Just like intelligent applications, data products are discovered using the SAP BDC catalog.
In the catalog you will see the data products listed from all source applications. If you are running multiple formations then you can implement a central catalog that includes all data products across all formations. Think of this as a 'catalog of catalogs'.
Note
Data products are defined and owned by the source application, for example SAP S/4HANA. It is the responsibility of the source application to fulfill the technical requirements of a data product.
For example a data product must provide not only the business data, but also the meta data in the correct format. The data products must be described using the correct file format (JSON) for the CSN document. The data products must be self-describing using the ORD protocol for open discoverability. A data product is defined in the source system using a Data Product Definition File. It is the responsibility of the source system to provide this file.
If a data product meets these requirements you can discover it using the SAP BDC Cockpit.
SAP BDC Cockpit
The SAP BDC Cockpit provides search features so that you can quickly narrow down the list of data products and find the one you are looking for. You can search by many criteria including source system and activation status.
Once you find a data product that you are interested in, you can click on it to learn more about it including which fields are provided and the Data Package it belongs to.
Watch this video to learn how to discover data products using the SAP BDC Cockpit.
SAP Business Accelerator Hub
We learned that data products are discovered using the SAP BDC Cockpit. However, not all data products will be displayed in the SAP BDC Cockpit. Only the data products that relate to the SAP source systems included in your formation will be displayed. You also need to have purchased the commercial entitlements to the Intelligent Package that contains the data products for the data products to be displayed.
Let's look at a couple of scenarios:
You are running SAP SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA. You did not include SAP S/4HANA in your SAP BDC formation. You would like to know if a data product exists that provides the latest inventory document data so that it can be used in a machine learning project. SAP S/4HANA does provide such a data product, but If you search using the SAP BDC Cockpit in your landscape you will not find it.
You are running SAP SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA. SAP S/4HANA is included in your SAP BDC formation but you did not purchase the commercial entitlement to the Intelligent Package that provides the data product for inventory balances. If you search for the data product for inventory document data, using the SAP BDC Cockpit in your landscape, you will not find it.
In these cases you use the SAP Business Accelerator Hub to discover data products that do not appear in your SAP BDC Cockpit.
The Business Accelerator Hub is a public portal managed by SAP that provides information about a variety of development artifacts including APIs, adapters, agents and SAP BDC data products.
The Business Accelerator Hub provides a detailed description of the data product. You can also access the CSN document to study the meta data of the data product and to learn which source fields are provided.