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Author's profile photo Deniz Osoy
Deniz Osoy
April 25, 2022 6 minute read

Conversion to SAP Datasphere: Conversion Paths and Cloud Transformation Steps

Abstract

Innovate your IT landscape with SAP Datasphere, which is SAP’s strategic target solution for all data warehousing use cases in the puplic cloud, in line with SAP’s data-to-value portfolio strategy. This blog post provides SAP BW and SAP BW/4HANA customers an overview of how existing on-premises investments can be converted to the cloud. More importantly, a Cloud Transformation Checklist which can be used when preparing the project and during the actual conversion to SAP Datasphere. The checklist contains the various conversion paths (Shell- and Remote Conversion), and their individual steps in different tabs, including the corresponding SAP Notes. The checklist is in no way intended to replace a dedicated project plan, but rather to provide support for effort orientation. For initial project planning and rough structuring, it makes sense to think through all project parts one by one. Tip: Click on the figures of the individual project phases below for better readability.

Overview

SAP Datasphere is SAP’s strategic public cloud product for data warehousing. It improves agility, accelerates time-to-value, and unlocks innovation with unprecedented business user enablement, a new form of openness, and embedded partner offerings. Looking at conversion, SAP offers the possibility of a tool-supported move of SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA investments to SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge (see figure 1). SAP BW bridge is a feature of SAP Datasphere, that provides a path to the public cloud for SAP BW and SAP BW/4HANA customers. It enables connectivity and business content via proven SAP BW-based data integration (extractors) from SAP source systems. In addition, it provides staging layers of SAP BW to manage data loads (including deltas) with partitioning, monitoring, and error handling. This allows customers to leverage their existing SAP BW skills and protect their SAP BW investments in the public cloud. For more information about SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge, check out the announcement blog post and the detailed blog post. Note: SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge is not a full SAP BW/4HANA component within SAP Datasphere. See SAP Note 3117800 for feature scope of SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge.

Figure%201%3A%A0SAP%20BW%20to%20SAP%20Data%20Warehouse%20Cloud

Figure 1: SAP BW to SAP Datasphere

In any conversion, manual interaction and re-design is required (see Figure 2). The degree of these manual tasks varies from customer to customer and depends on the configuration and state of the SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA system. SAP has developed tools to automate this renovation where possible and feasible, but they are not built or intended to fix badly designed models or clean up neglected systems. The tools transfer objects based on XML files via RFC from SAP BW Release 7.30 to 7.50 (on SAP HANA or Any-DB), and SAP BW/4HANA 2021 to SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge. Regarding release coverage, please see the details in the SAP Note 3141688. Each transfer is based on a selection of a specific scope, i.e., a set of SAP BW objects, e.g., a data flow that can be transferred together in a consistent way. Please note that SAP BW 7.40 and lower are already out of maintenance.

Figure%202%3A%20Conversion%20Paths

Figure 2: Conversion Paths

SAP provides a Pre-Check Tool (see SAP Note 2575059) that identifies important steps customers need to take to ensure their system is compatible with the conversion process. The tool determines which objects are compatible with SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge and which objects are not available in SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge. In addition, it checks which objects can be automatically converted, deleted, or need manual adjustments (see figure 2).

Figure%203%3A%20Conversion%20Overview

Figure 3: Conversion Overview

Regardless of the type of conversion (see figure 3), the Simplification List (currently in preparation, see SAP Note 3154420) and the Conversion Guide are suitable as a starting point. The Simplification List describes in detail, on a functional level, what happens to individual data models and objects in SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge. The individual Notes explain what needs to be done in the conversion process. The Conversion Guide is the end-to-end documentation of a conversion to SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge. Note: There is an individual Conversion Guide for the Shell Conversion (see Link) and an individual Conversion Runbook for the Remote Conversion (see Link).

Shell Conversion to SAP Datasphere

Shell Conversion: General Sequence

Figure%204%3A%20Shell%20Conversion%20-%20General%20Sequence

Figure 4: Shell Conversion – General Sequence

Shell Conversion (see figure 4) is offered by SAP to convert an SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA system into SAP Datasphere. It does not include the transfer and synchronization of existing data sets. Instead, customers can choose to load data from original sources, load data from the sender SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA system, or simply ignore historical data and start fresh. For SAP BW systems on releases from 7.30 to 7.50 (running on SAP HANA or Any-DB) and SAP BW/4HANA 2021, a shell conversion can be performed.

