The idea of ABAP Integration is to establish a unified model to consolidate all interaction scenarios between SAP Data Intelligence and an ABAP-based SAP system (directional and bi-directional).
The primary use cases for ABAP integration in SAP Data Intelligence are metadata retrieval, data provisioning, and functional execution.
This Deep Dive and Hands-On Session concentrates on the uses cases of ABAP Data Provisioning and ABAP Functional Execution.
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ABAP Data Provisioning Getting access to and using real business data in an SAP Data Intelligence pipeline helps you to build new intelligent applications and data flows. For example, you may want to obtain the replication data from an SAP S/4HANA system, enrich the data in an SAP Data Intelligence pipeline, and then feed it to a target storage in the cloud. The ABAP data provisioning gives you access to SAP S/4HANA and allows you to consume ABAP CDS views directly in a pipeline. ABAP CDS is the semantically rich data model in SAP S/4 HANA and allows the consistent representation of a business object (such as a business partner). It is feasible to just get this data in an initial load, but also to have a stream approach established to consume every update, insert, and delete that happens in the SAP S/4HANA system. For details about what options you have with the different release levels and release combinations, see SAP Note 2830276.
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ABAP Functional Execution In certain scenarios, it is required to enhance the scope of a data-driven application by accessing and writing data into an SAP S/4HANA system. For example, it may be necessary to execute a function module or BAPI within a pipeline to read data into SAP Data Intelligence, post information into an ABAP-based SAP system, or trigger an execution in the remote system. If you require this type, you can create your own operator in SAP Data Intelligence that references the corresponding ABAP functionality. You can find a list of all available operators in the ABAP section of the Repository Object Reference for SAP Data Intelligence. For an example integration of function modules from a SAP S/4 HANA system with SAP Data Intelligence you can also check this blog.
Other than during the on-site TechEd events in the past years, it was not feasible to provide the Eclipse based ABAP Development Tools (ADT) and the SAP GUI to our participants in the this year's virtual version of the TechEd. But it is a goal of this workshop to show and get the hands on the complete end-to-end implementation processes of ABAP integration with SAP Data Intelligence.
- For this reason, all parts of this session that require these (local) applications will be presented as live Deep Dive demos, conducted in ADT and in SAP S/4HANA by the trainer,
- The Exercises - in opposite - are then intended to be performed by the participants in SAP Data Intelligence and will leverage those objects in S/4HANA that got created during the Deep Dive sections.
In this workshop we will be using the Enterprise Procurement Model (EPM) as a data basis for our Deep Dive and Exercise scenarios. It is provided in all ABAP systems, hence also in SAP S/4HANA, as a ready-to-go demo application.
The business scenario at the core of EPM is that of a web shop run by a retail company called ITelO, a fictitious company that buys and sells computers & accessories. ITelO is a global player with several subsidiaries and locations world-wide selling its products through direct distribution channels. The company has various reseller and standard customers as well as various suppliers. Customers can purchase goods either directly from ITelO or indirectly from a supplier if the goods are not on stock. The main entities supporting the business scenario in EPM are implemented as Business Objects (BO). An example of an EPM BO is the Product BO, which encapsulates the business logic for maintaining and browsing products. The business objects available in EPM support the sales and procurement processes.
In order to support a realistic scenario, there are means to generate mass data which allow the simulation of generating real business object sample data in the area of transactional data (e.g. sales order and purchas orders) and master data (e.g. products). The generated data is approved and can be used at customers’ sites. EPM data can be generated in SAP S/4HANA via transaction SEPM_DG.
Even though EPM also provides several BO specific CDS Views, which are all linked to each other via associations, we'll be using the underlying physical tables in our Deep Dive demos and the Exercises. They are starting with the prefix SNWD_.
The relevant tables for our scenario are
- BUSINESS PARTNER (SNWD_BPA),
- SALES ORDER HEADER (SNWD_SO),
- SALES ORDER ITEM (SNWD_SO_I),
- PRODUCT (SNWD_PD),
- TEXTS (SNWD_TEXTS). Here is how these tables relate to each other:
