Data Product. From this
moment on, it is located in a hyperscaler environment based on SAP HANA Cloud, Data Lake
files and is ready to be used for every use case that is supported by SAP Business Data Cloud.
What this means for you is that all necessary data management steps such as integration,
transformation, cleansing, and so on are fully managed by SAP.

SAP Datasphere
At the heart of SAP Business Data Cloud is SAP Datasphere, which provides the foundational
structures that define the data model on top of the Data Products. This includes predelivered
Insight App and Data Product scenarios but also scenarios with custom data models that can
be manually extended with machine learning or AI. SAP Datasphere also serves as a central
tool for managing analytical roles and data access control, helping you to determine which
business users can view specific data.

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Lesson: Introducing SAP Business Data Cloud

SAP Databricks
An SAP-tailored Databricks component (called SAP Databricks) is used in SAP Business Data
Cloud when extending your analytics with functions that are based on AI, machine learning,
and Pro-Code engineering. There are different approaches to make this possible. On the one
hand, you can share Data Products from SAP Business Data Cloud Catalog with SAP
Databricks, to extend them accordingly and to push them back to SAP Business Data Cloud
Catalog. On the other hand, you can share data directly from SAP Databricks into SAP
Business Data Cloud Catalog. In both cases, your data models can be extended to enrich
classic analytics with insights that are usually implemented by Data Scientists.

SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA

SAP BW has a rich history in SAP's data and analytics ecosystem, with a large collection of
established, legacy objects. For these reasons, it is integrated into SAP Business Data Cloud if
you use the SAP BW Netweaver Cloud, private edition or the SAP BW/4HANA Cloud, private
edition. The approach makes it possible to technically onboard SAP BW objects into SAP
Business Data Cloud, allowing them to be used as Data Products. Within this framework, SAP
BW is supported until 2030, but we recommend taking the modern approach with SAP BW/
4HANA as soon as possible.

SAP Analytics Cloud

SAP Analytics Cloud stories are used to provide the required dashboard in out-of-the-box
reporting scenarios with Insight Apps. With its advanced visualization and planning functions,
SAP Analytics Cloud serves the business user as a central tool for exploring the requested
business insights or executing planning functions. Furthermore, using SAP Analytics Cloud,
business users can run ad-hoc analysis, explore the provided data with AI-driven chat
capabilities, or act on their insights with AI-driven suggestions, bridging the gap between
analytics and their end-to-end business processes.

Insight Apps
Insight Apps are not limited exclusively to SAP Analytics Cloud. In addition to the analytical
dashboards, or planning templates provided by SAP Analytics Cloud, it is planned to provide
SAP Business Technology Platform based Insight Apps. These SAP managed Software-as-a-
Service applications are delivered in SAP Business Data Cloud to focus on various action-
driven scenarios such as analytics, prediction, or forecasting.

SAP Business Data Cloud cockpit

The SAP Business Data Cloud cockpit has an important role in the overall SAP Business Data
Cloud landscape. With this tool you can browse and find predelivered Insight Apps and Data
Products, install Insight Apps, and share Data Products with SAP Databricks to be able to
extend them with AI, and machine learning capabilities.
In this lesson, you discovered the overall architecture of SAP Business Data Cloud and the
main tasks of each component.

Additional Learning
SAP Business Data Cloud and its associated data engineering and data analysis components
(including the new Insight Apps) are covered in more detail in the Introducing Business Data
Cloud learning journey.

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Unit 1: Explaining the Basics of Data Structures in SAP Analytics Cloud

LESSON SUMMARY
You should now be able to:
● Describe the key functionality of SAP Business Data Cloud in relation to data analytics.

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