Mastering the SAP Business Information Warehouse: Leveraging the Business Intelligence Capabilities of SAP NetWeaver, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 6Data Acquisition and Transformation

Identifying the right sources of data, extracting data from those sources appropriately, applying the transformations required, and storing the transformed data in a way that best supports reporting and analysis is usually the most time-consuming part of building a data warehouse solution. In the CIF framework, this is referred to as sourcing and manufacturing of data and information. More specifically, it involves extracting, moving, transforming, loading, and indexing data and information. All functionality required for the extraction, transfer, and loading processes is provided by the data acquisition and transformation services layer (also popularly known as ETL for “extraction, transformation, and loading”). Note that the term “extraction” generally connotes “pull,” not “push.” As real-time data acquisition becomes more prevalent and relevant, the term data acquisition is more comprehensive (for push and pull scenarios).

From an SAP BW point of view, the data acquisition and transformation services layer is composed of the following (see Figure 6-1):

• A Staging Engine
• A DataSource Manager supporting a number of interfaces to different types of source systems
• The persistent staging area (PSA)

Figure 6-1 Data acquisition and transformation services

The extraction interfaces break down further into the BI Service API used for ...