SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

3514000 - SRS and SRID in SAP Datasphere

Symptom

Spatial Reference Systems (SRS) and Spatial Reference Identifiers (SRID) is a feature in HANA Cloud.
Therefore, more information is required about how this is relevant/applicable for SAP Datasphere.

Environment

SAP Datasphere

Resolution

SAP Datasphere plans to add geo functionality in a holistic manner in the future.
This will entail activation of all SRS by default, support of geo data types, tight integration with SAC (which currently relies on 4326), support for geo functions in SQL views and a couple of small items more.
During the analysis for this development, Development team realized that just adding a single SRS will not cut it though since other parts of the product need to evolve with it (particularly data type support for more geo data types and geo functions ST_* to effectively work with the data). 

The respective functionalities can be accessed today in an OpenSQL Schema.
Do your developments in that Schema, for example installing an additional SRS with standard HANA means, then exposing them back to Datasphere main schema for subsequent consumption. 

Spatial reference systems can be installed in OpenSQL schema following the standard procedure described in SAP Help page SAP HANA as Geographic Information System for ESRI

For example:

CREATE PREDEFINED SPATIAL REFERENCE SYSTEMS;  -- will install all SRS
or 
CREATE PREDEFINED SPATIAL REFERENCE SYSTEM IDENTIFIED BY <srs-id>; --will install only SRS w ID = srs-id
Installing SRS in the Datasphere schemas where you do your standard modelling (i.e. those in which all your Data Builder artefacts lie) will be of limited help since Datasphere is not designed at the moment to deal with SRS other than 4326 end-to-end. Things like ST_* functions, value helps, data types etc. are not equipped to deal with other SRS and so installing it will be of very limited help.
 
In OpenSQL is flexible since none of the above-mentioned restrictions apply there. 
Process would be as follows: 
  1.  Create OpenSQL schema & accessing user in Space Management
  2. Open HANA Explorer from Space Management
  3. Install SRS (as reffered above)
  4. Expose data from Data Builder by setting "Expose for consumption" on the respective views
  5. Do your spatial work in OpenSQL in HANA Explorer
  6. Consume back the OpenSQL artefact from a new view in Data Builder (import OpenSQL artefact from "Sources" tab on the left of your view builder editor of a new view)

See Also

Keywords

KBA , DS-MD , Modeling (Data Builder) , DS-PROV , DWC Provisioning , DS-SM , Space Management , Product Enhancement

Product

SAP Datasphere all versions