SAP Data Services

Posted by Sudheer Sharma 12 December 2008
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SAP Business Objects Data Services  Overview

Data Services is a GUI based ETL tool from SAP Business Objects. It is a client server technology and an integrated tool-set for designing, running, monitoring, scheduling and administrating the ETL jobs.

Data Integrator/Data Services allows to develop data warehouse applications in both Batch and Real-Time job mode. It manages the data from heterogeneous and homogeneous sources and transforms the data according to business logic, integrates into single data source for analysis. It extracts the data from operational source systems and external source systems typically like RDBMS, Flat files, XML files, XML Messages, SAP IDoc’s, PeopleSoft, Siebel etc. We can develop complex dataflow mappings using simple GUI, point & click techniques

Here I’m going to share some basic stuff in DI/DS, which is useful for beginners (novice).

Data Services Topics

Data Services Installation Steps
Data Services Transformations

Tips & Tweaks

What’s New in SAP BODI/DS

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179 Responses to “SAP Data Services”

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  1. nikhil saini says:
    January 20, 2011 at 2:40 am

    Hi sudheer,

    Can you please help me understand how we can use indexes to retrieve data from tables in BODI?

    Reply
  2. nikhil saini says:
    January 20, 2011 at 4:52 am

    Hi Sudheer,

    Can you help me understand how do i use INDEX in BODI to load data ?
    Thanks

    Nikhil

    Reply
  3. Harsha says:
    January 24, 2011 at 11:02 am

    Sudheer,

    We recently installed BO DS 3.2 on Production system, yet to migrate projects/jobs from Dev. Now want to apply patches to both Dev/Prd systems. Please suggest me, which is the best way, i mean
    1) Apply patch to Dev and then Prd and migrate jobs from Dev to prd. OR
    2) Migrate jobs to Prd and apply patch to Dev and then PRD. OR
    3) Apply patches to PRD, next DEV and migrate jobs to PRD?

    Is applying a patch is as similar as installing BODS 3.2 (by running setup.exe) or something different?

    Could you please send me step by step procedure to apply patch, if you have any?

    Thanks,
    Harsha

    Reply
  4. Thangavel says:
    February 2, 2011 at 8:56 pm

    Hi Sudheer Sharma,

    Please provide the link for Trail version of SAP Business Object Data Service 12.2

    Regards,
    S. Thangavel

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      February 2, 2011 at 10:58 pm

      Dear Thangavel,

      I believe there is no trail version for SAP BO DS. I would suggest you to contact SAP Support people and say that you’re evaluating ETL tools and request them to issue one month validity license key for the same. Let’s see how it goes…

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
  5. Thangavel says:
    February 2, 2011 at 9:37 pm

    Hi Sudheer sharma,

    What is the difference between BOBI vs BODS at architecture level?

    Regards,
    S. Thangavel

    Reply
  6. nikhil saini says:
    February 23, 2011 at 4:20 am

    Hi Sudheer,

    How are you ?? Can you please help me understand how to use delta in BODI?Is Delta used to transport only the changes made in the source?
    Is there any other way in which we can transport only the changes made in the source to the destination?

    Thanks
    Nikhil Saini

    Reply
  7. jrara says:
    March 20, 2011 at 6:26 am

    Hi Sudheer,

    Thank you for this awesome SAP Data Services site! I read all your blog posts about BODS and those were very helpful! Are you planning to cover all Transformations in these posts? Looking forward to that! Also it would be very helpful if you would describe how to use global variables and substitution parameters!

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      March 20, 2011 at 11:53 am

      Hi Johannes Raja,

      Many thanks for visiting my site and for your comments. Well I planned many items to share…. running into very busy schedule these days… so could not make it as expected… will definitely post the usage of global variables and its family…. would be great if you could mail me the items that you would like to see ?

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
  8. jrara says:
    March 20, 2011 at 1:27 pm

    Well, it would be nice to see some more real world examples e.g using different transformations. Also I’m interested in to see how to use script objects in jobs (and how to use Data Services script language in general). There is lot of information on BOB and BO Data Services pdf manuals, but I think all this information is scattered around. Also Best Practices and Tips and Tweaks were very helpful and I would be pleased if you would have time to expand these topics. There is so much more information on the internet about e.g SSIS than Data Services, so every info one can gather is a way to go! Keep up the good work!

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      March 21, 2011 at 4:42 am

      Aaah, had many plans to share dear…. indeed, created video presentations too, but all those were scattered here and there. I agree, you’d get tons of articles for any other tool other than Data services over internet. Indeed, that small idea made me start this website to help people out there with my knowledge. However, will accommodate and dedicate sometime to complete the remaining articles.

