When defining a CDS view, what does using an association imply?

Using an association in a Core Data Services (CDS) view indeed implies that a direct link to another view is being established. This mechanism enables the modeling of relationships between different data sources in a way that enhances the understanding of the data structure and promotes efficient data retrieval. An association establishes a connection that allows for navigating from one entity to another, which is crucial for ensuring that data relationships are maintained and can be easily accessed in queries.

For example, if you have a CDS view representing a Sales Order and another representing Customers, defining an association between these two views enables you to leverage the relationship in your queries, allowing you to easily retrieve customer information related to those sales orders without manually joining tables in your SQL queries. This emphasizes the importance of associations in creating clear and maintainable data models within the SAP environment.

The other choices address different aspects of data handling that do not accurately reflect the purpose of associations in CDS views, such as summarizing data, filtering based on criteria, or merging multiple tables, which do not capture the essence of relationships that associations specifically aim to represent.