SAP CDS View: Find the Right View, Data Lineage and Field Catalogue

Have you ever felt that finding the right SAP CDS View is like searching for a needle in a haystack?

I certainly did, so I decided to do something about it and built a program that can search and discover the CDS Views you are looking for.

Part 1: Find the right CDS View

The program reduces manual time-consuming work and avoids creating your own CDS View because you could not find what SAP had already built.

The program also provides an overview of available CDS Views by different categories. You can open each CDS View syntax and navigate directly to related CDS Views referenced in the code. This makes it easier to understand the underlying structure.

Part 1 was first shared on LinkedIn in June 2026, with a demo of how to find the CDS Views that select data from the Sales Order table VBAP.

Part 2: Data Lineage and Field Catalogue

Once you have found the right CDS View, two questions always follow: where does each field actually come from, and which fields are actually available?

Data Lineage

Answering the first question usually means opening view after view, field by field, until you finally reach the table or the rule behind it. I’ve done that more times than I’d like to admit, so I extended the CDS View Program to do it for me:

• Each field traced back to its source SAP table and field, or the nearest rule syntax
• Shows whether a field is a straight 1:1 mapping or built by a rule, and whether it is a key field at source
• One click shows the full trace through every underlying CDS View, with the source line highlighted

Field Catalogue

Answering the second question means opening view by view and collecting the PascalCase field names into one unique list. Once the Data Lineage was in place, it was a small step to let the program build Field Catalogue List automatically:

• Select a set of CDS Views, e.g. all Sales views, and get one list of their fields
• Each field with meta data like PascalCase name, description, data element, domain, data type, length, decimals and conversion routine

This helps when you need to reconcile numbers with the business, explain a KPI to an auditor, build a data dictionary, or map S/4HANA data into Datasphere and know what you’re really extracting.

See the demo

Want to hear more? Write to Jens Nissen on LinkedIn or at contacts@effectuate.dk.