Extractors/RFC from SAP using Data Integrator - Advice?

dataservices sap-erp-bw
1

Just looking to get pointed in the right direction. I had a brief ‘hands-on’ demo of DS at SBOUC last week but have some questions on the feasibility of exporting SAP application data (cluster tables, ABAP, RFC) and metadata into DW (or BI/Universe).

Current process is a replication of transparent tables from SAP DB to DW DB as follows:
-Change Tables created to for delta capture of approx 50 transparent tables. Change tables are used as source for DS job, which applies the changes to corresponding tables in DW DB.**
-Data is then ‘transformed’ into fact and dimension tables using SQL.**
-Universe is built on these tables.

Questions:
-Are there ‘extractors’ built into SAP or DI (not configured with BW) that can be used to extract the data/metadata (including delta load)?
-Where do I find extractors, RFC, functions, and ABAP rules that are available for export using DI?

Thanks - I appreciate any input or direction!

Components:
Source: SAP ECC 6.0 (Oracle 11g db)
(we do not have BW configured)
Target DW: Oracle 11g db
BI Platform: BI Platform 4.0 (w/ data integrator)

abooth (BOB member since 2011-07-08)

2

Extractors a complete different thing than reading from Tables.

Extractors are built for BW to read “business data” and therefore often do a lot of transformations already, then the data is put into BW and from there transformed into a cube.

What people of ask is, why should I create the same transformations the Extractor contains another time in DataServices, just let me use it. If it is a fit, sure why not. But the Extractor might not include what you need, there might not be an extractor for the data you want in case there is no BW cube for that etc.

So in other words, if you find a suitable Extractor you should be able to use it just like any other SAP source object. I do not want to be limited by DataServices.

Werner Daehn :de: (BOB member since 2004-12-17)