Shell Conversion: (T1) System Requirements

Shell Conversion: (T2) Pre-Checks

Shell Conversion: (T3) Custom Code Check

Shell Conversion: (T4) System Provisioning

Shell Conversion: (T5) Shell Transfer

Shell Conversion: (T6) Post Conversion Tasks

Shell Conversion: (T7) SAP Datasphere Core Tasks

Shell Conversion: (T8) Go-Live

 

Remote Conversion to SAP Datasphere

Remote Conversion: General Sequence

Figure%205%3A%20Remote%20Conversion%20-%20General%20Sequence

Figure 5: Remote Conversion – General Sequence

Remote Conversion (see figure 5) is offered by SAP to convert an SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA system into SAP Datasphere. It enables customers to move whole data flows or transfer only selected data flows including data. Customers are able to decide whether they want to build a clean system, leave old and unused objects behind. For SAP BW systems on releases from 7.30 to 7.50 (running on SAP HANA or Any-DB), a remote conversion can be performed. SAP BW/4HANA 2021 as a sender system in a Remote Conversion will be possible soon.

Remote Conversion: (T1) System Requirements

Remote Conversion: (T2) Pre-Checks

Remote Conversion: (T3) Custom Code Check

Remote Conversion: (T4) System Provisioning

Remote Conversion: (T5) Remote Transfer

Remote Conversion: (T6) Post Conversion Tasks

Remote Conversion: (T7) SAP Datasphere Core Tasks

Remote Conversion: (T8) Go-Live

 

Summary

SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge, helps to accelerate the transition to cloud data warehousing while protecting previous and new investments in the cloud. In fact, the value of SAP Datasphere is clearly recognized by many SAP customers. However, customers want a smooth conversion path to secure their investments in SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA. Converting an SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA system to SAP Datasphere does not happen in one go. It is therefore essential to understand and deal with the differences between SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge. Indeed, customers should carefully analyze their existing system, estimate the complexity and duration of the required tasks, as well as properly plan all conversion activities. If customers manage it correctly, their conversion to SAP Datasphere will be very successful.

SAP offers a Conversion Execution Service for SAP Datasphere. With the conversion execution service for SAP Datasphere, customers can accelerate their move from an existing SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA system to SAP Datasphere. In addition, the course “SAP Datasphere: SAP BW Bridge” (DWCBW1) is available at SAP Education, see also the dedicated blog post for this SAP training. Find further information to get started with SAP Datasphere and check out Best Practices in the Community for SAP Datasphere. Customers will find more information about what is new or changed with SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge on the SAP Help Portal: New Features and Changes in SAP Datasphere, SAP BW bridge.

Please let me know, if you have any specific question. SAP’s Experts from SAP Data Warehouse Product Management & Strategy, and SAP Data Warehouse Development are involved in this topic.

Thank you to my colleagues Udo Bätz, Dominik Graus, Konstantinos Stergios and Klaus-Peter Sauer for their support.

Best regards,
Deniz

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      29 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Mehmet Ince
      Mehmet Ince

      Thanks, I great post. you made a complex topic easy to understand.

      😉

       

      Author's profile photo Frank Riesner
      Frank Riesner

      Hi Deniz,
      very interesting blog post, thank you!

      When will the remote conversion approach be available exactly?
      Does this approach require DMIS add-on somewhere? And if yes, what are the implications on license costs?

      Regards - Frank

      Author's profile photo Roland Kramer
      Roland Kramer

      Hello Frank Riesner

      Remote Conversion always uses the DMIS Add-On as prerequisite and you know the implication: You never get rid of it ...

      So the Shell Conversion, Is the was I would use. Furthermore, despite the Bridge is available for SAP BW System Version 7.x, a conversion to SAP BW/4 2021 would be preferred as well, as you don't want to loose existing Functionality and the conversion journey to SAP DWC could bring more complexity which is not foreseen, yet.

      Best Regards Roland

      Author's profile photo Deniz Osoy
      Deniz Osoy
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Frank,

      Thanks for your interest and your feedback. I hope the blog post is helpful.

      1. Remote Conversion is planned for SAP BW bridge release 2205 (scheduled for 21st May 2022).
      2. Yes, the remote conversion requires the installation of the SAP Landscape Transformation add-on (DMIS add-on) in the sender system. It is relevant when the realization phase begins (in the cloud transformation list at step 5.1).
      3. The DMIS add-on is covered by the licence of the receiver system, here by using of the tool to access SAP BW bridge.

      Kind regards,
      Deniz

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Great Blog Deniz Osoy

      Author's profile photo Adem Baykal
      Adem Baykal

      Thanks for putting all this together Deniz Osoy!

      Nice blog.

      Best,

      Adem

      Author's profile photo Josef Hampp
      Josef Hampp

      Thanks for this great blog, Deniz!

      Author's profile photo Martin Frick
      Martin Frick

      Wow, high quality content as always from you Deniz and colleagues! Appreciate your effort!

      Author's profile photo Poshan Ponnamreddy
      Poshan Ponnamreddy

      Hi Deniz,

       

      Very useful technical info. Thanks for sharing.

