There was a web ex session on 28th May 2013 to reveal some of the new features in Data Services 4.2. Must say some nice new features coming.
The session was presented by Connie Chan who is the SAP IM Project Management.
The session began with Connie discussing what SAP is trying to achieve with Data Services. In the below picture one can see the high level points.
The features for 4.2 focuses on providing functionality around
- Smart & Simple
- Information Governance
- Big Data
- Enterprise Ready
So with regards to Big Data the following features were a focus
- Real-time Data Provisioning
- Harness the Power of HANA
- Enhance Adapter SDK
- Unlock SAP ECC data asset
With regards to the real-time with Data Services SAP is trying to bring together Sybase Replication, SAP SLT and Data Services. When I hear this I was really excited.
In order to achieve the real time replication SAP will make use of Sybase Replication that will replicate to Sybase ASE. From there Data Services will pull from Sybase ASE via CDC.
What is unclear here is whether Sybase ASE and Replication server will come bundled with SAP Data Services, also whetehr they are seperate installs.
Connie then proceeded to demonstrated how this will be achieved by using the new datastore option for Sybase RepServer. This is Step 1.
Step 2 is set up how regular this replication should run. This can be setup on the workflow by choosing the appropriate option.
Some further settings can be found on a second tab, these are more related on how frequent to release resources.
Connie then moved on how Data Services has been optimized to work better with HANA. We all know when developing with Data Services we must push down as much work to the database, but to get this to work effectively with HANA that means Data Services cant just push down standard SQL. Will need to do more than that to harness the power of HANA.
Previously Data Services would have done the below dataflow by executing simple SQL at the points where we see the red bubbles, the remainder of the work would of been done by Data Services. Now with Data Services being optimized those queries will fall away. Data Services will now create a calculation view that will get the data but also do a lot of the transformation, transformation that would of previously been done by Data Services.
Below you can see the SQL that would of been previously generated versus the calculation view that will be generated in Data Services 4.2. One can clearly see we will gain much performance improvements when extracting from HANA.
Connie did discuss that some enhancements have been done to the SDK.
Shortly after Connie then elaborated on how more extractors have been exposed to data services. Over 5000.
From the smart and simple aspect Connie discussed the data services workbench. This was first released with 4.1, was very simple and could not have complex transformations. We can now see that more functionality has been made available within the workbench. This includes the visual part of the dataflow. With the below you can see that when clicking on transforms you can apply the columns transforms at the bottom of the screen. This allows you to have a complete overview where previously while editing the transform you would lose oversight of the complete dataflow.
With Data Services 4.2 you will now be able to export and import content from the respective repositories. This will allow transportation between environments to be easier.
Above is most of the points that I thought would make the 4.2 a interesting release in my opinion.
Hope you enjoyed reading the blog.
Follow me on twitter for more info. @louisdegouveia