After provisioning the components for your SAP BDC solution, the next step is to create a formation.
An SAP BDC formation is a logical grouping of SAP components that enables automated integration between them. Formations act as structured configurations that define how data SAP products and applications are orchestrated across the landscape, simplifying connectivity and providing a unified view of all systems.
You can create formations for different groups of users or for different regions. You can create a separate formation for a development, quality and production environment.
A formation always includes SAP BDC Cockpit. You do not have to add this to a formation.
You must choose other SAP BDC components such as SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, and SAP Databricks to include in your formation.
Formations must include all the source systems that provide data, such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors.
Some components can be reused across different formations. For example, the same S/4HANA the source could be included in all regional formations.
Formations are managed and created using the SAP for Me portal.
Preliminary Steps
To include an SAP S/4HANA Cloud system in your formation, you must enable secure communication. Therefore, you need to generate a Personal Security Environment (PSE) for a specific system user and generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) within that system.
For these steps, use the Trust Manager (STRUST) transaction in your SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.
For detailed instructions on certificate creation, refer to Administering SAP Business Data Cloud.
Note
Unless you are using SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, you must also configure the SAP Cloud Connector to link your SAP S/4HANA system to SAP BDC.
Creating the Formation
Once you have gathered the required information and certificates, log in to SAP for Me to create the SAP BDC formation.
After creating the formation, access the SAP BDC Cockpit to verify your system landscape. From the SAP BDC Cockpit you should be able to directly connect to all components.
Because you cannot connect directly to your SAP S/4HANA system from the SAP BDC Cockpit, you can verify the connection by checking that the intelligent applications and data packages from those source systems are listed under the Available tab in the SAP BDC Cockpit.