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SAP ERP Connector

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About SAP ERP connector

Etlworks SAP ERP connector allows the fastest and easiest way to connect to real-time SAP ERP data. The connector works just like any other connector for connected app.

Etlworks partnered with CData to provide access to SAP ERP using industry-standard JDBC protocol. Read about CData SAP ERP JDBC connector.

When to use SAP ERP connector

Use this connector to create Flows that extract data from SAP ERP.

Prerequisites

Enable the SAP ERP connector for your Etlworks account. Contact support@etlworks.com to enable the connector.

If you are running Etlworks on-premise and want to connect to SAP ERP using SAP Java Connector you need to obtain JCo libraries either directly from SAP or Etlworks. Contact support@etlworks.com for more information.

Create a Connection

Here's how you can create a Connection in two easy steps:

Step 1. In the Connections window, click +, and type in sap. Select SAP.

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Step 2. Enter Connection parameters:

  • Connection Type: the Connection type. The default is SOAP. Available connection types:
    • SOAP: connect to SAP ERP using SOAP API. This option requires setting SOAP URL.
    • JCo: connect to SAP ERP using SAP Java Connector. This option requires JCo libraries. Read more.
    • NetWeaver: connect to SAP ERP using NetWeaver library (Windows only). Contact support@etlworks.com for more information.
    • CLASSIC_UNICODE: connect to SAP ERP using CLASSIC_UNICODE library (Windows only). Contact support@etlworks.com for more information.
    • CLASSIC: connect to SAP ERP using CLASSIC library (Windows only). Contact support@etlworks.com for more information.
  • Host: the SAP ERP host.
  • Client: the client. The default is 800.
  • System Number: the system number. The default is 09.
  • SOAP URL: If connecting to SAP through the SOAP interface, this property must be set to the SOAP URL of your SAP system. An example of this is http://localhost:8000/sap/bc/soap/rfc. The SOAP service must be enabled in your SAP system for this type of connection to work properly.
  • User: the user name.
  • Password: the password.

Use Other parameters to specify the Connection string options. Read about available Connection string options.

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Work with SAP ERP

SAP ERP Data Model

The connector dynamically retrieves schemas for SAP tables, queries, and function modules at run time. However, since it can be inefficient to retrieve the metadata for the entire SAP system, the driver also applies default filters to represent only a slice of your SAP system.

Below is an explanation of how the driver models each type of SAP object. How the driver determines what to display is ; see Accessing SAP Entities for more information on selecting the SAP objects you want.

Read about the data model.

Stored procedures

Stored procedures are available to complement the data available from the Provider Schema. It may be necessary to update data available from a view using a stored procedure because the data does not provide for direct, table-like, two-way updates. In these situations, the data retrieval is done using the appropriate view or table, while the update is done by calling a stored procedure. Stored procedures take a list of parameters and return a dataset that contains the collection of tuples that constitute the response.

Read about available stored procedures in the data model.  

To call stored procure from the SQL Flow or Before/After SQL use EXEC sp_name params=value. Example:

EXECUTE my_proc @second = 2, @first = 1, @third = 3;

SQL Compliance

Read about SQL Compliance.

Extract data from SAP ERP

Note: Extracting data from SAP ERP is similar toextracting data from the relational database.

Here's how you can do this:

Step 1. Create SAP ERP Connection which will be used as a source (FROM).

Step 2. Create a destination Connection, for example, a Connection to the relational database, and if needed, a Format (Format is not needed if the destination is a database or well-known API).

Step 3. Create a Flow where the source is a connected app, and the destination is a Connection created in step 2, for example, a relational database.

Step 4. Add a new source-to-destination transformation.

Step 5. Select the SAP ERP Connection created in step 1 as a source Connection and select the data object you are extracting data from.

Step 6. Select TO Connection, Format (if needed), and object (for example, database table) to load data into.

Step 7. Click MAPPING and optionally enter Source query (you don't need a query if you are extracting data from the SAP ERP data object unconditionally).

Step 8. Optionally define the per-field Mapping.

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Step 9. Add more transformations if needed.

Browse data in SAP ERP

You must have SAP ERP Connection to browse objects and run SQL queries.

Use the Etlworks Explorer to browse data and metadata in SAP ERP as well as execute DML and SELECT queries against the SAP ERP Connection.

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