S4 Explorer: Navigate S/4HANA Business Content with Ease

If you ever customized or developed S/4HANA applications, you must've noticed that identifying specific business content can take a lot of time and effort. We certainly experienced it, so we developed a solution that enhances the efficiency and productivity of S/4 HANA development, enabling us to deliver better value to our customers.

SAP S/4HANA is not just another ERP software. With real-time insights and enhanced decision-making capabilities, it revolutionizes how businesses operate in the digital age. From a development perspective, S/4 HANA's layered architecture is a major strength, as it maintains a clear separation of concerns.

However, the robust structure and the wealth of business content pose a challenge to find out where and how specific functionalities are implemented. It can take a surprisingly long time and considerable effort to identify the components you need and to understand how they are related.

The Start of S4 Explorer for S/4HANA

The Just-BI team within EPAM Systems has designed and implemented a S/4HANA Embedded Analytics solution for a customer. After the requirements gathering phase, the team did the gap analysis to estimate customization and development efforts to fulfill the remaining requirements. To achieve this, it was necessary to identify and analyze the existing S/4HANA business content.

This task turned out to be surprisingly hard and time-consuming when using only standard SAP tools. The team spent a lot of time searching for components that best fit their requirements. The layered architecture of the S/4HANA virtual data model makes any customization or custom development difficult. It is not always clear which parts should be customized or extended.

This inspired Just-BI to develop a solution to overcome this challenge. The result is S4 Explorer which has since helped numerous teams in their efforts to analyze S/4HANA CDS views , find apps and analyze their dependencies on the service layer and the virtual data model.

S4 Explorer is an S/4HANA Fiori app for investigating and analyzing S/4HANA business content. With the help of S4 Explorer, IT professionals can quickly identify and learn about existing S/4HANA objects. Table functions, OData Services, and S/4HANA CDS views can all be explored with S4 Explorer. It helps you analyze how they are built and get insight into the relationships among the different objects. S4 Explorer also lets you share and communicate your analyses, saving time and effort when designing, planning, and developing changes.

How S/4HANA and S4 Explorer Work Together

The ABAP RESTFul Application Programming Model comprises guidelines and technologies for building S/4HANA applications and has the following layers:

• Base tables for data storage

• Virtual Data Model (VDM), which are semantic data models consisting of database views stacked on top of base tables

• Core Data Services (CDS) and annotation frameworks, which are programming languages to define the VDM and attach application-specific metadata to support low-code application development

• RESTFul OData web services which expose the VDM to applications

• Fiori Apps which supply end-user interfaces to work with business data and processes

The layering forms a solid foundation by ensuring the separation of concerns. Unfortunately, as it was already mentioned, it also results in complexity. To find the origin of a field in the app, it is necessary to dig down the stack, through the services and VDM layers to the base table columns. Similarly, assessing the impact of VDM changes requires going up the stack to find services and apps that depend upon it.

Standard SAP tools, such as Eclipse ABAP Perspective or the View Browser Fiori app either don't have the necessary features or provide them at the cost of extensive navigation, often requiring you to sift through many lines of CDS source code. This makes the analysis extremely time-consuming which hampers productivity.

S4 Explorer features like Smart Search, Visual Exploration, and Column Data Lineage overcomes this challenge. S4 Explorer makes the S/4HANA journey more efficient and productive by providing architects, developers, and administrators insight into the relationships between Fiori Apps, OData Services, CDS Objects, and base tables.

Analyses that take hours or days with SAP standard tooling can be done in mere minutes with S4 Explorer. Moreover, results are not only timely but also exceptionally accurate and complete. S4 Explorer’s sharing and collaboration features facilitate efficient communication within teams. This makes S4 Explorer an invaluable tool for impact assessments, change design, and development planning.

S4 Explorer Main Features

Let's take a look at some of S4 Explorer's key features that make it so powerful.

1. Smart Search

S4 Explorer's Smart Search empowers you to swiftly locate your desired S/4HANA content. You can search for CDS Objects, OData Services and Apps & Tiles.

