Clean Core Concepts: Build Custom Analytical Queries with SAP's Key User Extensibility Concept
Continuing the theme of learning and applying S/4HANA's clean core extensibility concepts, this week I'm covering Custom Analytical Queries. You can find this under Fiori app F1572 Custom Analytical Queries that is part of SAP's In-App Framework and Key User Extensibility concept.
If you're unsure about what clean core and In-App extensibility are check out my previous post on the topic.
This post contains a general introduction and some lessons learnt with my recent implementation experience.
You can use this app on both on-premise and cloud version of S/4HANA as part of Key User Extensibility.
Key features of Custom Analytical Queries
As per SAP Help Documentation:
Custom Analytical Queries is a tool used for reporting and analysis.
This tool transforms and organizes raw data delivered from business documents into a meaningful grid. It abstracts the process of writing structured queries so that you don’t have to understand the query language or the technical details.
Custom Analytical Queries provides the fields required to design a query. You select the required fields and set filters for your query. You can add restricted measures, calculated measures, and preview the query results. The various options in Custom Analytical Queries and the task that you can perform using the options are as follows:
- Search: Use to search an existing query.
- New: Use to create a query.
- Copy: Use to create queries from predefined SAP queries or from packages that you do not have permissions.
- Adding Dimensions and Measures from the Data Source: Use to add a field from a Data Source to define a query or to remove a field from the query. For more information, see Adding Dimensions and Measures from the Data Source in the related information section.
- Configuring fields of the query: Use to change the position of the fields in the result set, to define a restricted or a calculated measure, or to change certain properties of a query field. For more information, see Configuring Fields of the Query in the related information section.
- Defining filters: Use to define certain parameters or conditions to filter the results of a query. For more information, see Defining Filters in the related information section.
- Preview: Use to preview result set.
❓Why should you use Custom Analytical Queries?
Using Fiori application F1572 Custom Analytical Queries ensures you are leveraging SAP's In-App Extensibility framework and Key User Extensibility concept which uses low-code/no-code approaches to enhance S/4HANA.
The reason for this is you start to transition your CDS view objects into SAP's In-App framework to leverage all the benefits of In-App extensibility like upgrade compatibility and object re-use.
In my previous blog post on Custom CDS Views I mention that it's a good idea to try to build your data model with as much key-user extensibility up front before attempting any Eclipse based objects.
✋ Custom Analytical Queries relies on "Released" CDS Views
One really big hurdle to using In-App extensibility is the availability of "Released" CDS Views in SAP's Virtual Data Model. As S/4HANA evolves over time SAP will naturally release more CDS views. As of writing of this blog post on S/4HANA 2022 only CDS views with Release contract of C1 are supported.
Use the F2170 View Browser to find the released views you can start working with.
🤔 Not all CDS annotations and features are available
There are still a number of limitations within the framework for example these are some scenarios my project team encountered but this list is not exhaustive and are examples only:
- Metadata extensions are not supported in Custom Analytical Queries
- Header annotations cannot be added to the Custom Analytical Query
⚠️ Check the Framework before Project Implementation
If you're seriously considering using key user extensibility concept on your project make sure to validate your entire framework before you start your project implementation by building an analytical query and publishing it. I would even go so far as to attach it to a transport and make sure you can complete the process.
You could run into issues like security authorizations, random Fiori issues or just general stability overall. On my first rodeo with this tool I encountered a number of problems building our first data model.
📚 Reference Documentation
SAP Help links are constantly being updated so I recommend you start at https://help.sap.com.
I was not able to find any good quality value add blogs that don't already recreate the tutorials below.
🛠️ What's the best way to learn Custom Analytical Queries
I definitely suggest start off with the hands on tutorials ABAP developers - there's no substitute for actually getting hands on with the tool itself:
🙋🏻♂️ I might need additional help!
If your organization needs a helping hand on implementing clean core architecture and governance with SAP S/4HANA, please feel free to reach out to me at ben@ben-kwong.com