Snowflake an analytic data warehouse provided as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), is getting a lot of attention in the BI world because of its unique architecture and low cost. In reporting space SAP to hold a major spot because of its unique features like scheduling, broadcasting, etc. Creating a report in BOBJ platform on top of data from snowflake might be a go-to option in future.

To showcase an approach, we will be using a Universe created on top of tables from snowflake and build reports with SAP client tools with the universe.

Connector

Snowflake provides a JDBC connector, for connecting Snowflake database from Information development tool (IDT) to create a universe.

You can download the connector from the below link

https://docs.snowflake.net/manuals/user-guide/jdbc-download.html

Pre-requests

1. Import the snowflake certificate into BOBJ server for connecting without any issues

Linux

INSTALLATION DIRECTORY

\enterprise_xi40\lin_x64\sapjvm\jre\lib\security\

Windows

INSTALLED DIRECTORY\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\win32_x86\sapjvm\jre\lib\security\

2. Create a folder with name “snowflake” under below location and place “snowflake-jdbc-3.6.0.jar”

BO server

INSTALLED DIRECTORY\enterprise_xi40\dataAccess\connectionServer\jdbc\drivers\<snowflake>

Client Location

INSTALLATION DIRECTORY

\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\dataAccess\connectionServer\jdbc\drivers\snowflake

3. Update the JDBC.sbo present on the server and client side.

Creating the universe

1. Open Information Design Tool (IDT) and create a new project

2. In the project right-click and select New -> Relational connection

3. Provide a name for the connection and click Next

4. Select the snowflake JDBC driver in the available connection drivers list and click next

5. A pop-up window opens as shown below. Enter the connection details and click Finish to create the connection

Note: Enter the JDBC URL and the JDBC class that you have entered while importing the driver. With the URL append the warehouse name and the database.

For Example jdbc:snowflake://SYSTEM_NAME.snowflakecomputing.com:443/?warehouse=XXX&database=YYY

1. Publish the connection that you have created in the required BOBJ repository.
2. Right-click on the connection and select the new data foundation option and add the required table and create the data layer
3. Right-click on the Data foundation and then select a new business layer option.
4. Arrange the dimension and measures and create the required data model and then right-click on the business layer under the project and publish the universe in BOBJ platform in the required folder.

The data is ready to consume in the BOBJ reporting tools. Let’s analyze the performance while consuming this data in a BOBJ client tool.

Webi(Reporting tool)

SAC (Visualization tool)

Why SAP Analytics Cloud?

• SAP Analytics Cloud has better integration with Connections like SAP Universe.
• SAP Analytics Cloud is a public Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) enabling access to on-premise and cloud data sources. While connecting the created SAP Universe Query in SAP Analytics Cloud following observations have been done.

The Maximum data that can be imported from SAP ERP to SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) is 800,000 rows.  The Adaptable Number of records to be loaded is 40 K records which take 30 Secs to load. Further, this can be consumed in Charts and Tables for Visualization purpose. Hence for Effective Purpose, Aggregated Model can be Consumed in SAP Analytics Cloud.

Read more about similar Self Service BI topics here and learn more about Visual BI Solutions Microsoft Power BI offerings here.