Beginners Guide: How to start with ABAP Integration within Data Intelligence

This guide will cover the first steps to using ABAP Integration features in SAP Data Intelligence. I will start by describing the minimum requirements for setting up your environment, and in related blog posts you’ll learn how to create your first pipeline (also known as a graph) using ABAP operators. 

The first thing we need is a working ABAP type connection. To set up this connection, we require an ABAP-based system, possibly SAP Cloud Connector, and a SAP Data Intelligence instance.  In the next sections, we will explain in detail how to set up each one of those, but let’s start with a table that allows you to quickly check the minimum requirements for using ABAP Integration and to find out whether your planned scenario is actually supported. 

Table 1. Minimum requirements. 

Overview for ABAP Integration Scenarios

ABAP-Based System 

For table-based replication scenarios, you must connect your SLT central system to SAP Data Intelligence. Even though it is possible to extract data from SAP systems on older release levels by using them as the source of your SLT configuration, you can only establish connections between SAP Data Intelligence and SLT central systems that meet one of the following requirements: 

1. SAP ECC NW 7.52 with DMIS 2018 SP02 or higher; 

1. SAP ECC NW 7.00 with DMIS 2011 SP17 or higher; 

1. SAP S/4HANA on premise 1909 or higher. 

Note that DMIS Add-On availability depends on your NetWeaver version. Whenever possible, use the latest version available, and use DMIS 2018 rather than DMIS 2011.  

Once the prerequisites mentioned above are met, the next thing that you have to do is to maintain your security settings and give the authorized users the respective authorization objects. (If this is not done, the respective requests from SAP Data Intelligence will fail.)  

For the newest releases (DMIS 2011 SP20, DMIS 2018 SP05, SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2102, SAP S/4HANA 2020 FPS01 or higher), the predefined master role for SAP Data Intelligence ABAP integration is SAP_DH_ABAP_MASTER (S4) and SAP_LT_ABAP_MASTER (DMIS), respectively. You can find detailed information about the roles in SAP Note 2981615. 

For SAP S/4 HANA Cloud users, the security settings are automatically updated when you activate the respective communication scenario. 

For older releases, you will have to include the features and the data access you want to use in the allow list. To do this, open the respective maintenance view – DHBAS_WL_OBJ_V (S4) or DHBAS_WL_OBJ_V (DMIS) – in SM30 and allow both the operator (scenario OP_USE) and the data object you want to read from (scenario OP_READ).  

In the following example, we included the CDS Reader operator in the allow list so that it can read from CDS View Z_FLIGHTBOOKING. 

SM30 – SAP S4HANA – Allowing operators

SM30 – Allowing CDS View Operator

SM30 – SAP S4HANA – Allowing Object Extraction

SM30 – Allowing Z_FLIGHTBOOKING View

For more detailed information about how to work with the allow list, see SAP Note 2831756.

SAP Cloud Connector 

The next step in our journey is to set up your SAP Cloud Connector instance. If you connect from an SAP Data Intelligence Cloud system (equal or higher than version DI2003) to an ABAP-based system on the local network, SAP Cloud Connector needs to be enabled for SAP Data Intelligence. Here we will go through the steps to set up your RFC connection.

To learn about the installation and how to establish the link between SAP Cloud Connector and your SAP Data Intelligence instance, see How to use SAP Data Intelligence with SAP Cloud Connector and the official SAP Help page in this link. 

Let’s assume that you already have your SAP Cloud Connector and your subaccount. Open your SAP Cloud Connector, select your subaccount at the top of the page, then  navigate to the “Cloud to On Premise” menu.

 SAP Cloud Connector – Home page

Now click on the + sign to add a new system. For our use case, we will select ABAP system and create an RFC type connection

A pop-up will be displayed. Select the back-end type “ABAP System” and click Next.

On the next page, select the protocol RFC and click Next.

The connection type in our example will be without load balancing, but load balancing is now also supported.  

As we selected the option without load balancing, we must provide the application server host/address and the instance number. (If we had chosen to use load balancing, we would have been asked asked for the message server host and its respective port.) Go to the next step.

Choose a virtual host and its virtual port. The host can be anything you like and will be used to create the connection in SAP Data Intelligence. If possible, do not use the name of the actual application server/message server host. The port must be numerical since as of now SAP Data Intelligence only supports numerical port numbers.

After that, you may be asked to provide a description, and at the end you will be asked to confirm your choices. Don’t forget to validate your internal and virtual hosts. You can mark the checkbox “Check Internal Host” and press “Finish”.

After that, you will have to add resources to your connection as per the screenshot and tables below. 

 If you are connecting to an SAP S/4HANA system, the resources are: 

If you are connecting to a system that has the DMIS Add-On installed, the resources are: 

Now you can test your connection using the check button. Your system must be reachable as in the screenshot above. If you are struggling with this topic or need more information for different system releases, please see SAP Note 2835207. 

Configuration summary

• Backend Type: ABAP System 
• Protocol: RFC (with or without load balancing)  
• Internal hostname: This is the hostname for your application/message server resolved in your on-premise network 
• Internal port: This must be your instance number or message server port 
• Virtual host: Can be anything you like; this will be used to create the connection in SAP Data Intelligence 
• Virtual port: The virtual port may only be 33XX or 48XX, where XX is the instance number of the ABAP application.  Note that as of now only numerical ports are allowed in the SAP Data Intelligence Connection Manager. 

SAP Data Intelligence 

Now it is time to set up our connection in SAP Data Intelligence using the Connection Management app. To do so, log in to your SAP Data Intelligence account, go to Connection Management App and click on the + sign to add a new connection. 

Connection Management App

Now, please fill in the required fields and choose the “Create” button in the lower right menu. 

• Connection Type: ABAP 
• ID: Your connection name 
• Protocol: RFC 
• Connection Type: Without Load Balancing 
• System ID: Your ABAP system ID 
• Application server: The host to your application server (virtual host if you are using SCC) 
• Instance number: Your instance number 
• Client: The ABAP System Client 
• User/Password: Your ABAP system authorized user and the respective password 
• Gateway: If you are using, choose SAP Cloud Connector. If not, leave it blank. 

Note that RFC with load balancing is allowed in some SAP Data Intelligence versions. To check if your SAP Data Intelligence Version is supporting load balancing for connection type ABAP, see the Administration Guide on the  help.sap.com page for your SAP Data Intelligence version. In this case, if you are using Cloud Connector as the gateway, the connection there must also be of type RFC (with load balancing), and instead of providing the Application Server host and port in SAP Data Intelligence, you should provide the message server host/port.  

Now your newly created connection will be displayed in the connections list in Connection Management. You can click on the (…) button on the right and then on “Test Connection” to make sure that everything is working.

If you are facing issues with your connection, search for the relevant notes and feel free to ask questions in our Q&A for SAP Data Intelligence.

If you want to learn more about our product, check SAP Data Intelligence page in the community.