      Thanks for reminding me…
      Sudheer

      Reply
  9. SAP BO Business Intelligence Tools | A small notes. . . says:
    March 22, 2011 at 12:44 am

    [...] SAP Data Services [...]

    Reply
  10. nikhil saini says:
    May 2, 2011 at 11:46 pm

    Hi Sudheer,

    I am facinf issues with hierarchies in BODI.when im viewing the external meta data for a datastore and click on herarchy, i get the following error saying”SET HEADER FIELD NAME NOT KNOWN”.

    What can be the cause of such an error.?

    Reply
  11. lalsuri says:
    May 19, 2011 at 5:00 am

    Hi Suddheer,

    We are using Data services 12.2 version & we have faced performance issue while loging to the BODI repositories.we checked with Network connectivity & Application server performance and restart the services
    for Job server & DS services.But still it takes 30min to login the repository.Kindly suggest how can i login with in min time period (with in 2 or 3min ).

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      May 19, 2011 at 10:12 am

      Hi,

      Check whether the port is opened for the repository or not? or in otherwords firewall may be stopping to accessing the server port.

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
      • lalsuri says:
        May 20, 2011 at 6:06 am

        Hi Brother,
        we don’t have any issue with Port or Firewall sir.Normal secnario it takes 3 to 4min.but last Two weeks onwords it took exactly 30 min.after connecting to repository we don’t have any issues.

        we have analysed the issue below cases,

        1.We tried connecting to the Production repository from the development server. Connects in less than 3 minutes. From here we can conclude that there is no problem with the Database.
        2.We tried connecting to the Development repository from the Production server. Connects in 30 minutes. From here we can conclude that there is some problem in the BODI Production Application server.
        3.We tried connecting to the Production repository from the Production server. Connects in 30 minutes. From here we can conclude that there is some problem in the BODI Production Application server.

        Kindly suggest me how can i open the repository with in time lines ?

        Reply
        • Sudheer Sharma says:
          May 20, 2011 at 9:27 am

          Hello Lalitha,

          Well, I didnt check your msg completely I’m sorry abt that :) …. To understand better, provide the below details…

          1. How big is your repository?
          2. Do you have any Central Repo? If so was that enabled/active while logging into Prod Repo?
          3. How often you compact your repository (both Local & Central)?

          Cheers,
          Sudheer

          Reply
  12. Ashish says:
    June 10, 2011 at 1:45 am

    hi sudhir,

    u have given a lot of useful information about DI which is helpfull for beginners. Please can you tell what are the advantages and disadvn. of SAP DI as compared to Informatica PowerCenter.

    Thanks….

    Reply
  13. Ashish says:
    June 11, 2011 at 8:39 am

    Hi sudhir,

    Can u pls tell abt following concepts.
    1. How the Change Capture Process works in DI
    2. How can we load complete data(FULL LOAD) and only changed data (INCREMENTAL LOAD) from source to target.

    Thanks..

    Reply
  14. Ashish says:
    June 11, 2011 at 11:18 am

    Hi sudhir,

    Can u pls tell abt following concepts in SAP DI
    1. How the change capture process works.
    2. How can we load the complete data (FULL LOAD) and only changed data(INCREMENTAL LOAD) from source to target. How this two processes are handeled in DI

    Thanks……

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      June 13, 2011 at 6:03 am

      Hi Ashish,

      There are many ways to design your job to load Initial/History data and Incremental data. You can design one job which has two dataflow one for Initial and one for Incremental by setting up conditional flows and parameters. Or You can design two diffferent jobs one for Initial and one for Incremental.

      Let me know if you need more information.

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
  15. Ashish says:
    June 13, 2011 at 11:09 am

    Thanks sudheer,

    can u give some overview of how change capture process works… as in case of Informatica it has image tables (ETL_R_IMG, ETL_I_IMG, ETL_D_IMG) for every source tables.

    thanks….

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      June 13, 2011 at 7:32 pm

      DI also has image capturing techniques. We have a Transformation called Map_CDC, If you can go thru the reference PDF content of DI, you ‘ll get to know more information. As I said, It captures data based on images “Before Image and After Image”.

      let me know if you need more information.

