CDS Views in SAP (CDS means Core Data Services), are a bunch of Views that can allow access to the SAP database. For cloud-based S/4HANA systems, they are increasingly the only way for third party applications to access the SAP data. And, in the case of S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition, it is the only way to do that if you want to access the SAP data via interaction with the SAP data layer.
So CDS Views are increasingly important to understand and, maybe not surprisingly, a lot of our recent development effort for Safyr has been concerned with expanding our capabilities for CDS Views.
If you are working with SAP data for analytics, AI or even for integration, it is critical that you are able to understand and use CDS Views effectively.
Similarly, if you are embarking on, or implementing Data Governance, Data Catalog or lineage platforms, being able to access, understand, and include the metadata in CDS Views is vital to your project.
According to SAP’s own definition:
“The VDM (virtual data model) forms the basis for data access in SAP S/4HANA in, for example, analytical applications and APIs. The VDM of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and SAP S/4HANA is represented by CDS views. The CDS views that make up the VDM follow consistent modeling and naming rules. They expose business data - stored in database tables - in a format that is based on business semantics and therefore easier to consume.”
To put it another way, the Virtual Data Models published by SAP group CDS views into ‘business areas’ .
A screenshot from the Virtual Data Model documentation illustrates this:
Safyr extracts the CDS Views from an SAP system and allows them to be searched and displayed.
The example below shows a CDS View that is about ‘Sales Order’ information.
This CDS View is based on another CDS View – ISDSALESDOC.
The View-Info tab shows this:
This View - ISDSALESDOC in turn can be drilled into, and this one is based on yet another CDS View and two Base Tables:
To assist with easier search and navigation of these data assets, we have implemented a new Hierarchy for them in Safyr. This groups the CDS Views into the same groupings described in the SAP Virtual Data Model documentation.
Going back to the first CDS View – ISDSALESORDER – this can be located in the Hierarchy:
…and this shows other CDS Views that are relevant to Sales Orders.
Safyr delivers a comprehensive list of CDS Views that are defined in the ABAP Data Dictionary. There are an additional set of CDS Views called CDS View Entities. These are not defined directly in the ABAP Data Dictionary. We will be addressing these in the next major release. Watch this space.