Using OData

You can define OData Services in SAP Analytics Cloud, analytics designer based on an existing on-premise SAP S/4HANA live connection in your system which was created using CORS (​​Cross-origin resource sharing) connectivity. Additionally, you can also define OData Services based on SAP BW systems, SAP HANA systems, and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) systems (that were also created using CORS).

You can create an OData service, define the endpoint URL and trigger the execution of the action by using scripts.

OData services can be used to trigger transactional actions at the backend like filling out an order form or other forms.

In analytics designer, OData actions can be called from and executed in the backend system via scripting inside an analytic application. Furthermore, it is also possible to read and use the data of entity sets (exposed via OData services) by using APIs.

What you should know
  • OData actions are operations exposed by an OData service that may have side effects when invoked.

  • OData action imports, also called unbound actions are not associated with any OData entity set or entity. They generally expose simple parameters. All parameters are set via POST body.

  • OData bound actions are actions which may be invoked on a specific entity. They always contain a first parameter which is set via URL (to resolve the binding to the entity within the relevant entity set), and all other parameters are set via POST body.

    In general, actions can be bound on every type, but in analytics designer only binding on single entities is supported.

  • For OData you should configure the CORS (direct) connection at the backend. Please follow the instructions for the connection configuration in this chapter Live Data Connections to SAP S/4HANA.

    In the documentation chapter for the connection configuration (see link above) the CORS connection is referred to as direct connection.

    Note

    Note the following important additional configuration information:

    • The service path that you configure should correspond to the end-point URL of the OData service.

    • In addition to the service path listed in the documentation, you need to add another service path: /sap/opu/odata4/

    • The connection should also support if-match as allowed header.

Note the following limitations:

  • Only parameters of simple types are supported. Actions with mandatory parameters of unsupported types are not available. For actions with optional parameters of unsupported types, the action itself is supported but those parameters are not.

  • In case of bound actions, actions which are bound to an entity collection are not supported. Only actions which are bound to a single entity are supported. It is only possible to set this binding parameter by specifying the key of the entity on which the action should be carried out.

  • Only the JSON format is supported

  • Only S/4HANA on-prem is supported

  • Only Direct (CORS) connections is be supported.

  • The following types are not supported:

    • Edm.Stream

    • Edm.Untyped

    • all Edm.Geography types

    • all types defined in different name space

Related Information