Introduction

SAP ERP system SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA is one of the leading ERP systems in market which enables the client to do business with ease by integrating different functional areas & its business processes seamlessly with in the IT environment of the organization. Any system that is new or old needs a continuous performance evaluation of business processes to keep the system running efficiently, basically to report the performance of the system. To do this another solution from SAP, a data warehouse solution SAP BW which has seamless integration with SAP’s ERP solution. SAP BW acquires data from SAP ERP and transforms data as part of ETL process and stores data that is read optimised for end user to consume through reporting. These report helps business owner to take right decision at right time to keep up the business performance of the organisation.

Although SAP BW is the preferred solution for reporting due to seamless integration and SAP delivered standard extractors which includes complex business logic to get data from different tables, function modules, programs, BAPI, etc  and make data available for SAP BW to acquire.

With all these advantages still, some customer would opt out of SAP BW option and choose to design their custom data warehouse solution outside SAP eco system for various reasons. Due to rapid growth in cloud computing in recent years data warehouse application on cloud are becoming popular. With this approach the main bottle neck was unable to take advantage of complex business logic that are built-in into SAP delivered standard extractors.

Now with SAP’s ODP (Operational Data Provisioning) framework data from standard SAP delivered extractors can be push out of SAP ERP system into external systems via various methods. We shall restrict our discussion to one of the methods that is Exposing SAP Extractors via ODP as an OData Service. This means any external system that can read OData can be consumer of this service.

More information on ODP framework & different data extraction option is provided within ODP framework is available in the below SAP wiki page:

https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BI/Introduction+to+Operational+Data+Provisioning

Although below approach details on how to consume extractor data directly from ECC as a OData service, but any customer can still continue within SAP eco system using SAP’s own cloud data warehouse, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud which is a subscription based cloud solution.

SAP Extractors via ODP as an OData Service

Any SAP extractor that is whitelisted by SAP for ODP framework can be used to extract data from and expose that data as an OData service for consumption. And for extractors that are delta capable can extract delta data as part of ODP framework and make it available for any external system as an OData service for consumption is icing on the cake.

List of steps to be performed to make this possible can be broadly classified as

1. Extractor setup
2. Enabling ODP
3. OData Service generation

Note: Extractor 0UCINSTALLA_ATTR_2 is considered as an example to discuss in this blog.

1. Extractor setup

This step is typical SAP BW extractor enabling step.

1.1 Activate Extractor

Go to transaction RSA5, expand sub tree and find extractor (in this example 0UCINSTALLA_ATTR_2)

1.2 Validate Extractor

To make sure extractor is active and to view the fields of extractor go to transaction RSA6, expand subtree and find the extractor.

Double click on the extractor to view the fields.

1.3 Test Extractor

To perform a test run, go to transaction RSA3 and type in extractor name (in this example 0UCINSTALLA_ATTR_2) and click on Extraction button

Click on ALV Grid button to view the data.

2. Enabling ODP

Most of the extractor have ODP enabled. This can be verified by checking the ODP icon in RSA5/6 which indicates if the extractor is whitelisted by SAP or not.

Furthermore, open the contents of table ROOSATTR to verify if there is an entry in the table for extractor and EXPOSE_EXTERNAL indicator is set.

3. OData Service generation

After ODP extractor is setup a service needs to be created to expose the extractor data. Follow the below steps to configure OData service.

Note: all objects are saved in local package $TMP in this example.

3.1 Create Project & Service

Go to transaction SEGW, create a new project by clicking on New button.

Enter project Name & Description

Expand Project and select Redefine -> OPD Extraction from context menu.

A three-step wizard opens, in step-1 input

• RFC destination: In case Gateway is on same system then choose same system)
• ODP Context: DataSource / Extractors
• ODP Name: Data Source Name

Click on Add ODP button & click Next

Model (prefix _MDL) & service (prefix _SRV) names are prepopulated

Enter description for Model & Service and click Next

Select all nodes and click Finish

3.2 Generate Runtime Objects

Click Save & click on Generate Runtime Objects button

A pop-up appears with model & service names prepopulated. Click continue.

The generated runtime artifacts appear in the respective folder under project.

3.3 Service Maintenance

Go to transaction /IWFND/MAINT_SERVICE and click Add Service

Enter System Alias as LOCAL and click on Get Services button

Search the generated service (in this case ZBW_ODP_ODATA_SRV) and click on Add Selected Services button.

Screen returns to transaction /IWFND/MAINT_SERVICE

Select the newly added service and click on Add System Alias on bottom right

A pop-up appears with prefilled alias details, click Save button to save the system alias.

Click on SAP Gateway Client button on bottom left.

A new screen of gateway client opens. With relative path of service URL prepopulated.

Click on Execute button, to run the service and the response appears with status code 200 if there are no errors.

Also click on EntitySets button on top to view list of entities within the service.

To view the complete metadata of the service, use the url

http://<server>:<port>/sap/opu/odata/sap/<service name>/$metadata

Conclusion

With this approach we can expose any extractor which ODP enabled to external systems using OData service. And this service can be delta capable provided extractor is delta capable.

Also to reemphasize that SAP’s own cloud data warehouse solution SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is available for customer who want to continue within SAP eco system.

The consumption of generated OData service is discussed in next blog: Consuming OData service based on ODP Extractor in Python