Browse Connections, View Data, and Metadata
Learn how to browse connections, view metadata, and preview the data.
Note
To explore connections and profile data in Discovery, you must have one or more connections
set and the appropriate permissions for those supported connection types: SAP HANA
SQL, HDFS, Vora Catalog, S3, and several cloud connections. Depending on the policy
configuration, you may have rights to see the connection, but may not have rights to
see certain paths within the connection as a result of the URI path set for the
connection. Therefore, you may not see all of the objects. Likewise, you may be able
to browse on an object, but may not be able to profile, view or export metadata, or
view the fact sheet as a result of the actions assigned in Policy Management.
Contact your system administrator to set the appropriate rights and permissions.
They may be able to modify your resource access in Policy Management. For more
information about Policy Management, see Policy ManagementPolicy Management grants resource access to a user. in the
SAP Data Hub
Administration Guide.
From the SAP Data Hub cockpit, you can access the Discovery page by clicking the compass icon. The list of connections available for you is shown in the Connections
pane on the Discovery page. Click the information icon next to the connection to learn about the connection, such as the
connection's zone and system settings. This information can help you determine that you
are looking in the correct connection. Click OK to close the
Connection Settings dialog.
If you have many connections, enter the name (or a portion of the name) in the
Filter connections search box.
Use the expanding options to the left of the connection name to access the folders and objects
within the connection. Selecting a folder or connection populates the table on the
right. From the table, you can view the type, last date modified, whether the table was
profiled, and the results. When you know a file or folder name that you want to navigate
to, click the
pencil icon to edit the breadcrumb path.
Note
If your table name has forward
slashes (/) or backslashes (\), you must enter additional slashes when editing the
breadcrumb path. Let's say that you have a table name: COMPONENT\PART/ELEMENT. To
find this table by typing in the breadcrumb, you would substitute
\/ for the backslash and
\\ for
the forward slash. Therefore, you would type
COMPONENT\/PART\\ELEMENT in the breadcrumb to find this
table.
You can sort the data within the columns by clicking on the column headers. Click the
profiling status for more information. For more information about the
Profile
Status dialog, see
Profile Data.
Note
The column headers are dependent on the connection type; not all columns
may be shown.
View Metadata
To view metadata, select an object, and then click .
The information at the top of the Metadata dialog may change based on the connection type and
whether the connection is profiled. The Columns section shows
a list of the column names and the data type of each column. For supported types,
you can also see the length in parentheses (for character data types) or the
precision and scale (for numeric types). The available data is dependent on the data
type. For example, you wouldn't see precision and scale on a column that has a
character data type assigned.
To filter the columns, click in the filter and begin typing the column name.
You can view metadata on any file type, but the metadata may be limited. Supported file types
yield more metadata.
Export Metadata
To export metadata, the following roles must be assigned to the user logged into the Data Hub
Cockpit.
- BDH_Metadata_Administrator
- BDH_Discovery_Review or BDH_Discovery_Profile
When policy management is enabled, you must have WRITE permission on the
connection you are using.
To export metadata, select an object, and then click . Choose a folder where you want the data stored, and then click
Move.
Note
You can choose a different location to store
each object’s metadata. However, once you have chosen the location to export an
object's metadata, then that is where that object's metadata will always be
exported. If you export that object's metadata to one location, and then try to
export the same data to a different location, the file will not appear in the
second location; it will be updated in the initial location.
To view the exported file, click
and choose
Metadata Catalog. Browse to the
location where you exported the metadata file and then click
arrow icon to view the output. If the name of the exported object is more than
255 characters, the name is truncated.
Note
The export metadata functionality is
only supported for the following objects: CSV files, ORC files, Parquet files,
HANA tables, HANA views, and VORA Catalog tables. The export metadata
functionality is not supported for partitioned files.
Preview Data
To preview data, select an object, and then click Preview. The first
100 rows of the object are shown.
Previewing is only supported for CSV, PARQUET, and ORC files in HDFS, S3, and several cloud
connections. Previewing is available for tables in SAP Vora Catalog and tables and
views in the SAP HANA SQL connections.
If the Preview or Fact Sheet button is not
enabled, check the Policy Management settings so that you have PREVIEW and READ
permissions.
Metadata 
View Metadata
.