How to Secure Data Access in SAP HANA Calculation Views

SAP HANA calculation views are powerful tools to model complex business scenarios and perform advanced data analysis. They allow you to combine data from multiple sources, apply various calculations and transformations, and define the output structure and semantics of your data.

However, not all users or applications should have access to all the data in your calculation views. You may want to restrict or limit the data access based on certain criteria, such as user roles, user attributes, or business rules.

In this blog post, we will show you how to secure data access in SAP HANA calculation views using privileges and authorization. We will also explain how to use analytical privileges to apply dynamic filters on your calculation views.

What are Privileges and Authorization in SAP HANA?

Privileges and authorization are concepts that help you control who can access what data in SAP HANA. Privileges are permissions that grant users or roles the ability to perform certain actions on certain objects. Authorization is the process of checking whether a user or role has the required privileges to perform a requested action on a requested object.

There are different types of privileges in SAP HANA, such as system privileges, object privileges, package privileges, analytic privileges, and application privileges. For more information about these types of privileges, see Privileges in the SAP HANA Security Guide for SAP HANA Platform.

In this blog post, we will focus on object privileges and analytic privileges, as they are relevant for securing data access in calculation views.

How to Use Object Privileges for Calculation Views?

Object privileges are permissions that grant users or roles the ability to perform certain actions on certain database objects, such as tables, views, procedures, or functions. For example, SELECT privilege allows users or roles to read data from a table or a view.

To use object privileges for calculation views, you need to follow these steps:

1. Launch SAP HANA Studio and open the security node.
2. In the navigation pane, select a user or a role that you want to grant or revoke privileges to or from.
3. In the context menu of the user or role, select Edit.
4. In the Edit User or Edit Role dialog box, select the Object Privileges tab.
5. In the Object Privileges tab, select Add Object Privilege.
6. In the Add Object Privilege dialog box, select a schema where your calculation view is located.
7. Select your calculation view from the list of objects in the schema.
8. Select one or more privileges that you want to grant or revoke for your calculation view. For example, SELECT privilege allows users or roles to read data from your calculation view.
9. Choose OK.
10. Save and activate your changes.

How to Use Analytic Privileges for Calculation Views?

Analytic privileges are permissions that grant users or roles the ability to access only a subset of data in calculation views based on certain filter conditions. For example, an analytic privilege can restrict users or roles to see only sales data for a specific region or product category.

To use analytic privileges for calculation views, you need to follow these steps:

1. Launch SAP HANA Studio and open the content node.
2. In the navigation pane, select a package where you want to create the new analytic privilege.
3. In the context menu of the package, select New Analytic Privilege.
4. Provide name and description for your analytic privilege.
5. Choose Finish. The modeler launches a new analytic privilege editor with an empty filter expression node.
6. Drag and drop your calculation view from the tool palette to the scenario area.
7. Connect your calculation view to the filter expression node.
8. Select the filter expression node. In the Details pane, select Add Filter Expression.
9. In the Add Filter Expression dialog box, select one or more attributes from your calculation view that you want to use as filter criteria for your analytic privilege.
10. For each attribute, select an operator and enter a value or an expression for your filter condition.
11. Choose OK.
12. Save and activate your analytic privilege.
13. Launch SAP HANA Studio and open the security node.
14. In the navigation pane, select a user or a role that you want to grant or revoke your analytic privilege to or from.
15. In the context menu of the user or role, select Edit.
16. In the Edit User or Edit Role dialog box, select the Analytic Privileges tab.
17. In the Analytic Privileges tab, select Add Analytic Privilege.
18. In the Add Analytic Privilege dialog box, select your analytic privilege from the list of available analytic privileges in your system.
19. Choose OK.
20. Save and activate your changes.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we have learned how to secure data access in SAP HANA calculation views using privileges and authorization. We have also explained how to use analytic privileges to apply dynamic filters on your calculation views.

We hope this post has helped you understand how to use these features of SAP HANA to protect your data and comply with your business rules.

If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below.

Disclaimer: This content is generated by AI.