Transport / Promotion management is the backbone of a landscape that makes it easier for administrators when content needs to be moved. Transporting SAP Design Studio applications from one environment to another in SAP HANA is done with the help of ‘Delivery Units’.
All Analysis applications published on the SAP HANA platform are placed in a package named ‘designstudio’ and all custom extensions installed, in the package ‘designstudio_extensions’. For more information on SAP Design Studio on the SAP HANA platform, please read my previous blog.
Prerequisites to create Delivery Units
Delivery unit information is maintained in the _SYS_REPO schema. The content vendor name should be configured to create DU (Delivery Units). The user account used to create the delivery unit should have insert rights on _SYS_REPO (generally, modeling rights) and the system privilege ‘INIFILE ADMIN’.
To configure the vendor name for creation, select the Configuration tab and expand the ‘indexserver.ini’ option. Select ‘repository’ and add a new parameter. The parameter is a Key-Value pair. The key is ‘content_vendor’ and the value is the name of your company.
Creating a Delivery Unit
Delivery units are SAP HANA specific packages that can be used to install content, transport data models and applications developed on the SAP HANA platform. The delivery unit management window can be accessed through the ‘Modeler Perspective’ in SAP HANA Studio. Once a delivery unit is created, it can either be exported as a package to the target system or the target system can pull the DU from the source system, using ‘SAP HANA Transport Management’.
Step 1:
In SAP HANA Studio, select the ‘SAP HANA Modeler’ perspective and select ‘Delivery Units’ under ‘Setup’. This will open the ‘Delivery Units Management’ window.
Step 2:
Click the ‘Create’ button on the right corner to create a new DU.
Step 3:
Fill up all the information in the ‘New Delivery Unit’ form. ‘Name’ is mandatory.
Step 4:
Now select the newly created delivery unit and click on ‘Add’. This will help us add packages to the DU.
Step 5:
As mentioned earlier, all analysis applications are placed inside the ‘designstudio’ package and each application is maintained as a separate sub-package. Browse for the ‘designstudio’ package and select the analysis application (sub-package) that is to be promoted.
Now we have created a delivery unit for the analysis application that needs to be promoted. This can be used with manual export/import or transports.
Exporting the Delivery Unit
Step 1:
In SAP HANA Studio, select ‘Export’ in the ‘File’ menu.
Step 2:
Select ‘Delivery Unit’ in the ‘SAP HANA Content’ folder and select ‘Next’.
Step 3:
If you have configured many systems in your SAP HANA Studio, select the system from which you need to export the DU. You should have the EXPORT system privilege to perform this operation.
Step 4:
Now
- Select the delivery unit we created for the analysis application
- Select the ‘Export to Client’ option
- Browse for the location where the file should be saved
- Type the desired name for the delivery unit, without changing the file extension
When done, click ‘Next’ to proceed.
Importing the Delivery Unit
Step 1:
In SAP HANA Studio, select ‘Import’ from the ‘File’ menu and select ‘Delivery Unit’ in the ‘SAP HANA Content’ folder. You should have the IMPORT system privilege to do this.
Step 2:
Select the ‘Target’ SAP HANA system and click ‘Next’.
Step 3:
Now
- Select ‘Client’, as the location of the delivery unit
- Browse for the delivery unit that needs to be imported
- Click ‘Finish’ to initiate the import
Step 4:
When Import is complete, the Job Status will change to ‘Success’. Now, the SAP Design Studio application will be active in the target system.
The application can be accessed using the following URL format
https://<hostname>:<port>/sap/bi/aas/rt/index.html?APPLICATION=<APP_NAME>
Remember to transport the data models used by the application, as well. Data models can also by transported the same way, using delivery units, if development has been done based on best practices.
We have promoted an analysis application from one environment to another using direct export/import. Let us explore how to use SAP HANA Transport Management to do this – in part 02 of this blog.
