In the ever-evolving landscape of data integration and management, enterprises are continuously seeking agile solutions that can connect, transform, and optimize their core data processes.
SAP BusinessObjects Data Services (BODS) emerges as a robust and versatile platform designed to meet the rapidly evolving demands of data-driven decision-making and ensure data sources, formats, and analytical needs are managed efficiently over time.
Keep reading to learn how SAP BODS can improve data mapping, management, and connection across the entire SAP landscape and where our team of expert SAP consultants can come in to help.
What is SAP BODS?
SAP BODS, or Business Objects Data Services, is a graphical user interface (GUI) tool designed to help users build and manage jobs that extract data from various source systems, transform the data into a format that meets business requirements, and load data into the target SAP or non-SAP system.
With SAP BODS capabilities, companies can maximize the value of their structured and unstructured text data, improve the efficiency of their core data flow, and drive better business outcomes across their entire organization.
Key Components of SAP BODS Architecture
Here are a few critical components that comprise the architecture of the SAP BODS server:
1) Repository
The Repository in SAP BODS comprises a set of tables that hold both user-created and system-defined objects within their SAP system, including business-critical metadata for target and source transformation rules. Here are the three different types of repositories in SAP BODS:
- Local Repository: Contains all the metadata related to system objects, like dataflows, workflows, and data stores; schedules and executes jobs designed to maintain different technical environments; provides a local data store for each area of the SAP landscape; and allows developers to manage tasks without creating more confusion for internal teams.
- Profiler Repository: Stores the tasks created when a profile request is submitted from a designer or administrator platform; monitors the progress and execution of each task; improves visibility and analysis across SAP data flows; and provides greater insight into data and the pattern of the distribution of data across the SAP system.
- Central Repository: Facilitates more efficient release management strategies in real-time; compares jobs in local and central repositories to accurately understand any changes that occur; and manages check-in and check-out functions across the entire repository.
2) Designer
The Data Services Designer tool in SAP BODS leverages an intelligent graphical interface to provide the capabilities needed to create core BODS objects, like workflow, dataflow, data storage, and more, and store them in the local object library. Customers can use drag-and-drop interface features to structure new jobs and define transformation rules for the Extract-Transfer-Load (ETL) processes.
3) Job Server
The Job Server contains intelligent engines that extract data from the repository, execute jobs on the related repository, and link repositories to one or more job servers depending on the number of jobs being executed simultaneously and the demand for better system performance.
Job servers in SAP BODS act as integration units, storing data for real-time and batch jobs, extracting business-critical data from source systems, and loading data into the intended target system.
4) Access Server
The Access Server offers similar capabilities to the job server but is used more frequently for real-time jobs rather than batch jobs. Access servers control the real-time movement of messages between the source system and the target system using the associated XML messages.
5) Metadata Reporting
The Metadata Reporting function in SAP BODS contains all the metadata found in a specific repository, and it can be used to control and optimize reporting for the available metadata in the system, including previously created objects, target metadata mapping, and child-parent data hierarchies.
With intelligent reporting capabilities, companies can access complete data views and tables via SQL commands and choose specific metadata reporting functions in the administration console.
6) Administration
The Administration Console, or the admin console, provides a centralized location where users can schedule and monitor batch jobs, define trace log and error logs, and facilitate more efficient analysis for the execution of each job.
Main Capabilities of BODS in SAP HANA
With intelligent data integration, quality, cleansing, and transformation capabilities, SAP Data Services (and SAP BODS, in particular) help companies leverage a centralized data management console to maximize the value of their structured and unstructured data.
Here are a few of the most critical capabilities of SAP BODS for business users:
Data Quality
User-friendly experience
With built-in interface functionality in SAP BODS, organizations can design, test, edit, run, and maintain core data integration and data quality operations, accelerating deployment time and improving team visibility.
Users can leverage only one product, one interface, one sign-on, and one environment to complete tasks and improve data quality across the entire SAP landscape.
Deliver trustworthy data
By standardizing and defining core business intelligence objectives and leveraging built-in data cleansing features in SAP BODS, companies can reveal a single source of truth for their SAP data, making building trust across the entire SAP ecosystem easier.
With enhanced data validation capabilities, companies can also identify areas of improvement, determine data quality issues, and uncover untapped relationships between data services, sources, and systems in their integrated SAP environment.
Ready-to-use transformations
SAP BODS enables organizations to leverage specific customer functions and user-defined changes to extend the capabilities of their existing SAP Data Services, making it easier for users to standardize, analyze, and consolidate operational and customer-related assets across the entire landscape.
Data Integration
Third-party connections
With the integrated architecture included in SAP Data Services solutions like SAP BODS, companies can keep their core SAP and non-SAP technologies connected in the same place.
SAP BODS provides native support for the following third-party data sources:
- Microsoft SQL Server
- IBM DB2 and Informix
- Oracle
- Apache Hive
- OData
- MySQL
- Microsoft Azure
- Big Data Services
Access data anytime, anywhere
With SAP BODS, users can access their data whenever and wherever they need it, including support for databases, files, transports, applications, and unstructured content across the entire SAP landscape.
SAP BODS customers can also leverage the expertise of certified SAP partners to access existing data sources and examine predefined data changes for each data source.
Improve SAP Data Services for SAP HANA
SAP BODS provides an intelligent optimizer tool that converts existing data flow to the target system, enabling users to unlock the power of the SAP HANA database and maximize system performance.
There are three main approaches users can take to complete data conversion tasks:
- Traditional support from an Extract, Transfer, Load (ETL) tool
- Push down of all operations to the target system and data warehouse
- Data processing through Extract, Load, and Transform (ELT) functions
Enhance SAP integrations
With a native connection to the SAP Business Suite and the SAP Data Hub, companies can ensure their SAP Data Services tools understand the traditional application model and can access important metadata across the entire suite of SAP applications.
SAP BODS also offers intelligent tools that help the system leverage interconnected computing node and connector options for better data integration and read data based on existing programming languages, like IDocs, ABAP, RFC, and more.
Data Profiling
Improve scalability and accessibility
With built-in data profiling tools in SAP BODS, companies can design data services to automate data queries with multiple parallel threads, making it easier to improve job execution across multiple parallel processes or on one server with multiple different servers.
Secure access to critical SAP data
SAP BODS leverages public data keys and encryption, decryption, and masking capabilities to keep sensitive data confidential and compliant, maintain valuable relationships between data services and sources, and facilitate more secure in-memory data transformation through traditional ETL functions.
Text-Data Processing
With SAP BODS, customers can extract and analyze unstructured text data, gaining better insights from critical entities, relationships, sentiment, linguistic artifacts, and more. This way, companies can support a wider range of SAP and non-SAP data sources and improve analysis for unstructured data.
How Can We Help?
Whether you need help creating a new data store in your existing SAP environment, additional support connecting Designer and Job Server functionality in your local repository, or just an extra hand configuring job and web services in your SAP Data Services system, Surety Systems is here to help.
Our senior-level, US-based SAP consultant team has the skills, experience, and know-how to handle any SAP-related project, from implementation to integration, upgrade, enhancement, and more.
And, in the past three years, our team of SAP consultants has been engaged on more than 100 consulting projects, making us the perfect fit for all your unique SAP project needs!
Getting Started with Our Team
Interested in learning how SAP BODS can help users perform complex data transformations and facilitate more efficient data management, or where our SAP consultant team can come in to help?
Contact us today to get started!
