Day: December 25, 2017

ICYMI: Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has appealed a state appellate court decision holding that an executive order seeking to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals from discrimination by state agencies and contractors was unconstitutional. https://goo.gl/btHkm9 #GlobalHR #HRTech

Early next year, Esri will release a version of the Enterprise Geodatabase that supports SAP HANA.  You’ll need ArcGIS Pro 2.1 and ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6.  You will also need HANA 2.0 SP2 or greater. If you’re interested in signing up for the early adopter program, please visit this website.

I’ve been putting ArcGIS Pro 2.1 and ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6 through its paces for the last 2 or 3 weeks and am happy to say that I was able to create an Enterprise Geodatabase in HANA and load some of the utility model sample datasets.  As you’d expect with any early release, there are a few bumps, but with the help of the early adopter forums and a few helpful tips, I was able to easily navigate them.

In this blog, I’ll look at what it takes to create an enterprise geodatabase for HANA, enable it and copy some feature classes from another enterprise geodatabase into the HANA one.  I’ll discuss the creation and loading of utility models in another post.

As many of you know, the ArcGIS platform has been able to access tables in HANA using query layers since ArcGIS Server and Desktop – 10.3 and Pro 1.2 was released in 2014.  This enabled spatial data in HANA to be consumed and updated by the ArcGIS platform.  As of ArcGIS Server 10.3.1, feature services against HANA were supported.  This is commonly known as an agile spatial datamart or “sidecar” scenario.  There are other blogs that describe the possibilities created by query layer support – here (page is in Dutch, but Google Translate handles the translation to English easily), here and here.  Have other questions on ArcGIS/HANA integration? See this blog.

The second scenario is creating an enterprise geodatabase in HANA.  Esri is referring to this scenario as Esri ArcGIS on HANA. This site explains both of these scenarios.

The first release of the enterprise geodatabase for HANA will support the following:

* subtypes/domains
* relationship classes
* attachments
* editor tracking
* non-versioned archiving
* offline editing with sync capabilities
* new service based long transaction model for editing
* utility network

Other networks (including the current utility network) won’t be supported in the first release.  See this link and this link for more information on the new enterprise geodatabase for HANA.

Assuming you have installed or have access to ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6 and Pro 2.1, the steps for creating an enterprise geodatabase are:

* Install and configure the SAP HANA 64 bit ODBC drivers (part of the SAP HANA Client) on both the Enterprise and Pro instances.  See this blog for more details.  Use the same connection name on the Enterprise instance.  Record the name of your ODBC connection for later (step 6)
* Using the HANA Cockpit or HANA Studio, create an SDE user in your HANA instance.  The SDE user will need CATALOG READ permissions.  If you don’t have USER ADMIN privs, get the HANA DBA to create the SDE user for you.
* Test your ODBC connection using the SDE user from both the Pro and Enterprise instances
* Start ArcGIS Pro and create a new project

* Right click the Databases group in the Catalog pane on the right and select New Database Connection

* The following dialog will appear.  First, select SAP HANA as the Database Platform.  Then use the ODBC connection name you recorded earlier (when you later register the enterprise geodatabase with ArcGIS Enterprise, you’ll use the same ODBC data source name).  Specify the password for the SDE user.
* If you’ve correctly done the proceeding steps, you should now have a connection to the SDE database in HANA.  In HANA, each user has its own schema.
* Now, you’ve reached the cool part – actually enabling a HANA database to be an enterprise geodatabase.  Note that the enterprise geodatabase must be owned by the SDE user.  You’ll need a keycode file from your Enterprise instance that authorizes you to enable HANA as an enterprise geodatabase.  It is typically located as shown below on your Enterprise instance C:Program Files (x86)ESRILicense10.6sysgen​

* Copy the keycode file over to your Pro instance.  You’ll provide the keycode file path in the Authorization File field and the specify the database connection you created in Step 7 above.  Click run and in about 5 seconds, you’ve successfully enabled a HANA enterprise geodatabase.

* Now, I’ll copy some feature classes from another enterprise geodatabase using the Import geoprocessing tool.  You’ll first need to create a database connection to that database like what was done in Steps 5 and 6.  You’ll specify the database connection to the other enterprise geodatabase, the feature class(es) you want to import and the target (the HANA enterprise geodatabase or a dataset inside it).  Click Run and in a few minutes, you’ve easily copied feature classes into your new HANA enterprise geodatabase.   Of course, the more feature classes you copy, the longer the Import will take…

So that’s it… assuming you’ve installed ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6 and Pro 2.1 and installed the ODBC 64 bit drivers, the rest of the steps I did above took about 10 minutes.  Once you’ve enabled the geodatabase (Step 9), you can easily copy additional feature classes or datasets (a dataset is simply a group of feature classes – you can create one with the Create Dataset geoprocessing tool in less than a minute.  Learn more here).

I went on to create and share a webmap to ArcGIS Enterprise.  I navigated to Portal and simply right clicked and selected Add and Open as shown here:

…and the following map was created in ArcGIS Pro.

The above map uses map services served up by the ArcGIS Enterprise instance – which is obtaining the geometries from the HANA enterprise geodatabase.  Just to make sure, I logged into the ArcGIS Server Manager on the ArcGIS Enterprise instance and looked at the feature layer used by the above map:

From here, there’s a lot you can do – you can author maps and utilize the advanced ArcGIS enterprise geodatabase features – and do all of that against an enterprise geodatabase in HANA…starting early next year.  All-in-all, a great reason for 2018 to hurry up and arrive! http://bit.ly/2DbaEvJ #SAP #SAPCloud #AI

Integrating data and analytics into a process that promotes compliance and positive patient outcomes

Life science companies are often organized into discrete operational and business functions. Complex infrastructure and disparate reporting systems and platforms encourage a siloed approach to safety mitigation and compliance assurance, inspection, and audit.

Continuous readiness models offer alternative strategies for optimizing compliance effectiveness and efficiency across the enterprise. They help life sciences companies to uncover gaps and adopt proactive strategies that reduce costs and, ultimately, improve patient outcomes.

Migrating to one of these models requires companies to consolidate compliance management functions while also extending necessary program changes to all business and clinical operations. These actions are necessary to create visibility across the entire risk landscape. Until recently, it was easy for status-quo proponents to contend that continuous readiness would be too disruptive and expensive. But those arguments have become less compelling with the advent of new cloud-based platforms.

“Continuous readiness models have major benefits,” says George Pushchinsky, product owner for the ConvergeHEALTH Safety Life Sciences practice at Deloitte. “They help life sciences companies avoid noncompliance and improve operational efficiency while allowing resources to be reallocated to the most value-added tasks.”

Using the cloud allows companies to maintain budgetary discipline while establishing an enterprise-wide view of compliance risk. Affordability provides a competitive advantage for organizations that want to incorporate artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics, and other advanced technologies into their continuous readiness strategy.

Click here to watch episode 4 of this 4-part series. http://bit.ly/2DctFhA #SAP #SAPCloud #AI