Integrating SAP data in the information system using open
source data integration
November 2008—v1.0
Talend Open Studio v3—launched in October 2008—offered native SAP support.
In November 2008, Talend also introduced Talend Integration Suite v3, which includes addi-tional SAP support features making it even easier to interface with SAP systems.
This Technical Note discusses Talend’s data integration capabilities for SAP and covers Talend’s SAP connectors, as well as additional SAP-dedicated tools.
1. About Talend's connectivity with SAP
All companies want to align their applications—whether internal or external—as a means of collaborating with partners and vendors, streamlining their operations, and maximizing their IT investments.
With this in mind, companies investing in SAP ERP software often hope to centralize all the company’s mission-critical functions in a single platform. For the most part, this isn’t possible because, while a company can manage its own IT investments, it has no control over a partner’s—or customer’s—IT. Furthermore, legacy systems often exist, or best-of-breed systems must still be implemented alongside the SAP deployment. SAP is highly successful and popular, but it is also a large, unique, and complex system environment and presents many challenges to companies who want to integrate it with third-party systems.
Talend, the leader in open source data integration, allows users to integrate data be-tween SAP systems and any other business-critical applications.
By integrating the power of SAP interfaces (RFCs, BAPIs or zBAPIs), Talend’s data inte-gration solutions—Talend Open Studio and Talend Inteinte-gration Suite—facilitate compli-cated data-related tasks; any module of enterprise SAP structures can be accessed. Talend fills a broad range of integration needs without expensive IT development costs:
• Reading data from SAP environment at any level, from Tables, RFCs or BAPIs. These operations include for example extracting a partial data set for reuse in a third-party application.
• Transforming data from, or to, any SAP or non-SAP system.
Transformations include data quality operations such as deduplication or aggrega-tion over heterogeneous SAP data environments, or over data to be integrated into an SAP system.
• Integrating data in any format.
Data may come from databases, binary files or flat files, print or web streams, etc. Talend’s SAP-dedicated features include:
Available under a GPL v2 license in Talend Open Studio, these connectors enable efficient development and deployment of bi-directional data transformations from and to SAP systems, and between SAP and non-SAP systems
• Wizards that simplify the function calling as well as the data handling through a convenient visual interface,
This allows users to reuse their preferred settings in all their Jobs, dramatically ac-celerating and facilitating development and maintenance operations.
• Native Support of SAP at any level.
Table, RFC, and BAPI level (including custom BAPI or zBAPI)
2. Talend’s SAP connectivity features
Talend Open Studio and Talend Integration Suite let the user read and/or write data in any SAP system using out-of-the-box components.
With a simple click-&-drop of SAP-dedicated components from the Studio’s Palette, a user can build as many processes (Jobs) as required to read, transform, and upload da-ta from any—and to any—SAP system.
In the convenient graphical interface of the Studio, users can combine SAP read and write connectors with some of the more than 400 components at their disposal in the Palette to implement complex data-related tasks.
For example, a user could create a Job design that extracts data from a favorite SAP SD (Sales and Distribution) module and filter the extracted records. Then, in the same Job, the user can look up reference information in a Sugar CRM customer module, map it with the SAP-extracted data flow, apply transformations through the graphical map-ping editor and feed an SAP FI (Finance) module with the processed data.
Talend’s SAP components are based on the certified SAP Java Connector (SAP JCo), a middleware component provided by SAP that enables the development of SAP-compatible components and applications in Java. This ensures that the user can access any level of SAP via Tables, RFCs, or BAPIs. This guarantees complete connectivity with any data-related module in an SAP environment.
From one central view in the Studio, the user connects to the SAP system and sets the parameters for extraction or writing.
a. Reading an SAP structure
The tSAPInput component reads a table or structure in order to extract all or part of the data contained in an SAP system regardless of the level of structure. This component takes advantage of the capabilities of SAP interfaces or functions to re-trieve the desired data.
From a single view in the Studio's user interface, the user sets the required para-meters for the Talend tSAPInput component to connect to the SAP structure of choice, calls the given function, and extracts the described data from it.
The function called can be any RFC, BAPI, or even any custom BAPI (zBAPI) stored in the function library of the targeted SAP system.
b. Writing to an SAP system
The tSAPOutput component is designed to write to a table or structure in any SAP system module with the incoming data provided by the process flow.
The user is, therefore, able to integrate—at any SAP system level—the data coming from any source (from a simple flat file, binary file, database, etc.), and potential-ly transformed in a previous step of the process.
Similarly to the reading component, the output component relies on accessing the Function library of the targeted SAP system and uses the input and output parame-ters to feed the function or application and achieve the desired result.
From the central setting view in Talend Open Studio, the user connects to the tar-get SAP module and maps the incoming data to the corresponding SAP parameters. Heterogeneous data from any source can be processed and standardized before be-ing integrated into the SAP system without jeopardizbe-ing the overall system data quality.
3. Industrialize, maintain and improve productivity
The dedicated SAP wizard makes configuring SAP reading and writing components much easier.
An integral part of Talend Integration Suite, this feature allows users to centrally store both their connection settings and their function call configuration settings for reuse. In addition, one of Talend Integration Suite’s great strengths is its collaborative work capability, which makes the SAP settings stored in the SAP wizard available to all regis-tered users through the shared Talend Repository.
Talend Integration Suite offers additional features that can be very useful in an SAP operating environment. For example, a small change in the connection setting or in the SAP function call configuration can have a great impact on processes already gone live. Via a simple right-click, the impact analysis feature identifies dependencies in any other Jobs using this configuration.
A dialog box allows the user to decide whether it is worth propagating the change to all processes based on the shared configuration.
The SAP wizard provides a number of extra features, including: • Direct access to the detailed metadata from the SAP Dictionary.
The function purpose and parameter description from the SAP dictionary are shown when selecting the function in the list.
• Real-time testing of the SAP functions.
The selected function is tested in real time through a simple test-it button. • Direct access to the BAPI documentation.
When calling a BAPI or documented zBAPI, the corresponding html documentation is extracted from the relevant SAP resource.
• Retrieval of all Metadata (Input/output field definitions).
func-4. Conclusion
By offering the first open source connectivity solution for SAP, Talend extends the reach of data integration to all systems in the enterprise. Talend Open Studio— including the SAP connectors—is provided under a GPL v2 license and can be down-loaded at no charge at http://www.talend.com/download.php.
© 2008 Talend Inc. All rights reserved.
