With Power BI Desktop, you can now access SAP HANA databases. To use SAP HANA, the SAP HANA ODBC driver must be installed on the local client computer in order for the Power BI Desktop SAP HANA data connection to work properly. You can download the SAP HANA ODBC driver from the SAP Software Download Center. From there, search for the SAP HANA CLIENT for Windows computers. Since the SAP Software Download Center changes its structure frequently, more specific guidance for navigating that site is not available.
To connect to a SAP HANA database, select Get Data > Database > SAP HANA Database as shown in the following image:
When connecting to a SAP HANA database, specify the server name and the port in the format server:port – the following image shows an example with a server named ServerXYZ and port 30015.
In this release SAP HANA in DirectQuery mode is supported in Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service, and you can publish and upload reports that use SAP HANA in DirectQuery mode to the Power BI service. You can also publish and upload reports to the Power BI Service when not using SAP HANA in DirectQuery mode.
Supported features for SAP HANA
This release has many capabilities for SAP HANA, as shown in the following list:
The Power BI connector for SAP HANA uses the SAP ODBC driver, to provide the best user experience
SAP HANA supports both DirectQuery and Import options
Power BI supports HANA information models (such as Analytic and Calc views) and has optimized navigation
With SAP HANA, you can also use the direct SQL feature to connect to Row and Column Tables
Includes Optimized Navigation for HANA Models
Power BI supports SAP HANA Variables and Input parameters
Installing the SAP HANA ODBC driver
Limitations of SAP HANA
There are also a few limitations to using SAP HANA, shown below:
NVARCHAR strings are truncated to maximum length of 4000 Unicode characters
SMALLDECIMAL is not supported
VARBINARY is not supported
Valid Dates are between 1899/12/30 and 9999/12/31
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