SAP BW 7.3: How to extract data from SQL Server using DB Connect

In this document (my first one) I will comment how to create a connection from SAP BW to SQL Server step by step and the small problems that I encountered during the process. I hope it can help to someone who has to perform this process in the future.

Step 1. Create the Source System.

RSA1 –> Source Systems –> Right click on “DB Connect” –> Create…

Step 2. We need to fill the next fields:

Logical System Name: in our case we have named “MSSQLS”.

Source System Name: Text field (40 Characters Long).

Type and release: here we can specify a type and a release of this source system.

Step 3. Once named the system we have to create the connection parameters:

DB Connection: the logical name with which we have created our connection.

DBMS: the database type to which you want to connect. In this case “MSS”. There are the following ones:

User Name and DB Password: user and password with which we are going to connect to the database.

Conn. Info: specific information for database connection. In our case:

MSSQL_SERVER=SERVERNAME1 MSSQL_DBNAME=DBNAME1 OBJECT_SOURCE=SAP

With:

MSSQL_SERVER: name of the server we are going to connect.

MSSQL_DBNAME: name of the database from which we will extract data.

OBJECT_SOURCE: name of the schema in which the tables are available.

Permanent: related to what happens when an open database connection is lost due to a database failure or lost network connection.

Connection Limit: Maximum Number of DB Connections

Optimum Conns: Optimal number of DB Connections

Step 4. In SQL Server the user must have the following permissions:

Step 5. We check that the connection is correct.

Step 6. We select the tables or views from which we want to extract the information.

Right-click –> Additional Functions –> Select Database Tables (3.x)

Then we press “Execute”:

The following tables and views have been found:

… the same views we wanted to access:

Important note: as seen in the image below, we cannot access “View_2” because the names of the tables/views (and their fields) must be in UPPERCASE.

Step 7. If we select any of the first four tables and we press “Edit DataSource” we can see the fields (Field Name, Database Type, Length in Database …) of each table:

Step 8. If we press “Display Table Contents”   we can see the content:

Step 9. If we press “Check DataSource”   we can verify the DataSource. In this case displays a warning because the length of one of the fields is larger than 16:

Step 10. And if we press “Generate DataSource”   we create the DataSource in BW side.

A message shows that the DataSource (6DB_tablename) has been successfully generated:

Step 11. If we return to the Workbench we can see that our DataSource has been generated (in version 3.x):

Step 12. Click the right mouse button and migrate the DataSource to version 7.0.

Step 13. Create the transformation rules (as we can see below):

Step 14. Create the Infopackage and DTP.

Step 15. Execute the Infopackage and DTP and we can see that our Infoobject (ZCCAA2) has been loaded correctly:

Best regards,

Carlos