Extraction From 3rd

Party Tools

ETL• By ETL, we mean the following process:• The extraction of data from a source system,• The transformation of this data• Loading of this data into the SAP BW system.• An ETL tool is one that supports this process.

Advantages of Using ETL Tools (Versus Programming)

• Graphical modeling and comprehensive functions simplify and accelerate the development of extraction processes from non-SAP systems

• The extraction processes are documented uniquely and are thus easier to maintain

• You can use the ETL tool as a central administration tool for extracting data from external systems, since the data from different external systems is integrated in a homogeneous environment

• Integration with SAP BW Using BAPIs

• Business Application Programming Interface

Lesson: Loading Master Data from Flat Files

File Format

Comma Separated Values (CSV)• In CSV format, field-separating characters (such

as ;) and sentence-ending characters (CR, Carriage Return) are used.

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)

• In ASCII format, fixed field lengths are used to differentiate fields for the individual data record.

Hints For Uploading

• When uploading external data, you have the option of loading data from any work station into SAP BW. From a performance point of view,

• however, you need to store the data on an application server and load it from there into SAP BW. In so doing, you can also load data in the background.

• If you want to upload a large quantity of transaction data from a flat file and you have the option of specifying the file type for the flat file, you need to create the flat file as an ASCII file. From a performance point of view, the uploading of data from an ASCII file is the most cost-effective method.

• In some cases, the creation of an ASCII file can cost time and performance.

Extraction process for Master data/Text

End of Master Data Loading

Lesson: Loading Transaction Data from Flat Files

Extraction Process in Transaction data

• End of Transaction Data Loading