Browser-Based Data Blending vs SDI-Based Data Blending
You can blend data with live models in two ways:
- Browser-based data blending
- Data blending using Smart Data Integration (SDI)
Why are there two different approaches, and when should I use which approach?
We typically recommend browser-based data blending to business users or data analysts who want to blend smaller* aggregated datasets together within a story. A system-defined data volume limit ensures that the data blend operation within the story performs as expected. In general, we recommend trying browser-based data blending with live models first, because this approach should meet most business users' needs. There are no extra hardware deployment requirements for using browser-based blending.
When users are linking dimensions for the purpose of browser-based blending, a warning is shown if the data volume limit is exceeded:
An error message is shown if the blending operation doesn't complete successfully due to the data volume limit being exceeded:
If this happens regularly, contact your SAP Analytics Cloud system administrator to determine whether SDI-based data blending should be enabled for your business use case. We recommend SDI-based blending for larger aggregated datasets.
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* These are the browser-based blending limits on aggregated sets of data:
- SAP HANA live connections: up to 2 MB in dataset size
- SDI- and browser-based blending are defined on a per-connection basis, with SDI-based blending having the higher priority. For example, if you have both SDI- and browser-based blending configured against a connection for a data source, then SDI will be used for blending the data.