Shifting SAP BW to SAP Business Data Cloud

Let's now look at the second step of the lift, shift and innovate approach. In the shift step, SAP BW data is exposed as data products in SAP Business Data Cloud.

As a first step to expose SAP BW data as data products, you need to use the SAP BW Data Product Generator (SAP BW DPG).

The SAP BW Data Product Generator is a tool designed to simplify the integration of data from your SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA system with SAP Business Data Cloud. It provides a mechanism to replicate data from your SAP BW InfoProviders to the managed object store (HDLFS) within your SAP Datasphere tenant as part of SAP Business Data Cloud. This replication allows for seamless consumption of your SAP BW data within the SAP Business Data Cloud ecosystem and beyond.

The SAP BW Data Product Generator offers several key features that make data integration efficient and straightforward:

• Easy Replication: It simplifies the process of replicating data from SAP BW InfoProviders to SAP Business Data Cloud. You define subscriptions specifying which SAP BW InfoProviders and their fields should be replicated, along with any necessary filtering.

• Flexible Replication Modes: You can choose between one-time snapshots, regular reloads, or incremental delta updates (where supported by the underlying SAP BW InfoProvider). This flexibility allows you to tailor the replication frequency to your data update needs.

• SAP BW Integration: The SAP BW Data Product Generator integrates directly into the SAP BW environment, providing an editor (SAP GUI for BW and a Fiori UI for SAP BW/4HANA) for managing subscriptions and configurations. This makes the process familiar and intuitive for SAP BW users.

• Process Chain Integration: You can integrate SAP BW Data Product Generator subscriptions into SAP BW process chains, enabling automated data replication triggered by other SAP BW processes or scheduled at optimal times.

• Local Table (File) Creation: For each SAP BW InfoProvider included in a subscription, the SAP BW Data Product Generator creates a Local Table (File) in a dedicated SAP BW space within your SAP Business Data Cloud Datasphere tenant. This Local Table (File) contains the replicated data and metadata, ready for further use.

• Data Products: The Local Table (File) can be used as a basis for creating data products in the SAP Datasphere Data Sharing Cockpit. These data products facilitate easy sharing and consumption of the data within the SAP Business Data Cloud environment and with external tools.

• Zero-Copy Consumption: A key benefit is the ability to enable zero-copy consumption of your SAP BW data in SAP Databricks. By sharing the Delta Table of the Local Table (File) via DeltaShare, you allow SAP Databricks to access the data directly without needing to move it, optimizing performance and reducing data redundancy.

• Analytical Consumption: You can also use the Local Table (File) directly for analytical consumption within SAP Datasphere. This allows you to combine SAP BW data with data from other sources to create comprehensive analytical models.

A system administrator handles the steps related to installing the SAP BW Data Product Generator in SAP BW, private cloud edition or SAP BW/4HANA, private cloud edition (for detailed steps, see SAP Note 3593519).

After installation, the system administrator also takes care of the setup. A task list, SAP_BW_BDC_CONFIGURATION, can be used to perform the following steps:

• Configure an OAuth 2.0 Client in SAP Datasphere.
• Configure OAuth in SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA to SAP Datasphere.
• Configure certificate usage by creating a new SSL client identity and adding the required certificates (this identity is later used in the RFC connection to the object store).
• Create a target space with type SAP BW and storage type SAP HANA Data Lake Files in SAP Datasphere (during this process, the self-signed certificate is sent to the SAP Datasphere tenant and stored in the new space).
• Configure SAP HANA Data Lake Files Connection (an RFC destination type to the object store is created).

After installation and setup by the system administrator, you want to use the SAP BW Data Product Generator to publish data from SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA to the SAP Datasphere object store.

For this scenario, you need to perform the following steps:

1. Launch the SAP BW Data Product Generator.
2. Create, save and check a data subscription.
3. Activate the data subscription.
4. Run the data subscription.

Let's have a detailed look at every step.

For SAP BW/4HANA, you create and maintain the data subscription in the SAP BW/4HANA Cockpit (transaction code BW4WEB).

For SAP BW, you use the SAP GUI (transaction code RSDPS) to create and maintain the data subscription.

When you create a data subscription, you must first specify the following information:

• Source Name: The data subscription is based on source type ODP (SAP BW InfoProvider). The following SAP BW objects can be used as a source:

  • InfoObject (master data)
  • DataStore Object (classic and advanced)
  • InfoCube
  • CompositeProvider
  • MultiProvider
  • Query as InfoProvider

  As these objects are used as ODP Provider, the source name is represented with an extension:

  • Transactional data: <Technical Name>$F
  • Texts: <Technical Name>$T
  • Attributes: <Technical Name>$P
  • Hierarchies: <Technical Name>$H

• Target Name: This is the name of the SAP Business Data Cloud target as defined by the system administrator (DEFAULT).