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
  16. sundar says:
    June 27, 2011 at 12:18 am

    Hi all,

    If anybody installed the SAP Data services 4.0. Please provide the screen shots of the installation. I have another question that ” Is it possible to migrate the informatica mappings xml files to SAP data services 4.0″

    Thanks
    Sundar

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      June 27, 2011 at 1:50 am

      Hi Sundar,

      Installation process will be there in technical documents. No documents with me at the moment, will post in future. If you have any queries/questions related to installation you can post. I will try to reply with better solutions.

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
  17. praveen vootla says:
    June 27, 2011 at 12:48 am

    Hi sudhir,

    How to install SAP Bodi 4.0,we have a problem on installation for BODI4.0, u r site is very helpfull for ours.

    please give me reply for as soon as possible.u have any screen shot for installtion pls send to my mail or put in u r site.

    regards.
    praveen vootla

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      June 27, 2011 at 1:53 am

      Hi Praveen,

      Thanks for landing on my site and sharing your experience with it. Unfortunately, I do not have any installation process document with me at the moment. But surely I will post one in future. However, you can find installation process in Technical manuals. If you have any queries related to installtion, do let me know. I will check and provide my solution if I could able to sort it out.

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
  18. sundar says:
    June 27, 2011 at 3:59 am

    Thank you Sudheer,

    I am try to install the SAP Data services 4.0 installation wizard showed me successfully installed. After the installation how to add/create repository to job server like in Data services 3.2. When i open data services designer its showing the error missed some .dll files. In installation i am not created repository and not given any database connection to the repository. Actually its not ask me in the installation wizard. I know the installation of data services 3.2 based on that tell me the solution.

    Reply
  19. sundar says:
    June 27, 2011 at 7:58 am

    Hi Sudheer,

    I am disturbing you many times. Plz dont mind. I have installed data services 3.2 successfully, but while opening data services designer its giving the following error.

    Cannot Initialize application (BODI 1270039)

    I have tried many ways but still cannot reslove the issue. Even i deleted existing local repository and re created, and add the repository to job server. But i am getting same error. Please help me resloving the issue.

    Cheers
    Sundar

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      June 27, 2011 at 11:52 pm

      Just check out whether services are started or not?

      Goto Run–>type “services.msc” and look for “Business Objects Data Services” service and check the status of it.

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
  20. sundar says:
    June 28, 2011 at 12:44 am

    Sudheer,

    The “BO Data services” and “Apache tomcat” services are started. “BO Address server” is stopped defaultly. I have searched a lot no one has given correct answer. Everyone suggesting is uninstall the software and os. Here its not possible to uninstall the os.

    Cheers,
    sundar

    Reply
  21. sundar says:
    June 28, 2011 at 1:59 am

    Sudheer,

    I got the solution for the above problem. Goto start>run>goto regedit
    then goto goto HKEY_CURRENT_USER and from software folder delete the SAP entries.
    then we can able to login the data services designer.

    Cheers sundar

    Reply
  22. pnr says:
    July 1, 2011 at 1:51 am

    Hello Experts,

    Please throw some light on how to Extract data from MS CRM Dynamic 4.0 systems using DSv3.2 icon_eek.gif

    Is it similar to Salesforce extraction or ERP r/3 extraction ?? icon_question.gif

    Thanks~

    Reply
  23. Vidya says:
    July 8, 2011 at 5:25 am

    Thank you Sudheer for this execellent Data Services site!
    I am new Bee to Data Services.
    I Have read all ur Transformations.U provided transformations with screen shots..Really nice to easy understand.
    In that Can you share your experience using Table Comparision transform,Degree of parallelism…?
    diff b/w map_operation and Table compare.
    diff b/w parallel load and degree of parallelism.

    Thanks,
    Vidya

    Reply
  24. sundar says:
    July 14, 2011 at 5:07 am

    Hi Sudheer and all,

    I have a requirement that importing the informatica metadata xml file into sap data services 4.0. If anybody of you know the process. Please let me know the process. This is very urgent for me. When importing the sample informatica metadata xml file its giving the following error.

    (BODI 1210019) Error converting xml file: Incorrect xml file or wrong metadata format.

    Thank in Advance

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      July 14, 2011 at 7:24 am

      Hi Sundar,

      I don’t think you can do that. Informatica metadata info will be entirely different when compare with BODI/DS metadata.

      Note: BODI/DS is an ETL tool and not a conversion tool. You cannot import any other ETL tool metadata into BODI.

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
  25. sundar says:
    July 15, 2011 at 6:26 am

    Hi Sudheer,

    Thanks for your reply. I have doubt that in informatica have the isnull(), instead of that which function i have to use in data services. Please dont take silly i dont know about data services. Your posts are very much helped me to understand the Data services Transformations.

