Recently I attended a training session on HANA and here is my analysis with regards to Data provisioning.
SAP HANA comes in three flavors –
Platform - Platform version is intended for the customers who have ETL licenses
Enterprise - Comes with SLT replication server and SAP Business objects data services.
Extended – Enterprise + Sybase
Data provisioning is all about ways to get the data from SAP /NON-SAP systems into SAP –HANA. Differences listed below are true when the source system is SAP.
SAP-HANA provides three ways of data provisioning.
From a technical perspective I have listed out the options available in ETL based replication and Trigger based replication.
| SAP BO Data Services (ETL Based Replication) | SLT Replication Server (SAP Load transformation Replication server – Trigger Based Replication) |
Connections | Separate connections are to be configured in data services to connect to source SAP system and SAP HANA. For Metadata, SAP HANA directly connects to SAP systems and the meta data is imported into SAP BO data services. | Schema defines the configuration of data replication and is done with in SAP HANA system. SAP HANA communicates to the source system using a RFC connection. |
Landscape | Installed separately | Installed on a separate system or on the ERP system |
Mapping | Specific columns can be chosen and mapped | All the columns in the table are mapped |
Transformation | For complex logic, Transformations can be performed with in BOBJ and the data is sent to SAP HANA. | No transformations are available. Data is mapped as is from source system. |
Meta data Creation | Meta data can be created for specific tables. | All source system tables metadata is retrieved. Specific tables cannot be chosen |
Initial Data Load | A batch process or real time job can be created for initial data load. Data load process needs to be done for each specific table. Operational data providers(Extractors) can be used for data extraction | Load or replicate process can be used for initial data load. Multiple tables can be selected at once for initial data load. |
Delta Load | SAP standard extractors (Operation data providers – ODP) can be used for Delta load. For tables where ODP is not available, Delta mechanism can be configured with in Data services. No Separate installation is required on Source system | Deltas - Specific tables within the source system can be marked for replication |