• Execution Mode: You can choose between Full and Delta.

The Description of the data subscription is derived from the description of the SAP BW source object. This can be edited after a first save.

When you first save the data subscription, the Technical Name is filled with a generated subscription ID (DDS....). After this first save, it's optional to:

• Change the Description.

• Select a Process Chain Variant: to run the extraction using a process chain (the process type has to be "Load Process and Postprocessing – Data Subscription").

• Use Selections to restrict the data values to be extracted by defining conditions.

• Use Projections: to define which source fields are extracted (the key field(s) always have to be selected).

If you have specified one of these options, you must save the data subscription again.

The table Data Subscription Status shows the status values after saving the data subscription:

When you check the data subscription, several checks are performed by the system, for example if credentials for SAP Datasphere have been maintained and if a dedicated space exists in SAP Datasphere.

Now, you will perform some exercises to use SAP BW data for a data subscription.

In the first exercise, you will have a look at the SAP BW data to be used.

In the following exercise, you use the SAP BW Data Product Generator to create, save and check a data subscription for SAP BW Data.

When you activate the data subscription, a Local Table (File) is created in SAP Datasphere in a dedicated SAP BW space (of type SAP HANA Data Lake Files). The subscription ID is used as the name for the Local Table (File).

The table Data Subscription Status shows the status values after activating the data subscription:

In the following exercise, you activate a data subscription for SAP BW Data.

When you run the data subscription, the data is loaded to the Local Table (File).

The subscription log shows information about the transferred records.

After a successful run, the table Data Subscription Status shows the following status values:

In SAP Datasphere, you choose the Data Builder to locate the Local Table (File) in the dedicated SAP BW space. A data viewer option is available to check the contents.

In the following exercise, you run a data subscription for SAP BW Data.

After using the SAP BW Data Product Generator, SAP BW data is stored in a Local Table (File) in SAP Datasphere. To expose the SAP BW data as a data product, you want to learn the steps to create a data product on this Local Table (File).

Before you can create a data product, a data provider profile needs to have been created using the Data Sharing Cockpit in SAP Datasphere.

A data provider profile comprises company and contact information as well as general information about the data you offer, such as the industry your data products belong to or the SAP applications related to them.

In a data provider profile, also the Data Product Visibility is set, which defines how data products of the data provider can be published. You can set the following options:

• Public Data Provider
• Private Data Provider
• Internal Data Provider
• Formations

For our scenario, where SAP BW data should be exposed as a data product, the option Formations has to be set. With this setting, a data product may only be published with SAP Business Data Cloud Formation.

You use the Data Sharing Cockpit in SAP Datasphere to create a data product in a data provider profile.

Like other data products, you specify a Business Name, Technical Name, Description and Data Category.

To expose the SAP BW data as a data product, you select the SAP BW space and the Local Table (File). It's also possible to select multiple tables that should be exposed through the data product.

The data product has the following typical product details:

• Contexts: formations
• Delivery Mode: Delta Share

After saving the data product, the Lifecycle Status is Draft. This means that the data product has been created but is not yet visible in the Catalog & Marketplace.

To enable visibility and access for authorized users, you use Switch Status to switch the status of the data product from Draft to Listed.

This triggers the creation of a delta share endpoint and an ORD document that will be shared with the Unified Customer Landscape.

After the status has been set to Listed, you can find the data product using Catalog & Marketplace in SAP Datasphere and also using Catalog & Marketplace in SAP Business Data Cloud.

Notice the following details of the data product:

• Business Name
• Lifecycle Status
• Category
• Version
• ORD-ID (a unique identifier for a data product using the Open Resource Discovery (ORD) standard)

In the following exercise, you create a data product on a Local Table (File) in SAP Datasphere.

In this lesson you have learned about the possibilities of the SAP BW Data Product Generator:

• It simplifies the integration of SAP BW data with SAP Business Data Cloud.
• It offers flexible replication options, including one-time snapshots, regular reloads, and delta updates.
• Replicated data is stored as Local Tables (Files) in SAP Datasphere, enabling various consumption scenarios.

In this lesson you have also learned how to use a data provider profile to create a data product on a Local Table (File) in SAP Business Data Cloud:

• The data product visibility of the data provider profile has to be set to Formations.
• The data product is created in a data provider profile.
• The data product has to be listed to make it available in the Catalog.