    Regards
    Sundar

    Reply
  26. John Passam says:
    July 27, 2011 at 5:53 am

    Hi Sudheer,
    I am a London based recruiter. Currently I have a requirement with a Hedge Fund in central London for a BODI developer. The salary is £65k per year + Bonus. I wondered whether you might know anyone with Data Services experience that would be interested in looking at new permanent opportunities?
    Cheers,
    John

    Reply
  27. sundar says:
    August 17, 2011 at 5:43 am

    Hi Sudheer,

    I want some material of “BODI” regarding the transformations in the Tool. I am not get the good idea at some transformations. If you have any material please share me. It will be very helpful for me.

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      August 17, 2011 at 8:29 am

      Hey Sundar,

      Whatever I have on BODI, I’m sharing with my blog. I have plenty articles to post… will post as soon as I get some time. If you really want better material then technical manuals pdf which comes with tool is the best one.

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
  28. Prasanna says:
    August 31, 2011 at 5:18 am

    While accessing BODS designer from client machine (my machine), I am getting following error,
    (Please note, we have installed BODS 4.0 designer on Server machine i.e. 10.191.97.232 and trying to access same from remote location i.e. 10.212.127.3 by using BODS 4.0 client designer)
    The user id and password and authentication method is correct…
    I have done the telnet required for the port 6400 as well as 6410. it was O.K but still we were not able to solve.

    Reply
  29. Alok says:
    October 5, 2011 at 6:37 pm

    We are on BO DI 11.7.3 Version and recommended Future version is BO DS 3.2.

    1. Is Direct Upgrade from BO DI 11.7.3 to BO DS 3.2 would be possible?

    2. Is there any Migration Strategy/Tools available for the same?

    3. Any technical challenges in getting that Upgrade?

    Please share any upgrade/migration related document for the same.
    Thanks in advance.

    Regards,
    Alok

    Reply
  30. Vink says:
    October 11, 2011 at 4:51 pm

    @alok
    1. Upgrade is possible via the repository manager. However, it is a major upgrade and requires a different license key. That can be obtained via SAP
    2. See 1.
    3. No technical issues. May be in theory something is not entirely converted. I advise to check input/output for both versions and compare them. If there is something different, it is often consistent an you can find the other parts of problematic code too.

    I advise you to look also in the possibility to upgrade to 4.0.

    @Prasana
    4.0 uses a different authentification method. IT is now more closely related to à universe. Did you check that?

    Reply
  31. Parveen says:
    October 14, 2011 at 3:35 am

    Hi Sudheer,
    Could you please help me on how to run DS job on unix platform and also by a third party schedular, also how to run a batch which checks previuos job status(Pass/Fail) and then run accordingly. How to check production running job logs or how to write logs into a file in case we can not check logs by logging into DS designer.
    Would be great if you can refer any document which explain all my above doubts.

    Reply
  32. ramesh says:
    November 8, 2011 at 9:40 am

    hai sudheer can you just explain how to build/drope the indexes in bodi/ds

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      November 8, 2011 at 11:47 am

      Hi Ramesh,

      Building and Droping indexes can be done thru script step by calling SQL statements, or you can write SQL’s in pre load and post load command boxes under target table options.
      Hope this helps. Let me know if you require more information.

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
  33. asuja says:
    November 30, 2011 at 1:24 am

    Hi Sudheer,

    Can u explain me more about template tables ? Are these template tables permanent?

    Also what is the significance of Data_Transfer Transformation?

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      November 30, 2011 at 3:55 am

      The main use of this object is in early development phase. You really do not have to create a table in the backend database and import the metadata.Inspite of that you can DI creates a table in the database with the defined schema (the schema that comes from the previous transform) when job is executed.

      Hope this helps! Let me know if you need more clarification….

      Cheers,
      Sudheer

      Reply
  34. sreenath says:
    December 6, 2011 at 6:30 am

    hi,what is the difference b/w row and key generation,

    Reply
  35. sreenath says:
    December 6, 2011 at 6:31 am

    wht is difference b/w XIR2 and XIR3?

    Reply
  36. sreenath says:
    December 6, 2011 at 6:36 am

    In interview,Wht the architecture u r using in u r project means,whts i want tell explain?

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      December 11, 2011 at 8:36 pm

      You need to explain about your project and its related architecture…. what are the sources…stage/landing areas….and then stage-datawarehouses/datamarts… and final relation to cubes and then reports…

      Hope this helps!