      Regarding shell conversion for BI 7.0 to DWC, is that still on cards for Q3 release.

      For customers, who are on version 7.0, upgrading to 7.3 for shell conversion becomes an additional effort and cost,

      Please advise.

      Thanks

      Best Regards

      Poshan

      Author's profile photo Deniz Osoy
      Deniz Osoy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Poshan,

      Thank you very much for your feedback and your interest.

      For the time being, it is not planned that a transfer from SAP BW 7.0 to SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAP BW bridge will be possible (the XML transfer does not work here). SAP BW 7.30 to 7.50 (on SAP HANA or Any-DB), and SAP BW/4HANA 2021 can be considered as sender system for a transfer to SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAP BW bridge.

      Best regards,
      Deniz

      Author's profile photo Poshan Ponnamreddy
      Poshan Ponnamreddy

      Thanks for clarifying Deniz. Appreciate your response.

      Author's profile photo Thomas Baer
      Thomas Baer

      Very informative and comprehensive blog.

      Thanks, Deniz!

       

      Author's profile photo Koen Van Dijck
      Koen Van Dijck

      Great blog.

      What with customers who already use AMDP in their transformations? BW Bridge only supports ABAP ...

      Author's profile photo Deniz Osoy
      Deniz Osoy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Koen Van Dijck,

      thanks for your feedback and your interest.

      In fact, AMDPs are also supported in SAP BW bridge. Customers can create ABAP code according to SAP BTP ABAP environment coding conventions for custom-logic transformations in SAP BW bridge. Transformations can generally be executed either in SAP HANA runtime or ABAP runtime depending on the feature set and programming language used. If the transformation is executed in SAP HANA runtime then AMPDs are executable via SAP HANA Script.

      Best regards,
      Deniz

      Author's profile photo Cornelius Faurie
      Cornelius Faurie

      Hi Deniz,

      Thanks for the excellent blog!

      Is there a Cloud Transformation Checklist (or links to a blog) for a new implementation on SAP Data Warehouse Cloud as well?

      A client's SAP BW system still contains 3.x and 7.x objects together with BW4/Hana objects and I was wondering if it would be less stressful to try and convert old objects and just develop everything in native Data Warehouse Cloud from the beginning?

      Thanks,

      Regards

      C Faurie

       

      Author's profile photo Deniz Osoy
      Deniz Osoy
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Cornelius,

      Thank you for your feedback and your interest.

      Currently, we don't have such a checklist for the Greenfield only SAP DWC Core approach.

      Best regards,
      Deniz

      Author's profile photo Cornelius Faurie
      Cornelius Faurie

      Thanks very much Deniz, noted. Do you know if such a checklist will be made available and if so, when?

      Kind regards

      C Faurie

      Author's profile photo Deniz Osoy
      Deniz Osoy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Cornelius,

      currently such a checklist is not planned.

      Best regards,
      Deniz

      Author's profile photo Nishant Kapoor
      Nishant Kapoor

      Hi,

      In your figure 1 you have written like Migration,Conversion*. Is migration & conversion refer to same thing OR there is some difference between them.

      Author's profile photo Eduard Schoonbrood
      Eduard Schoonbrood

      Hello Nishant,

      In this case it is actually both.

      The term "migration" is used when we talk about a database switch. For example from anyDB to SAP HANA.

      It is also a conversion because the BW objects need to be converted/transferred to BW Bridge compatible objects, e. g. cube to advanced DSO, multiprovider to composite provider, etc.

      Best Regards,

      Eduard

      Author's profile photo Deniz Osoy
      Deniz Osoy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Nishant,

      Thank you for your question and your interest. I think the answer given by my colleague Eduard should now be clarifying.

      Best regards,
      Deniz

      Author's profile photo Roberto Sterle
      Roberto Sterle

      Hi,

      we're going to convert our SAP BW 7.4 to SAP Datasphere using BW Bridge ( most probably doing a shell conversion ).
      At the moment, we only have a productive tenant of SAP Datasphere/BW bridge (later we should have also a development tenant). We need to do some tests on the productive tenant (the only one available at the moment) on how shell conversion works (i.e. converting some objects/dataflows from BW Development) before starting with actual conversion from BW Production.

      Anyway we don't know if it makes sense or it's possible to do given that:

      1. As SAP BW Bridge is productive it has been created without the option Development Enabled. This means that it is not possible to create or edit any objects in the tenant and the property cannot be changed after tenant creation. This property make impossible to create effective test scenarios in a tenant which has been set as productive. Doesn't? The only solution is to wait the availability of dev tenant and do the test there?
      2. If it is possible how can we clean the SAP Bridge/Datasphere environment after we did practice test scenarios succesfully? Is there the chance to completely clean what we've done on the tenant and starting from scratch?

      Thanks in advance.

      Regards.

