SAP HANA - MDX Provider

MDX Provider is used to connect MS Excel to SAP HANA database system. It provides driver to connect HANA system to Excel and is further, used for data modelling. You can use Microsoft Office Excel 2010/2013 for connectivity with HANA for both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows.

SAP HANA supports both query languages − SQL and MDX. Both languages can be used: JDBC and ODBC for SQL and ODBO is used for MDX processing. Excel Pivot tables use MDX as query language to read data from SAP HANA system. MDX is defined as part of ODBO (OLE DB for OLAP) specification from Microsoft and is used for data selections, calculations and layout. MDX supports multidimensional data model and support reporting and Analysis requirement.

MDX provider enables the consumption of Information views defined in HANA studio by SAP and non-SAP reporting tools. Existing physical tables and schemas presents the data foundation for Information models.

Once you choose SAP HANA MDX provider from the list of data source you want to connect, pass HANA system details like host name, instance number, user name and password.

Once the connection is successful, you can choose Package name → HANA Modeling views to generate Pivot tables.

MDX is tightly integrated into HANA database. Connection and Session management of HANA database handles statements that are executed by HANA. When these statements are executed, they are parsed by MDX interface and a calculation model is generated for each MDX statement. This calculation model creates an execution plan that generates standard results for MDX. These results are directly consumed by OLAP clients.

To make MDX connection to HANA database, HANA client tools are required. You can download this client tool from SAP market place. Once installation of HANA client is done, you will see the option of SAP HANA MDX provider in the list of data source in MS Excel.