With S4 Explorer, you have the flexibility to select from a diverse array of search criteria, providing precise control over your search for business content. You can search by name, type, package, or application component, whichever way you prefer. Besides the basic mode of searching which solves many use cases, there is also an advanced search feature that allows to further define the search.

2. Visual Exploration

Rather than sifting through CDS code or XML, S4 Explorer presents CDS objects and OData services in user-friendly diagrams. These diagrams not only facilitate easy navigation to associated elements but also enable a visual exploration of their interconnections. This feature offers a swift understanding of the structure and arrangement, and how they relate to functionality.

S4 Explorer provides an easy-to-understand diagram tailored to each unique use case:

• CDS Structure Diagrams provide insight into the composition of CDS views.

• OData Diagrams offer an overview of the structure of the OData services.

• Dependency Diagrams help understand the relationships between and across CDS objects.

• Column Lineage Diagrams enable choosing columns and then visualizing the data flow across CDS objects on the column level.

3. Data Preview

In addition to its detailed and visually engaging metadata, S4 Explorer also allows you to inquire about and preview data. This feature enables you to easily verify if the objects you're evaluating contain the information your users need.

4. Export, Share, Collaborate

S4 Explorer provides extensive export and sharing capabilities. You can easily:

• Download tabular views in Excel format

• Download the source code in plain text

• Export diagrams in HTML or SVG formats

This flexibility allows for seamless integration into documentation portals or utilization in various office documents.

Who Can Benefit from S4 Explorer?

S4 Explorer is the go-to tool for IT professionals engaged with S/4HANA, simplifying their tasks and boosting productivity.

Fiori App Developers

For a Fiori App developer, S4 Explorer proves invaluable in swiftly identifying and understanding essential OData services for app development. It simplifies the differentiation between principal and auxiliary entities, as well as their relationships. Additionally, when inspecting the underlying CDS objects used in the OData service, the diagram provides a seamless transition with just one click.

Consultants

Those involved in the design or customization of Embedded Analytics will find value in the ability to locate Cubes and Dimensions and observe their interconnections. It also simplifies tracking the origins and methods of metric calculations.

Architects

In the role of an architect, one can gain valuable insights from S4 Explorer regarding the S/4HANA virtual data model.

System Admins & Design Authorities

For system administrators, the appeal of S4 Explorer lies in the ability to swiftly audit object authors and changes, assess their authorization status, and understand their organization within packages.

Use Case: How to Clarify the Definition of the "Net Value" Field

To illustrate how the S4 Explorer might assist you, let’s assume a salesclerk uses the “Manage Sales Quotations” Fiori app and asks your S/4HANA team to clarify the definition of the “Net Value” field (see Figure 3).

Without S4 Explorer, you’d need to inspect the app to find out what OData Service it uses. Based on the names of the OData entity sets, you might guess on what CDS object the OData service was built. Then you’d need to search the CDS object in the Eclipse/ABAP Perspective and inspect its CDS source code to identify which column definitions correspond to the screen fields. You’ll likely need several iterations to inspect the CDS code of the underlying stack of CDS objects until eventually arriving at the base table(s). It could take an expert several hours.

With S4 Explorer, the same analysis takes just a few minutes:

1. Use Smart Search to find the app in the Apps and Tiles catalog and open the App object page.

2. Click the app’s Service URL link to open its OData service page.

3. Visually explore the OData Diagram to identify the key entity set and its properties.

4. Drill down from the key entity set into the underlying CDS object’s detail page.

5. Use Column Lineage to identify the field’s origin.

You can see S4 Explorer in action in this video.

Summing Up

S4 Explorer is an invaluable tool for IT professionals working with S/4HANA. It simplifies the often complex task of identifying and analyzing business content and boosts productivity and efficiency. With user-friendly diagrams, powerful search features, and seamless integration with various aspects of S/4HANA, S4 Explorer empowers users to navigate the system effortlessly. It's a transformative tool that unlocks the full potential of S/4HANA, making it essential for architects, developers, consultants, and system administrators, as well as anyone seeking a more efficient S/4HANA experience.