      Roberto

      Author's profile photo Deniz Osoy
      Deniz Osoy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Roberto,

      thank you for your interest and the questions.

      #1 You are right. You cannot use a productive tenant for development/testing. So as you mentioned, the only solution is to wait the availability of dev tenant and do the test there.
      #2 If you want to reset a tenant, you have to delete it and create it again - or delete the relevant objects one by one (in the right order). You can also reset a shell conversion tasklist using the report RS_B4HANA_TRANSFER_REM_RESET as documented in 5.3.1 in the Shell Conversion Guide.

      All the best with the conversion. My colleagues from the SAP HANA Competence Center and I will gladly assist you if you have any further questions.

      Best regards,
      Deniz

      Author's profile photo Roberto Sterle
      Roberto Sterle
      Hi Deniz,
      we're starting a conversion project of our on-premise landscape (BW Dev/Prod) to the corresponding BW Bridge tenants (Dev/Prod).
      At the end of the conversion activities, we also need to transfer historical data.
      We'd be oriented to use shell conversion because, in my opinion, it can give us more flexibility in metadata conversion, data migration and model optimization at the expense of longer deployment time. Can it make sense?
      That said, based on this requirement i was wondering if a bw sandbox as sender system could be useful to minimize the impact on the on-premise landscape.
      In my mind, using a bw sandbox can be a good strategy if we only need to transfer/convert data models without data.
      In this case we update, adapt custom code etc... only in that sandbox avoiding regression test in the on-premise landscape.
      In the opposite, in order to do data transfer between BW on premise landscape and BW Bridge environment we must necessarily update, adapt custom code (with all regression tests required) and trasferring data models from each BW on-prem systems to each corresponding BW Bridge, isn't?
      If this is true, I don't see the point of using a sandbox in a scenario like this where apart from data models conversion also data transfer is needed.
      To be honest, I don't see other ways to achieve the expected result.
      Do you have some suggestion on this that can be useful to share?
      Thanks in advance.
      Regards.
      Roberto
      Author's profile photo Deniz Osoy
      Deniz Osoy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Roberto,

      thank you for your interest. Have a successful conversion.

      1. Shell is indeed more flexible and apparently faster, but our Conversion Experts would not say this is the path for them without a proper assessment. Terminology, but Data migration refers to Remote Conversion, otherwise it’s about manual Data loads. The cost/time of these Data Loads after Shell can be higher than the Data migration via Remote.
      2. The usage of a Sandbox would be beneficial for both Shell and Remote options. The Sandbox system can used for the 1st test cycle and as a baseline to create the new bridge Dev system. It will also give flexibility for coding and remodelling adjustments before the transfer.
      3. Linked to 2. Shell gives more flexibility for remodelling after the transfer, for Remote it’s recommended to do it before the transfer. Coding – either Shell or Remote offers the possibility to adjust it before or after the transfer, however customers usually prefer to do that after the transfer, as a “post processing” phase of the project, to avoid such changes in the actual systems and to speed up the transfer process.

      Best regards,
      Deniz

      Author's profile photo Roberto Sterle
      Roberto Sterle

      Ok thank you.

      Using a Sandbox (i.e as copy of BW Prod) as sender system for Shell Conversion, is connection to SAP source system necessary to accomplish conversion (i.e. for conversion of source-system objects related - datasources)? Or the sandbox can be an isolated environment without SAP source system connected?

      Thanks in advance.

      Regards.

       

      Roberto

       

      Author's profile photo Eduard Schoonbrood
      Eduard Schoonbrood

      Hello Roberto,

      You can certainly use an isolated environment, but it depends on what you would like to test.

      A shell conversion of only BW objects without connection to a source system is possible without having a source system.

      But maybe a test of a complete data flow, including the transfer from an SAPI DataSource to ODP-DataSource is only possible with a connected SAP source system.

      Best Regards,

      Eduard

      Author's profile photo Aaron Benner
      Aaron Benner

      Very useful information.

      As regards old 2LIS** extractors in the source system, e.g. there has been some documentation indicating that they need to be changed to ODP to be able to be used.

      Is there some guidance on this, e.g. does the extractor name change?  Or simply a "release" by running RODPS_OS_EXPOSE?  Because in this case, the queues do not start to show up in ODQMON for example.

      Trying to determine the level of conversion needed, thanks!

      Author's profile photo Eduard Schoonbrood
      Eduard Schoonbrood

      Hello Aaron,

      The following notes provide more information regarding ODP:

      SAP Note 2481315 - Operational Data Provisioning (ODP): Extracting from SAP Systems to SAP BW or SAP BW/4HANA – Availability and Limitations contains more informations about the ODP topic.

      SAP Note 2232584 - Release of SAP extractors for ODP replication (ODP SAPI)

      Best Regards,

      Eduard Schoonbrood