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Harness the Power of Location through Esri ArcGIS with SAP HANA - Common Questions

som
Advisor
Advisor
‎09-13-2017 5:13 AM


Quick link: bit.ly/hanaesriFAQ

SAP and Esri have been working together since 1999 to enable businesses to answer the question of WHERE. Where are my customers? Where are we failing to meet the customer satisfaction score? Where is the faulty section of the gas pipeline? Where should we target the next sales campaign? With the innovation of breakthrough in-memory database technology and native spatial capabilities of SAP HANA, SAP and Esri have been doubling down on the integration efforts to bring the business and location data together in a complete, unified data landscape with high-performance analytic engines. In January 2018, Esri has released ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6 and ArcGIS Pro 2.1 supporting SAP HANA as the Enterprise Geodatabase.

This page addresses common questions on Esri integrations with SAP, covering SAP HANA Spatial, SAP Analytics, SAP ECC, SAP Business Suite, S/4HANA, and field-based mobile tools for Asset Management. We invite you to interact with us and send us any questions or feedback. We will continue to update with more information and answers.

Contents

Public Resources for Common Questions

Public URL – SAP HANA and Esri Common Questions


Other publicly available information


Esri and SAP HANA Spatial

Is SAP HANA Spatial OGC compliant?


What benefits does OGC compliance offer for SAP HANA Spatial?


What spatial data types does HANA support?


How many spatial functions and methods does HANA support?


Is spatial data in SAP HANA stored as blobs or open geometries for spatial functions?


Is HANA Spatial available in the cloud?


What is a shapefile?


Will the new Esri Enterprise Geodatabase for HANA utilize the native HANA spatial data types?


When is SAP HANA as Esri Enterprise Geodatabase due to be released?


What capabilities does the Esri Enterprise Geodatabase for HANA support?


What is SAP HANA Express?


Does SAP HANA Express support HANA spatial data types and functions?


Does HANA spatial require indices or tessellation tables?


Does HANA spatial support versioning?


What SAP analytics clients support HANA spatial?


What Esri clients support HANA spatial?


Esri and SAP Analytics

Do SAP Analytics solutions support Esri?


Esri and SAP ECC, SAP Business Suite, S/4HANA

What is the Digital Core?


What is SAP Geographical Enablement Framework (GEF)?


Can an on-premise deployment of SAP ECC, SAP Business Suite on HANA or S/4HANA with SAP Geographical...


What capabilities in SAP HANA does SAP Geographical Enablement Framework use?


Can non-SAP spatial data be stored in HANA alongside SAP Geographical Enablement Framework managed s...


Does SAP Geographical Enablement Framework support data cleansing?


Does SAP Geographical Enablement Framework support synchronization between the geometry stored in HA...


Field Based Tools for SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)

What tools does SAP provide for field based maintenance?


What tools does Esri provide for field based maintenance?




 

 

Public Resources for Common Questions


 

Public URL – SAP HANA and Esri Common Questions


The answers to the following questions are available.

  • I am an ArcGIS user. What does SAP HANA give me?

  • I am a SAP HANA user. What does ArcGIS give me?

  • I am developer. How do I get started with building apps with SAP HANA and ArcGIS?

  • Which SAP apps already have ArcGIS technology embedded in them?

  • What versions of ArcGIS and SAP HANA do I need?

  • Do Esri and SAP have a joint development roadmap?


Other publicly available information



 

Esri and SAP HANA Spatial



Is SAP HANA Spatial OGC compliant?


Yes, it is compliant with version 1.1 of the OGC standard.


What benefits does OGC compliance offer for SAP HANA Spatial?


It means that HANA Spatial is open. Any toolset that is OGC compliant can interact with SAP HANA Spatial.


What spatial data types does HANA support?


HANA supports 8 spatial data types and a superclass, ST_GEOMETRY.  These data types are OGC compliant.  See the SAP HANA Spatial documentation for more details.


How many spatial functions and methods does HANA support?


HANA supports around 100 methods as of HANA 2.  See the SAP HANA Spatial documentation for more details.

 

Is spatial data in SAP HANA stored as blobs or open geometries for spatial functions?


No, spatial data is stored natively using the supported data types.


Is HANA Spatial available in the cloud?


Yes, it is available in SAP Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud platform. On AWS, SAP HANA Bring-Your-Own-License, HANA One, SAP HANA, express edition are available.

Additional resources:

 

What is a shapefile?


