Data Sources (Extractors)

The Extractor is a new object type available in SAP Application Datastores starting with Data Services 4.0. This object type represents SAP Business Suite Content Extractors and there are two ways to consume the extractors: with the Operational Data Provider (ODP) interface or without.

An Operational Data Provider defines a set of interfaces for data that is classified as transaction data or master data (attributes, texts or hierarchies). When implemented, the interfaces enable the access to data for analytics purposes as well as for mass data replication. The key technology for delta enabled data replication are the services provided by the delta queue. This queue allows for multiple subscribers because it decouples the extractor from the recipients.

Using extractors should only be done when the logic and the output of the extractor is well understood. Today, the Business Content Extractors are consumed mostly by SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW). In some cases, the data from the extractors is augmented/transformed in SAP NetWeaver BW to make a logical record useful for reporting (e.g. by filtering the correct order types to distinguish between deliveries and returns.) This logic is not available if the extractor is consumed by Data Services to load that data into HANA. Therefore, please be careful when utilizing Business Content extractors.

With ODP

ODP enabled extractors provide the following benefits

Are used directly in a Dataflow; no ABAP Dataflow is required since data is streamed directly to Data Services
Delta recognition for those extractors that support it

ODP enable extractors also have the following limitations

HIER (master data hierarchies) extractors aren’t supported
Only works with officially released extractors, which represent a subset of all the extractors in the SAP Business Suite systems – Note 1558737 - Data Sources released for ODP data replication API

Before using extractors, please have a look at the following notes.