SAP Analytics Cloud: Overview of Data Models

SAP Analytics Cloud combines Business Intelligence, augmented, predictive and enterprise planning capabilities in a single product which gives the capability to make fast, confident decisions. To fulfil this requirement SAP Analytics cloud requires information in the form of Models.

When we talk about data analysis, the word “Model” can never be avoided. The term “Model” is widely used in data warehouses and data analysis topics and was normally used to describe a structured way of representing/organizing large amounts of business data.

As a business data analysis platform in SAP Business Suite, SAP Analytics Cloud provides rich and flexible data modeling functions based on the concept of “model”, helping enterprises easily complete data analysis and gain insights.

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What is Model in SAC?

In SAP Analytics Cloud, Model acts as the basis for all business data output in an organization. A model in SAP Analytics Cloud is a data structure that defines how data is organized, stored, and utilized within the platform. It serves as a foundation for creating reports, visualizations, and analyses by providing a way to connect to data sources and define how data should be interpreted and used. Models enable users to perform data analysis, planning, and forecasting in a coherent and structured manner. SAP Analytics Cloud models are categorized in following two types:

i) Analytical Model
ii) Planning Model

Analytical Model:

Analytical Model in SAP Analytics Cloud is designed to facilitate the analysis and reporting of data. It provides the foundational structure for building interactive dashboards, reports, and visualizations by organizing and managing data in a way that supports insightful analysis. By leveraging dimensions, measures, hierarchies, and calculated metrics, Analytical Models help organizations transform raw data into actionable insights and strategic business intelligence.

Analytic models are read-only models used strictly for data reporting and analysis.

Planning Model:

Planning Model in SAP Analytics Cloud is a specialized type of model designed for planning, budgeting, forecasting, and financial simulations. It is used to manage and analyze future-oriented data and to support collaborative planning processes. Unlike Analytical Models, which focus primarily on historical data analysis and reporting, Planning Models facilitate the creation and management of plans and forecasts.

Planning models require Version and Date dimensions to designate what the written data is, and for what time frame.

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Both planning and Analytical models can be created as either Account-based or Measure-based models.

Account-based Models:

Account-based models have a single measure associated with multiple accounts. In an account-based model, model values are stored in a single default measure, and this is because SAP Analytics Cloud was born out of SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation), and the earliest business scenario was budget planning. In the BPC data model, the Account dimension is used to define each item in the charts of accounts, which is a very important financial concept. Therefore, in order to facilitate the integration with other SAP components such as BPC, SAP Analytics Cloud also uses the concept of “account dimension” based on the star model.

Here, data is broken down by Account (Discounts, Gross Sales, Quantity, and Cost of Sales), which is used to describe the values in the measure column. Those values represent transaction data associated with other dimensions

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Measure based Model (New Model):

The measure-based model / New model type exposes measures as single entity and allows us to add and configure multiple measures with aggregation and units to fit to data. It provides plenty of flexibility; We can match the structure of an account-based model by using measures and an account dimension, or you can remove the account dimension when it is not required for your use case.

Measure-based models is further categorized in,

• Model with measures and no account dimension
• Model with measures and an account dimension

SAP Analytics cloud model supports both on-premises and cloud data sources via either live or import data connectivity.

Live Data Connectivity:

Data models in SAP Analytics Cloud can be created with On-premises or import sources through live connection. We can not perform any kind of transformation while using live connection. All the calculations have been performed in source and Data access for the model is controlled by the source system security, not SAP Analytics Cloud security.

Sources supported live data model,

Import Data Connectivity:

In acquired data connection, the data is imported (copied) to SAP Analytics Cloud from the source system. This replication allows the imported data to be transformed/manipulated and/or additional calculations created. Changes made to the data in source system do not affect imported data so, it is necessary to schedule load at regular interval to have an up-to-date data from source. Data access for the model is controlled by SAC cloud security.

In nutshell each of these models serves distinct functions but ultimately contributes to a unified goal: transforming data into actionable insights. By selecting the appropriate SAP analytics model, organizations can tailor their approach to meet specific analytical needs, driving better business outcomes and maintaining a competitive edge in an increasingly data-driven world.

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