SDI – DP Agent and Remote Source Configuration in HANA to Read Data from S/4HANA

HANA Smart Data Integration (SDI) Introduction:

SDI is HANA database native technology to support all styles of data integration. It can be used for data federation (Smart Data Access), real-time data replication and to apply complex transformations on the data.

SDI is available on SAP Cloud Platform and every HANA database since HANA SPS09.

Data Federation or Smart Data Access (SDA):

Smart Data Acces replicates the table meta-data from the source and not its data. We get the table structure in remote data source, on which we can create a “Virtual table”.

SDI Components:

SDI has two main components. They are

1. The Data Provisioning Server (DPServer)

2. The Data Provisioning Agent (DPAgent)

1. Data Provisioning Server (DPServer):

DPServer is natively available in the HANA database. We need to activate the DPServer in the HANA configuration.

2. Data Provisioning Agent (DP Agent):

The Data Provisioning Agent manages all SDI Adapters and connections to HANA database. It acts as the communication interface between HANA and the Adapter. The DP Agent version must match with the HANA version.

On this agent,different types of adapters are deployed, these adapters will take care of the communication between the HANA database and the source systems.

Steps to install DP Agent and to register Adapters:

The DP Agent can be downloaded from SAP Service Marketplace as SAR file.

1. Search for Smart Data Integration in SAP Service Marketplace.

2. From the results list, select the latest available SAP HANA SDI release (maintenance product). Example: SAP HANA SDI 2.0

3. Select the button Comprised software component version.

4. Select HANA DP AGENT x.x

5. Download the latest Service pack.

6. After you download the right DP Agent you must install it.

7. Click on Register Agent and give the Agent Name.

8. Click on Connect to HANA – Provide your HANA System Details.

9. After entering the HANA details, the DPAgent Configuration Tool should show that it is connected to Hana successfully. We can see the agent name is registered, and the agent status started.

10. Select ABAPAdapter and click on Register Adapter.

ABAPAdapter: 

The SDI agent includes many adapters. It includes real-time enabled and batch extraction adapters. In addition to these adapters, to create custom adapters a JAVA based adapter SDK is also available.

This ABAPAdapter retrieves data from virtual tables through RFC for ABAP table and ODP extractors. It also provides Real-Time change data capture for ODP extractors.

11. Once the ABAPAdapter is registered in DP Agent, we can check in HANA under SYS Schema->Expand VIEWS->Right click on ADAPTER and select data preview to check whether an entry is created.

Steps to set up the Remote Source:

The first step of accessing data virtually is to create remote data source in SAP HANA. Let’s see how to create remote data source in SAP HANA Studio.

1. Create remote data source by open the folder called “Provisioning” in HANA.

2. Then right click on the “Remote Sources”, select “New Remote Source…”.

3. Create the new remote source by maintaining the following fields:

◉ Source Name: Give a proper Name.

◉ Adapter Name: Choose the relevant adapter for SDI – in this case ABAPAdapter.

◉ Source Location: Select the data provisioning agent installed in the previous steps.

◉ Fill in the right Credentials to use the S/4HANA source tables.

4. Choose one adapter from the adapter list in the popup dialog and select the source location, fill in corresponding connection and authentication information of the remote data source.

5. After filling the connection information, press the run button to create remore data source. Now, we can see the newly created remote source connection under Provisioning folder.

Steps to Create Virtual Table:

After the Remote data source is created in SAP HANA Studio, we need to map the tables in remote data source as “Virtual Table” to our schema.

Let’s take Sales Document Header and Item tables (VBAK and VBAP) as an example.

1. Create Virtual Table.

2. Right click on the table in Remote Source, Select Add as Virtual Table.

3. Select your Schema.

4. Execute a quick smoke test and get a preview of VBAK data by running the following SQL statement in the console.

5. Repeat the steps for all the Virtual Tables based on the individual Requirements. In this example we’d like to use two tables (VBAK & VBAP) from the Source (S/4HANA) as Virtual tables.

6.Click on create.