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richho_microp
Contributor III
Contributor III

SAP Connector - Why do you use it?

Hello one and all,

I come from an Oracle background and we currently use flat files extracted from the database to populate our QVD's and applications but I'm just about to embark on a project to integrate one of our sister companies into Qlikview and they've suggested that we use SAP connector to retreive the data.  I appologies for my ignorance but why do you need a SAP connector rather than getting flat files out of SAP?

Your thoughts and opinions would be gratefully recevied.

Cheers

Richard

10 Replies
richho_microp
Contributor III
Contributor III
Author

Sorry I should add that the sister companies system is a standalone SAP system with no links to my existing Oracle database.

mmichalke
Partner - Contributor III
Partner - Contributor III

Hey Richard,

I don't really get your point. In my point of view it's a question about your strategy how to retrieve data from a system. Your way is to 'push' data out of the system. Using SAP Connector it is the other war round 'pulling' the data out of the system.

Hope this helps !

Cheers,

Moritz

richho_microp
Contributor III
Contributor III
Author

Hi Moritz,

So if I want to 'push' my data out of SAP is that going to be quite simple for someone with no experience of a SAP database?  I'm not familiar with the database structure but I've heard that some of it's in German and the data can be replicated in a variety of tables which can make it difficult to extract correctly.

Cheers

Richard

mmichalke
Partner - Contributor III
Partner - Contributor III

Hey Richard,

i think the language is not an issue. You don't need german skills to get data out of SAP. But you need ABAP skills to write some program that retrieves data from the reevant tables and creates the export files.

Cheers,

Moritz

richho_microp
Contributor III
Contributor III
Author

Thank you for your help Moritz.

I'm still interested, though, in the opinion of other people on the benefit of using the SAP connector/ XtractQV connector over writing the relevant extraction scripts?

saniiiil
Contributor III
Contributor III

Hi Richho,

we use Xtract QV to pull the data from SAP.

For our BI guy who has not a big experience with SAP it is very easy task.

He just need the SAP table name to extract it. We don't need to use the SAP GUI or to write an ABAP programm to export the SAP table.

We are extracting our SAP data not only from Tables, but from SAP Queries and OLTP Datasources that provide an automatic delta mechanism.

The SAP connector was not an option for us.

mmichalke
Partner - Contributor III
Partner - Contributor III

Hey Sani,

what do you mean by automatic delta ?

saniiiil
Contributor III
Contributor III

Hi,

OLTP data sources have many update modes:

- Full update: A full update requests all data that meets the selection criteria you set in the scheduler.

- Delta update: A delta update only requests data that has appeared in the source system since the last load.

- Initializing the delta process: You need to initialize a delta process before it can work. The initialization selections are copied to load the delta records.

Check Xtract QV web site:

http://www.theobald-software.com/en/products/xtractqv/deltaq.htm

and SAP:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70ehp1/helpdata/EN/37/4f3ca8b672a34082ab3085d3c22145/content.htm

Regards

richho_microp
Contributor III
Contributor III
Author

Hi,

So did you buy and configure XtractQV yourselves or did you need to get a consultant in to do the work?

Regards