The shapefile format is a popular geospatial vector data format for geographic information system software. It is developed and regulated by Esri as an open specification for data interoperability among Esri and other GIS software products. The shapefile format can spatially describe vector features: points, lines, and polygons, representing, for example, water wells, rivers, and lakes. Each item usually has attributes that describe it, such as name or temperature. If you visit the Open Data website for your government, such as Open Data catalogue for Vancouver, or NYC Open Data, or visit sites like EU Open Data Portal you are likely to find many data in the shapefile (SHP) format.

 

Will the new Esri Enterprise Geodatabase for HANA utilize the native HANA spatial data types?


Yes. It is worth noting that ArcGIS already utilizes HANA spatial data types when it accesses HANA directly through query layers (ArcGIS 10.3+) or feature services (ArcGIS 10.3.1+).

 

When is SAP HANA as Esri Enterprise Geodatabase due to be released?


ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6 and ArcGIS 2.1 released in January 2018 supports SAP HANA as the Enterprise Geodatabase. Check out the following resources:

We have already run an SAP HANA + Esri Spatial Hackathon in March 2018 with Esri ArcGIS geodatabase in HANA as the unified data landscape.

 

What capabilities does the Esri Enterprise Geodatabase for HANA support?


Following public documentation provides a great overview. To summarize here:

Advanced ArcGIS Platform Information Model capabilities available for HANA

In the initial release, Esri will be adding many advanced platform information model functionalities so users can take maximum advantages of Esri’s Web GIS capabilities.

  • Subtypes

  • Domains

  • Relationship classes

  • Attachments

  • New long transaction model (branch versioning)

  • Sync capabilities for offline editing

  • Utility network

  • Editor tracking

  • Advanced Map services functionalities (attachments, domain, subtypes etc.)

  • Advanced Feature services functionalities (sync, editor tracking, attachments etc.)

  • Scene services


 

ArcGIS platform capabilities that will not be available to HANA users in initial release are:

  • Topology

  • Network datasets

  • Geometric network

  • Parcel fabric

  • Existing long transaction model (state-id based versioning)


 

One of the important distinctions between advanced platform information model support for HANA vs other currently supported DBMS platforms is that it only supports new service based long transaction model (branch versioning) that is simpler, more performant and better suited for archiving capabilities. As a result, many of the current platform capabilities that rely on older long transaction model (state id based versioning) will not be supported. However, in future releases ,many of those capabilities will support new long transaction model (branch versioning) and will be available to HANA users.

 

Keep in mind that there is no need to wait for the release of the HANA geodatabase. You should plan and evaluate the need for the HANA geodatabase, but you can use query layers, publish feature services to HANA and leverage HANA spatial for its native support for spatial data types, functions, and processing right now.  HANA spatial is supported in ArcGIS Server, ArcGIS Desktop (including ArcGIS Pro), and Insights for ArcGIS. Services can be published from these products to ArcGIS Portal or ArcGIS Online.


What is SAP HANA Express?


SAP HANA, express edition (SAP HANA Express) is a streamlined version of SAP HANA that can run on laptops and other resource-constrained hosts, such as a cloud-hosted virtual machine. SAP HANA, express edition is free to use for in-memory databases up to 32GB of RAM and includes HANA spatial engine.  Memory capacity increases beyond 32GB are available for purchase at the SAP Store.

SAP HANA Express is a great way to get started on your exploration, learning, and development of using Esri on SAP HANA if you do not have access to a SAP HANA full-use deployment.

SAP and Esri are jointly offering a trial which includes:

  • An ArcGIS Pro trial, including access to ArcGIS Online

  • SAP HANA, express edition.

  • Esri Demographic sample dataset.

  • Tutorials for working with SAP HANA data in ArcGIS Pro.


Register from this trial page.

 

Does SAP HANA Express support HANA spatial data types and functions?


Yes, HANA Express supports not only spatial, but most of the capabilities of enterprise class HANA.  This means developers and others can utilize HANA with ArcGIS for free using HANA Express.  HANA Express supports up to 32GB of memory and is available as a VM, in the cloud or as a binary install on bare metal.  HANA Express can be used in production with community support.  If you need more memory capacity for HANA Express, you can purchase additional memory capacity on the SAP Store up to 128GB in 32GB chunks from the SAP Store.


Does HANA spatial require indices or tessellation tables?


