Why SAP Data Services

It provides one development UI, metadata repository, data connectivity layer, run-time environment and management console enabling IT organizations to lower total cost of ownership and accelerate time to value. With SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, IT organizations can maximize operational efficiency with a single solution to improve data quality and gain access to heterogeneous sources and applications.

Where Data Services can be used

Data Services can be used as an ETL application tool in Data Integration, Data Migration, Data Warehouse, Data Quality Management or Master Data Management projects. Data Services is an All-In-One solution for Data Integration, Data Quality, Information Stewardship, and Text Analytics. Data Services helps to Move, Improve, Govern, and Unlock Enterprise Data.

• Move - Extract, Transform and Load data from almost any data source.
• Improve - Cleanse, Enrich, Match and Consolidate data from any domain.
  
• Govern - Understand and Measure the Quality of data in support of Information Stewardship.
  
• Unlock - Unlock insights from Structured and Unstructured Text Data.
  

Most Organizations Face Data Challenges due to Siloed Application System data & Inaccessible, Incomplete, Inconsistent and Inaccurate source data. Data Services can help to discover & understand enterprise data using source data Profiling. It can access and integrate disparate data from virtually any data source both structured and unstructured. It also helps to cleanse data to improve data quality for more accurate decision-making. High quality data is a prerequisite for

accurate analysis and informed decision making. Data Services a Single tool to define all extraction, validation and cleansing rules helps Business Run Better by Delivering Timely and Trusted Information.

Batch and Real-time Job

SAP BusinessObjects Data Services supports Real-time data processing as well as scheduled Batch jobs.

• Batch Jobs - The software helps to extract data from virtually any data source, apply complex transformation and data cleansing techniques and load the data to target system as schedule batches.
• Real-time Jobs - The software supports real-time data transformation thereby helps to address typical real-time scenarios. The software can receive XML message requests from Web applications, allows us to define the processing of real-time messages and send replies immediately using a real-time job.
  

SAP Data Services Job Server can move data in either batch or real-time mode and uses distributed query optimization, multi-threading, in-memory caching, in-memory data transformations, and parallel processing to deliver high data throughput and scalability.

Structured and Unstructured Data

SAP BusinessObjects Data Services supports Structured data as well as Unstructured text-based files such as text, binary documents, HTML, or XML.

• Structured Data - Data Services can process Structured Data from almost every Database as well as from majority of Legacy Applications.
• Unstructured Data - Data Services can read and process files that contain Unstructured content. In order to process a directory of text-based files such as text, HTML, or XML or to move a directory of graphic files on disk into a database table, Data Services provides Unstructured Text and Unstructured Binary file format. Text Data Processing is the new feature provided by Data Services to analyze text and automatically identifies and extracts entities using Base Entity Extraction transformation.
  

Datastores and Formats

SAP BusinessObjects Data Services supports data extraction from a wide variety of Sources.

Datastore -

Datastores represent connection configurations between the Data Services and databases or applications. We define Datastores so that Data Services can access metadata from a database or application and read from or write to that database or application while the software executes a job. Following are the wide range of Databases and Applications supported by Data Services.

• Databases - ODBC, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, DB2, MySQL, HP Neoview, Informix, Sybase ASE, Sybase IQ, SAP HANA, Netezza, Teredata, Attunity Connector, Data Federator.

• JD Edwards - JD Edwards ERP applications JDE One World, JDE World

• Oracle Applications

• PeopleSoft

• SAP Applications

• SAP BW - SAP BW Source, SAP BW Target

• Siebel -Siebel CRM application system

• Adapters - Java based custom Adapters to access application metadata and data in any application.

• Web Service - The web services datastore works by sending a request and waiting until it receives a reply from a web services server.

Format -

Format is used to connect to source or target data when the data is stored in a file rather than a database table. A file format is a set of properties describing the metadata structure of a flatfile (ASCII). A file format defines a connection to a specific file. File format objects can describe files of the following types:

• Flat Files - Data Services supports Delimited, Fixed width, SAP transport, Unstructured text & Unstructured binary files.

• DTD - A Document Type Definition describes the data schema of an XML message or file.

• XML Schema - Describes the data schema of an XML message or XML file.

• COBOL Copybook - A COBOL copybook file format describes the structure defined in a COBOL copybook file usually denoted with a .cpy extension.

• Excel Workbook - An Excel workbook format describes the structure defined in an Excel workbook usually denoted with a .xls extension.

Also the Nested Relational Data Model (NRDM) interface allows us to apply the full power of SQL transforms to manipulate, process, and enrich hierarchical business documents.

High Availability and Performance

The high-performance engine and proven data movement and management capabilities of SAP BusinessObjects Data Services include:

• Scalable, multi-instance data movement for fast execution.
• Load balancing.
  
• Changed Data Capture.
  
• Parallel processing.
  

To provide flexibility, reliability, and scalability, SAP Data Services components can be installed on one or across many machines. Server processes can be Vertically Scaled (where one computer runs several, or all, server-side processes) to reduce cost, or Horizontally Scaled (where server processes are distributed between two or more networked machines) to improve performance. It is also possible to run multiple, redundant versions of the same server process on more than one machine, so that processing can continue if the primary process encounters a problem.

Metadata Management

• Impact and Lineage Analysis - Analyze the end-to-end impact and lineage for Data Services tables and columns and SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise objects such as universes, business views, and reports. Helps to understand information context i.e data lineage to make more confident decisions

• Auto Documentation - View, analyze, and print graphical representations of all objects as depicted in the Data Services Designer including their relationships, properties, and more.

• Data Validation - Evaluate the reliability of the target data based on the validation rules created in the Data Services batch jobs to quickly review, assess, and identify potential inconsistencies or errors in source data.

• Operational Dashboard - View dashboards of Data Services job execution statistics to see at a glance the status and performance of job executions for one or more repositories over a given time period.

• Data Quality Reports - View and export reports for batch and real-time jobs such as job summaries and data quality transform-specific reports.

Central Repository- Version Control

The central repository is used to support multi-user development. The central repository provides a shared object library allowing developers to check objects in and out of their local repositories. While each user works on applications in a unique local repository, the team uses a central repository to store the master copy of the entire project. The central repository preserves all versions of an application's objects, so it is possible to revert to a previous version if needed. Multi-user development includes other advanced features such as labeling and filtering to provide with more flexibility and control in managing application objects.

SAP BusinessObjects Data Services (Data Services) is One-stop for end-to-end information governance and management.