Introduction

With SAP Datasphere you can virtually access or physically store data from anywhere:

• Federate access across all your data
• Replicate and store as required
• Combine both approaches in a single service

​Virtualization enables real-time federated access to various source systems. Data is left in the source (not moved and duplicated) and only accessed remotely when needed. This option is available across various sources and platforms including hyperscalers.

Replication lets you transfer data in real-time or in a scheduled manner for high-speed access to data that may have large volumes, or reside in sources that have slower accessibility.

Customers can choose, based on their business requirements to connect or collect data, and switch from federated data to persisted data with a single click.

Review the Help Portal for more information on Acquiring Data in the Data Builder.

In this Data Acquisition unit, we work with several data ingestion methods to import data either federated or replicated from SAP and non-SAP sources.

Key takeaways for the unit include:

• Validate the source connections
• How to ingest data
• Switch from federated to persisted data
• Adapt table semantics

The overview below lists the source and data entities of the Data Sources, and the Data Ingestion layer of SAP Datasphere we explore in this unit:

Data Sources and their data which we ingest:

• SAP HANA Cloud - Sales Order and Sales Order Items
• Google Cloud - Product Reviews
• Microsoft SQL Server - Business Partners and Addresses
• SAP BW/4HANA - Products and Product Texts
• CSV Files - Countries and Country Text

Data Ingestion methods:

• Replication Flow - Persisting Data
• Data Flow - Persisting Data
• Remote Table Access - Federated Data
• CSV Files Import - Uploading Data

Data Inbound Layer target objects in SAP Datasphere:

• SalesOrder and SalesOrderItems tables
• ProductSentiments table
• BusinessPartners and Addresses remote tables
• Products and Product Texts remote tables
• Countries and CountryTexts tables of type Dimension and Texts

[Optional] Modular Approach

The SAP Datasphere shared central space, CENTRAL_DATA stores the dataset of our workshop. The objects and their data are pre-defined in this space and shared with your workshop user space . This gives you the flexibility to do all or only parts of the lessons in this Data Ingestion unit.

Summary

SAP Datasphere offers the ability to access and store data virtually or physically from SAP and non-SAP sources. It allows for federated access across all data sources and the option to replicate and store data as needed. The virtualization feature enables real-time access without moving or duplicating the data. Replication is available for transferring data on a schedule, particularly for large volumes or sources with slower accessibility.