SAP HANA uses columnar data storage, which behaves as its own index. HANA internally uses spatial indices. However, users do not create, manage or rebuild indices on tables in SAP HANA. SAP HANA supports native spatial functions, queries, and advanced computations which do not require tessellation tables. These are unique differentiations of SAP HANA, powered by its columnar storage, in-memory technology and native spatial engine compared to other databases. SAP HANA spatial achieves faster performance with less complexity and lower cost of maintenance.


Does HANA spatial support versioning?


The planned release of Esri enterprise geodatabase for SAP HANA does. The Esri platform also provides more and more advanced spatial analytics (well over 700 functions) than are available in SAP HANA alone.

 

What SAP analytics clients support HANA spatial?


SAP Analytics Cloud, a SaaS solution which combines all analytics capabilities including business intelligence (BI), planning, and predictive analysis offers location analytics running natively on HANA spatial engine for it. SAP Digital Boardroom is a built-on SAP Analytics Cloud hence also supports HANA spatial.

 

What Esri clients support HANA spatial?


Esri Insights for ArcGIS is a web-based, data analytics workbench where you will gain powerful location-based business intelligence. Visit this comprehensive Esri web site for more information.

Esri ArcGIS Desktop tools, such as ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap, also support SAP HANA spatial. Services can be published from these products to ArcGIS Portal or ArcGIS Online for sharing and collaboration.

 

 

 

Esri and SAP Analytics


 

Do SAP Analytics solutions support Esri?


Yes. SAP Analytics Cloud, a SaaS solution which combines all analytics capabilities including business intelligence (BI), planning, and predictive analysis, and SAP Digital Boardroom, built-on SAP Analytics Cloud, have a wide range of integration capabilities of Esri. SAP Analytics Cloud includes both Esri base maps and custom vector maps built using Esri. SAP Analytics Cloud uses Esri’s JavaScript API for visualization layers, properties and drawing tools. You can also import Esri shapefiles, the open geospatial vector data format developed by Esri, from SAP Analytics Cloud, which in turn will store the data in SAP HANA. The shapefiles can then be displayed on SAP Analytics Cloud as a point-of-interest layer. It can also be used for more advanced spatial analytics, such as data points within or not within the intersection of, or the distance of the point-of-interest data represented in the shapefiles. This is an example of SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP HANA spatial, and Esri working together to enable end-to-end spatial analytics. You can also build public Feature Layers and visualize it on SAP Analytics Cloud.

SAP Lumira, Lumira Discovery and Lumira Design, use Esri base maps. SAP Lumira Discovery offers the ability to connect to Esri ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS platform and import content from named user accounts.

 

 

 

 

Esri and SAP ECC, SAP Business Suite, S/4HANA



What is the Digital Core?


The Digital Core is S/4HANA – SAP’s ECC specifically optimized for HANA.  SAP ECC has three stages of the transformation from the traditional ERP to the digital core.

  1. SAP ERP – SAP’s traditional ERP which stores its data in DB2, Oracle, and other relational DBMSs.

  2. SAP Business Suite on HANA – SAP ECC running on SAP HANA, migrated from non-SAP relational databases. Other known names are Suite on HANA or SoH for short.

  3. S/4HANA – optimized and built for SAP HANA, offering significantly faster performance and efficient workflows. SAP HANA’s in-memory technology removes traditional database technologies such as indices and data redundancy and provides much higher data compression.



What is SAP Geographical Enablement Framework (GEF)?


SAP Geographical Enablement Framework (sometimes abbreviated as GEF) can augment business data with geometric attributes. It allows you to drive spatially enriched business processes in SAP Business Suite and S/4HANA from a map and leverage both business data from applications and spatial data from GIS systems simultaneously to obtain better insights. It can also serve as the single entry point to access multiple applications directly from a map.

The geo framework is not a native HANA application. It requires and uses HANA Spatial to store the geometries of geo-enabled business objects (master data, transactions) of an SAP Business Suite or S/4HANA system. Customers or partners could choose to use the geo framework to enable any solution within the SAP Business Suite or S/4HANA. For an asset management business context, this is already offered by SAP with SAP Geo Framework for SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and SAP Geo Framework for SAP S/4HANA Asset Management. Although the geo framework requires HANA to store the geometries, it does not require that the customer be running S/4HANA or Business Suite on HANA – the customer could be running the legacy ERP while having a SAP HANA system as a side-car.

For more questions and additional help, contact Karsten.hauschild@sap.com.


Can an on-premise deployment of SAP ECC, SAP Business Suite on HANA or S/4HANA with SAP Geographical Enablement Framework utilize HANA in the cloud?


