Data Services within the SAP BI staging process

By Bhargav Gandhi, Tata Consultancy Services

Data Services XI 3.x is the official name for the EIM (Enterprise Information Management) platform. BusinessObjects™ Data Services is the one platform for data delivery and data quality to move, integrate, and improve any type of data anywhere at any frequency. Data Services is both a platform and a product. It is the platform upon which all new EIM functionality will be based

 

SAP BI is the business intelligence platform from SAP.

 

Data Services tools can be used into the SAP BI staging process, especially for Non-SAP data, where the enhanced integration capabilities of Data Services might be required anyway.

 

Following is the procedure for using Data Services features into the SAP BI staging process -  

1. Load the non-SAP data in the Data Services engine.2. Perform Data Quality operations on the data in Data Services.3. Load the data into SAP BI

Connecting SAP BI with Data Services

In order to allow the exchange of data and metadata between SAP BI and Data Services, we have to first establish a connection between both the systems. On the SAP BI side this is achieved by creating an External Source System and in Data Services we have to create a new Datastore. ...

 

1.       Log on to the SAP BI system.

2.       Start the Data Warehousing Workbench using TC RSA1 and select Modeling from the navigation area. Pick the entry Source Systems.

3.       Position the cursor on the External System  folder, and choose Create  from the context menu as shown above.

 

4.       Enter Logical System Name and Source System Name as shown above and hit Continue. 

 

5.       Data Services will start an RFC Server program and indicates to SAP BI that it is ready to receive RFC calls. To identify itself as the RFC Server representing this SAP BI Source System a keyword is exchanged, in the screen shot above it is "DEMO_SRC". This is the Registered Server Program, the Data Services RFC Server will register itself with at SAP. Therefore, provide the same Program ID that you want to use for the call of the RFC Server on Data Services side. All other settings for the Source System can remain on the default settings. To complete the definition of the Source System, save it.  

6.       Now, start the RFC Server on the Data Services side so that we can test the connection and load data from Data services to SAP BI system.

a)       Open MS-DOS command prompt. (Start > Run > Type CMD & hit OK)

b)       Go to the bin directory/folder for BusinessObjects Data Services. E.g . - C:\Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Data Services\bin>

c)       Call the program "rfcsvr -aPROGRAM_ID -gSAP_ROUTER_STRING -xSAP_GATEWAY". The PROGRAM_ID is the keyword we used above, "DEMO_SRC" in our example. The Router-String and SAP Gateway is something the BW admins should know. As a guideline, you can open the SAP Logon Pad and try the settings there. 

d)       The server here is 172.17.10.162 and the System Number is 00. The router string could hence be "/H/172.17.10.162/S/3300". The /H/ stands for the hostname, the /S/ for the port number. The port number can be derived from the system number, system 00 means port 3300. Same thing with the SAP Gateway. In a standard standalone installation the value for this is sapgw00.

e)       Type rfcsvr -aDEMO_SRC -g/H/172.17.10.162/S/3300 -xsapgw00 and hit Enter. It should not return anything 

 

7.       To check the connection, click on Connection Test as shown below -  

 

8.       The result would be as shown below in case of a success. 

 

9.       The newly entered 3rd party system would appear in the list of External Systems as shown below. 

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