We have come a long way from LSMW to modern ETLs.
I attended a late late night webinar on HCI-DS (date - 24th June 2015); it was very well presented and articulated byBen Hofmans.
We have the below ETL -
BODS - primarily for one off - during the data migration phase of a project (on premise; is it cloud compatible?)
SLT - real-time data synchronization; on going activity (on premise and cloud)
HCI-DS (on premise and cloud)
HANA EIM (on premise now; will be cloud by year end)
All these products require "tunneling". Except HCI-DS.
SAP says HANA EIM is the future.
What are the best use cases for each of these?
Are there any matrices (things to evaluate would be SAP's strategic direction, and other factors like price, easy to install and use, cloud vs on-premise, efficiency etc) that would help a customer / systems integrator decide one tool over another for a given scenario?
| Tools | Pros | Cons | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| LSMW | Ever since SAP R/3 46c Tried and tested Supports multiple formats - flat files, IDocs Many SAP standard programs Simple to complex data objects | Old UI Only Transform and Load possible Extract data via other means (e.g. SSIS, Informatica etc.) | |
| BODS | One stop shop ETL tool Extract data from SAP and non-SAP sources (ABAP Dictionary, external DB etc.) Can join mutiple tables from multiple systems Modern UI to define the data flow | Does not support Delta load Operates in Batch mode | |
| SLT | Real-time data replication Delta load is supported via triggers on the source table Big volumes (millions of records) Complex Data Objects (e.g. Banking data like Account etc.) Supports SAP and non-SAP data sources Minimal impact on source and target systems | Table joins are not possible | |
| HCI-DS | Good if you already have HCI (for integration) | ||
| HANA EIM | SAP's recommended tool |