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.
- Note 1521883 - Downport 'ODP data replication API'
- Prerequisites for using ODP enabled extractors in Data Services
- Note 1585204 - ETL interface: Release of DataSources
- Instructions on releasing generic ODP enabled extractors
Without ODP
Non ODP enabled extractors provide the following benefits
- ŸWork with all SAP ERP versions
- Work with TRAN (transactional data) and ATTR (master data attributes)
Non ODP enabled extractors have the following limitations
- ŸTEXT (master data text) and HIER (master data hierarchies) aren’t supported
- ŸMust be used in an ABAP Dataflow
- No delta recognition --full data extracts only