Access to SAP tables?

[Former Member]

Hi all,

just a quick question:

Can I access SAP tables with the Universe designer?

As I could see, there is only the access to BW-data (cubes) possible...but no tables...

Or is there any interface I do require for that?

Best regards,

bivision

[Former Member]

As per my knowledge, Generally data into SAP BW is puled from ECC as part of building SAP BW Cubes.

You may try to access ECC tables and see if they fit for your requirment. I believe ECC and SAP BW have generally use Oracle in Background.

Through universe designer if you create a connection using SAP you will only have access to SAP BW cubes/BEx Queries.

-Thanks,

DEEPU.

[Former Member]

Hi

thanks for your reply. Yes, that's what I've analyzed as well so far.

But in fact our aim is to provide reporting on ERP-real-time/transactional data and not on analytical ones.

That's why we aim to provide universes for specific ERP topics (e.g. PM, SD, FI...). This reporting should then make any ERP-query obosolet.

So is there really no way to access the underlying SAP database? (as far as I know, access to other databases e.g. MS SQL server is not problem for universes?)

Best regards

bivision

[former_member142702]

You have the following options:

1) Use Crystal reports. It provides a driver to access directly SAP Tables

2) Consider using Rapid Marts. THis package contains mappings for BO Data Services (ETL tool) that enable you to extract data from SAP ERP and load it into a relation database in a predefined set of tables. It also includes universes that enable you to build WebI reports on the extracted data. Keep in mind that you require a BO Data services installation and an additional license for the Rapid Marts package.

3) If you have a BO Data services installation you can write your own mappings and extract/load thee data in a relational database. You can then build universes on top of your relational data model. It is the same approach as the Rapid marts but you have to build everything from the scratch.

4) Load your data into a BW system (eg. in a DSO), build a mutliprovider and BEx queries based on the DSO and at the end create a universe on top of those BEx queries.

Regards,

Stratos

[Former Member]

Hi,

We plan to support ECC in universes using Data Federator technology in the coming weeks.

Regards

Didier

[Former Member]

@Didier:

that sounds good.

Do you have any further information about the ramp-up / release?

As that will be exactly what we need:

we want to use universes as an ad-hoc-reporting tool on ECC-data

[Former Member]

In a recent conference call with SAP the reps mentioned the Crystal reports method noted above. However, they did not recommend accessing SAP tables directly as this impacts on the performance of the ECC client.

They were promoting the new HANA tool, which only just went into ramp up, as a potential solution for real-time reporting.

[Former Member]

Yes, that's exactly the point - we got told that HANA will require Universes to work on real-time-data.

So maybe some SAP guy can tell something more about this?