      Cheers,
      Sudheer Sharma

      Reply
  37. tamuka says:
    December 7, 2011 at 8:52 am

    Want to move from SSIS to BODI,
    Is there a site i can download a trial version for BODI/BODS or where i can buy a pre-installed image drive? I know of sites like http://www.erpselftraining.com/produit.php?type=erp etc that sell pre installed images but do not have BODI/BODS.

    Please assist?

    Reply
  38. mamatha says:
    January 3, 2012 at 5:22 am

    Hi,
    Your website is helpfull. Thank you very much for sharing knowledge.
    Could you please advise/publish about Delta/Incremental loads. How we can implement using BODS. I would you be great if you send me an example.

    Thanks
    Mamatha

    Reply
  39. John says:
    January 13, 2012 at 2:37 am

    Hi sudheer,

    I need some information on the Perfomance of the Tool BODS.

    1. Is there any data compression can be done through BODS ? If so, any supporting documents.
    2. How much of data volume BODS can handle. I need max data volume.
    3. How to move the Jobs from Dev to Prod ? any Best practice implementation.

    Please help,

    Regards,
    John

    Reply
  40. Thangavel says:
    January 23, 2012 at 6:26 am

    Hi Sudheer,

    Whenever more than one person attempt to log in to a single repository. Reset -User? Opiton will come.
    What is the impact of this. Please clarify.

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      January 23, 2012 at 11:50 am

      The best practice is one user per repository. Whenever the number exceeds it will prompt the logging user to reset, the impact would be you’re kicking off the other user who already logged in. If the guy is actually creating/developing a DF/WF/Job or doing some operations on the other end, he would be kicked off forcebly without saving the data. Now you could imagine the impact of the scenario. Hope this helps! let me know if you require more informatin.

      Cheers,
      Sudheer Sharma

      Reply
  41. Thangavel says:
    January 25, 2012 at 1:22 am

    Hi Sudheer,
    Whenever I pressed the reset user putton, what are backgroud process is running, which meta-data tables are updated or affected.. those details i want to know…

    Thanks and Regards,
    S. Thangavel

    Reply
  42. Mahesh says:
    February 17, 2012 at 4:29 pm

    Sudheer,

    How to create the indexes on a target table? when we will go Table Partition on the target table?
    Could you please explian me the how to increase the performances?

    Reply
    • Sudheer Sharma says:
      February 27, 2012 at 10:37 pm

      Performance Optimization queries cannot be replied in one liner words. Where you want to increase the performance (Database? Dataservices?) many areas you would have look out for. Let me know your exact requirement so that I can suggest my best.

      Cheers,
      Sudheer Sharma

      Reply
  43. Sam says:
    February 21, 2012 at 5:59 am

    Hi Sudheer,
    Hope u r doing good.
    I am new to BODS. could you please tell me what are the differnces b/w version 3.2 and 4.0.

    If you have any document regarding this please mail me.

    Thanks in Adv..

    Regards,
    Sam

    Reply
  44. sreenath reddy says:
    March 2, 2012 at 3:56 am

    hi,i have 50 records in flat files,when im inserting that records im getting 30 records only,20 records are fails,i want to get all records ,for next execution.,

    Reply
  45. suresh says:
    March 6, 2012 at 1:04 am

    HI Sudheer,

    can u please tell me the processes of getting the data from sap systems.

    can we extract the data with out using ABAP CODE..
    Specify the best method to pull the data from sap.

    Thanks in advance
    Suresh.

    Reply
  46. sreenath reddy says:
    March 7, 2012 at 12:51 am

    Hi sudheer, ecc is my source and i want to extract data to csv files, i tried that but im getting error that is “Cannot open file . Please check its path and permissions.”

    what i want to do,pls reply me

    Reply
  47. suresh says:
    March 7, 2012 at 11:28 pm

    HiSudheer,
    Thanks for ur quick response.
    BODS have 3-4 methods to extract the data from SAP applications like using functions,
    open hub tables.. etc
    Is there any method without using
    abap code(direct download)?
    And tell me what’s preferred one among them.

    Reply
  48. sreenath reddy says:
    March 8, 2012 at 4:07 am

    k,.thanks sudheer.

    Reply
  49. sreenath reddy says:
    March 8, 2012 at 5:12 am

    Hi Sudheer, im using abap dataflow as my soure and target is flat files ,while im executing its showing error
    “Execute ABAP program error < Open File Error"
    how can i solve this problem,

    Reply
  50. Markus says:
    March 11, 2012 at 11:06 pm

    Hi,
    Can you generate source to target mapping that you can export to excel?

    Reply
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