Generating Custom Data Products

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to create a custom data product using the Data Sharing Cockpit of SAP Datasphere

Custom Data Products

Data Sharing Cockpit

SAP provides data products for SAP source applications. In addition, customers can create their own data products.

There are many scenarios where you might want to create a custom data product including:

  • Add additional tables to an SAP-delivered data product
  • Add additional calculated columns
  • Combine historical data originating from SAP BW with live SAP data to create a unified data product

You create a custom data product using the Data Sharing Cockpit in Datasphere.

The Data Sharing Cockpit

The Data Sharing Cockpit is a component of Datasphere that was originally developed so that customers and partners could publish and share their Datasphere artifacts using a marketplace to reach external and internal customers. The Data Sharing Cockpit has been extended to include the definition and publishing of custom data products within SAP BDC.

Creating a Data Provider Profile

Before you can create a custom data product you first need a data provider profile.

A data provider profile is a digital business card that consumers use to learn about the provider organization and the custom data products they provide. The data provider profile includes contact information which might be needed, for example, to request activation keys for licenses or ask data product-related questions. Some of the features of the Data Sharing Cockpit are not used by SAP BDC, for example the pricing information, and so these parameters are either skipped or have default values that cannot be changed.

A data provider profile and example parameters

To create a data provider profile, proceed as follows:

  1. From the Data Sharing Cockpit go to the My Data Provider Profile app and click Create Data Provider Profile to open the data provider page.

  2. Complete your data provider profile as described in: Maintaining your Data Provider Profile.

    Enter the mandatory technical name for your data provider profile.

  3. Select the visibility option Formations. Your custom data products can then be shared with any system in the formation that supports delta sharing, such as SAP Databricks.

    Note

    There are other visibility options but you must choose Formations for working with SAP BDC data products.

  4. Enter a namespace. A prefix based on your landscape's name is automatically generated to ensure consistency.

  5. Save your data provider profile.

Now you are ready to create custom data products.

Creating a Custom Data Product

relationship between a data provider and a custom data product

A custom data product can only belong to one data provider profile.

You need the Modeler role assigned to your user within the Data Sharing Cockpit to publish data products.

  1. In the Data Sharing Cockpit→My Data Products, choose Create Data Product.

  2. Enter the Business Name and the mandatory Technical Name of the data product.

  3. Fill out the Product Details.

    Because you are creating a data product under a Formations provider the Data Shipment is automatically set to Integrated Delivery and the Delivery Mode is set to Delta Share. You cannot change these values.

  4. In the Pricing section, the Contract Type is set by default to Free, and you cannot change it.

  5. Select the source artifact space and then select local tables containing the data for your custom data product. For SAP BDC data products, the artifact space is automatically set to SAP HANA DATA LAKE storage type instead of regular HANA Cloud spaces. To create custom SAP BDC data products, you can only choose local tables as the source artifact.

    Only tables with supported column data types are displayed. For more information, see Data Types Supported By Local Tables (File).

    You cannot apply filters to the columns or rows of these tables.

  6. The lifecycle state of the new data product is set to Draft. To make it available for consumers, select the data product from the page My Data Products and click Switch Status to change the status to Listed. For more information, see Managing your Data Product's Lifecycle.

Wait a few minutes until the status of the data product is updated to Listed and the data product will be visible in the Data Products collection to everybody with the Catalog User role. The data product can be used within SAP Datasphere or shared with other SAP BDC components:

When the catalog is accessed from an SAP Datasphere system, users can install the custom data product to a Datasphere space.

When the catalog is accessed from SAP BDC, users can share the custom data product to a target system in the SAP BDC formation.

Deleting Custom Data Products

You can delete custom data products once they are uninstalled from all SAP Datasphere spaces and are no longer shared with any SAP BDC tenants.

When you delete a custom data product, the system also deletes the corresponding delta share tables from SAP HANA Data Lake spaces.

Please note that once you've deleted a custom data product, you cannot create a new one with the same technical name.

Note

Once a custom data product is generated, it is not possible to make changes to it. However, it is possible to include additional local tables to the data product and republish it under a new version with the same name.

Let's Summarize What You've Learned

In this lesson, you've learned how to create a custom data product using the Data Sharing Cockpit of SAP Datasphere.

  • You've learned that you use the Data Sharing Cockpit to create a custom data product.

  • You've learned that before you create a data product you must first create a data provider profile.

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