Technically this could be possible but it has not been released as a standard product. There are performance and reliability considerations that should be well understood before taking business requirements into consideration.


What capabilities in SAP HANA does SAP Geographical Enablement Framework use?


The geo framework uses the native spatial data types and functions in HANA.

 

Can non-SAP spatial data be stored in HANA alongside SAP Geographical Enablement Framework managed spatial data and/or S/4HANA and Business Suite on HANA?


Yes.  How the data is stored in HANA will depend upon architectural and business considerations.  HANA supports multiple schemas in the same, single tenant.  HANA also supports multi-tenancy (or containers).  This means non-SAP data could be housed in a different container on the same HANA instance.  It could also be housed in a different schema in the same container as GEF or other data.  For reliability, maintenance and performance reasons, the most likely option is to house this data in a separate container or on a completely different server or HANA VM install.  When Esri releases the Enterprise geodatabase for HANA later in 2017, all business and GIS data can reside in HANA – on one or more HANA VMs or servers.  Doing so provides a TCO and operation and management benefit because you no longer have to maintain DBMSs from different software vendors which in turn provides licensing, training and support benefits.  It also makes mashing up of SAP and non-SAP data easier because it would all be in HANA.  For a utility, for instance, this means that GIS data, business data and engineering data can all reside in HANA.


Does SAP Geographical Enablement Framework support data cleansing?


No, it does not.  SAP and SAP partners provide software which does.  SAP HANA Enterprise Information Management offers Smart Data Quality (SDQ). There are many innovative partners who specialize in Master Data Management data cleansing and data. We encourage you to visit SAP App Center and contact SAP to discuss specific requirements to determine the best course of next step.

 

Does SAP Geographical Enablement Framework support synchronization between the geometry stored in HANA and the Esri platform?


SAP Geographical Enablement Framework does not support, as a standard product, synchronization between a geo-enabled SAP Business Suite or S/4HANA system and Esri.

You may want to consider whether synchronization of all geometries is desired. For example, you may have just one geometry for an asset in the GIS system. However, for business reasons (e.g. asset accounting, maintenance work flows) you may have multiple geometries for the same asset in SAP.

SAP and partners offers services to address synchronization since each customer has unique requirements around data governance and workflows. We recommend that you visit SAP App Center or contact SAP to discuss specific requirements to determine the best next step.

 

 

 

Field Based Tools for SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)



What tools does SAP provide for field based maintenance?


SAP offers SAP Work Manager which shows a field crew or individual technician what notifications (NO) and work orders (WO) created in SAP Plant Maintenance (PM) are assigned to them.  They can view information about assets attached to a work order or notifications, track time spent, order parts, update the status of a work order, notifications, and more.  SAP Work Manager runs on top of the SAP Mobile Platform (SMP) which in turn connects with SAP EAM.  It is a proven online/offline mobile asset management solution. SAP Work Order runs with SAP Business Suite as well as SAP S/4HANA as the backend system. It supports iOS, Android, and Windows based mobile devices.

SAP Work Manager, Cloud Edition can also be deployed through SAP Cloud Platform Mobile Services, allowing you to shift your capital expenditures to operational expenditures.

SAP has announced in 2016 a strategic partnership with Apple to create a next generation mobile asset management tool. This solution is SAP Asset Manager. The SAP Asset Manager app is a mobile solution for managing work orders, notifications, condition monitoring, material consumption, time management and failure analysis. It supports the highly skilled workers who maintain enterprise assets to perform their job with complex information and business logic that is always available whether they are connected to the network or working in offline environments. It leverages the digital core with S/4HANA as well as HCP as the IoT platform for managing assets. It complements SAP Work Manager which provides robust, proven support for mobile asset management. Ongoing support and development for Work Manager will continue. For more details, please see http://discover.sap.com/apple/en-us/index.html.

Both SAP Work Manager and SAP Asset Manager (planned) are spatially enabled which means they can reference and display feature services from the ArcGIS platform.  The default spatial capabilities can be modified by customizing the spatial control within the products.  There are SAP and 3rd party partners who offer these services.


 

What tools does Esri provide for field based maintenance?


Esri has a number of tools, including Collector.  Collector lets people in the field gather information about field based assets and the ability to modify and create them.  Whereas SAP Work Manager and SAP Asset Manager operate against objects managed by SAP EAM like Work Orders, Notifications, Assets and Functional Locations, Collector operates against the entire geodatabase.

 

Authors:  tom.turchioe and sharon.
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