Jan van Ansem
Senior SAP BI Consultant, Bluefin Solutions
SAP BusinessObjects Data Services - now is the time.
30 Jan 2012
Business Intelligence (BI), Business Objects, Enterprise Architecture, HANA, Infrastructure, In-Memory, Consumer Business, Data Quality
In recent years SAP has released exiting new technologies for a wide variety of business scenarios. There is the much talked about In-Memory technology (SAP HANA) which enables real time SAP BI reporting. There is a complete set of products for data quality management and master data management. SAP has unlocked a great potential by enabling the use of social media comments in SAP BI reporting. What all these products have in common is that to a certain extend they are build on, or rely on, the application SAP BusinessObjects Data Services. Surprisingly enough, there seems to be quite a slow uptake on this product amongst organisations running SAP.
I understand not everyone gets excited about a piece of 'middleware' - an application which is not visible to end users. At the same time, I would expect people who are interested in infrastructure and system architecture to be interested Data Services. There are two good reasons why Data Services is relevant:
- Data Services is an easy to use ETL tool, and can probably replace one or several tools in use in your SAP landscape. It is now part of SAP's best practise architecture for Data Warehousing.
- Data Services is a prerequisite for several new SAP technologies - and my expectation is that this will be more and more so.
My recommendation would be to get the infrastructure in order while you can. Implement Data Services in your current landscape so you are prepared when projects require it. In the meanwhile you might save a few bob as you might be able to phase out existing ETL tools. Data Services is the new standard and it is here to stay.
Comments
Krishna 08 May 2012
Hey Jan,
One of the main reasons to use BW ETL is use the intelligence already available in the form of Business Content delivered by SAP and extending that based on customer needs either by copying or enhancing it.
How do we leverage that functionality when using BODS when source of data is ECC (SAP).
Krishna.
Handoko 14 Mar 2012
Hi Josh,
Thanks for replying.
I hope you don't mind answering again my two questions below. Greatly appreciate it.
1. In the scenario that the data source for BW is only from SAP system, what advanced transformation that DS can do but BW can't do it ? Any example will help my understanding a lot.
2. Similar to question no.1, in the scenario that the data source for BW is from SAP system and from other systems such as Cognos or flat file, what makes DS a better ETL tool compare to BW ?
Thank you..
Regards,
Handoko
Joshua Fletcher 14 Mar 2012
Hi Handoko, my understanding is that if you are only using SAP as a data source for BW and have no advanced transformation/DQ requirements, then easiest option is to use BW ETL.
If you do have external data sources, and/or need to do advanced transforms or data cleansing, then Data Services might suit you better.
FC - yes you can use DS to load master data into ECC.
Cheers,
Josh
Handoko 10 Mar 2012
Hi Jan and Josh,
BODS is becoming more and more famous nowadays. Even HANA is using BODS to load data into it.
For a customer that is using BW or plan to use BW, any idea on why BODS can probably be better for ETL compared to BW ETL ? Or, can I simply use BW ETL tool ?
Please share. Many thanks.
Regards,
Handoko
FC 02 Mar 2012
Can you use HANA to load SAP Master Data in ECC-6 ?
Josh Fletcher 31 Jan 2012
Hi Jan,
I couldn't agree more. I've been using Data Services for several years now and still enjoy how easy and powerful it is to use.
Data Services can now be used for loading HANA, Sybase IQ, BW and any non-SAP data warehouse. It can also be used for data migrations when implementing SAP, and as a real-time service bus. Text Analytics has also been built in for the latest release.
Hopefully we see a lot more customers and consultants picking up Data Services in 2012!
Kind regards,
Josh