ssisetldata-warehousesap-erpsap-dotnet-connector

What is the best way to transfer data from SAP to SQL Server?

We want to build up a new Data Warehouse from scratch, based on SAP Tables. For the extract, transform and load (ETL) procedure, we want to use Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services. There are many vendors on the market like Theobald, CData etc, which provide a framework to access SAP data. But there is also a SAP .NET Connector 3.0 provided from SAP itself to access the data via RFC.

Do you have any experiences with these different solutions? According to the DWH concept we just want to access the tables and are focused on fast transfer (good transfer performance) of the SAP data.

Thank you for your help.

Solution

  • I'd prefer stick to the native SAP solutions. Here are the options:

    1. SAP SLT Very simple but efficient solution. Features are quite limited (no joins, no merging from multiple sources) but seems to be ideal for one-time transformation.
    2. SAP Data Services (SAP BODS) More sophisticated tool that allows building scenarios of ETL from any sources to any destinations, including complex transformations, scripts, etc.
    3. SAP MDM/MDG More conceptual solution which includes data quality, data governance, validation, de-duplication, etc. MDM and MDG are actually two different products but here we place them as single for the sake of simplicity. They are used presumably for instant replication process between SAP systems, but MDM is more versatile and can be used standalone, and for any data source.
    4. SAP PI The most sophisticated, feature-rich and complex solution which doesn't seem reasonable choice for 1-time transfer. More about differences.
    5. SAP Data Hub SAP solution for Big Data sources which seems redundant for your case.

    It's all depends of the scope of your task (mirroring, replication or transformation), complexity of data, necessary transformations (simple or complex), periodicity (ad-hoc or instant), budget and others.

    If you just need to move your DWH as is into MS SQL I suggest to use SLT as the most performance-efficient way. If you need more sophisticated transformations I suggest using SAP BODS. Other points seems not relevant for your task.