Unlock Your SAP Data Potential: Introducing SAP Business Data Cloud's Foundation Services and Data Products

Introduction:

In today's data-driven world, accessing and leveraging operational data efficiently is paramount. SAP Business Data Cloud's Foundation Services offer a game-changing approach, transforming raw data into readily consumable Data Products. This innovative solution simplifies data integration, enhances trust, and accelerates your analytical journey, allowing you to reach visualization stages without deep knowledge of underlying data structures.

The Challenge of Traditional Data Analysis:

Traditionally, analyzing operational data from diverse SAP sources involved a complex Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) process. This required in-depth knowledge of the operational data model to develop transformations for generating analytical models and visualizations. SAP Business Data Cloud streamlines this process.

Introducing Data Products: The New Standard for Integration

SAP Business Data Cloud introduces the concept of Data Products. Think of operational data as a product with a predefined, stable structure, well-defined interfaces, lifecycle management, and documentation. This ensures:

• Easy Consumption: Consume operational data without complexities.
• Trust: Rely on accurate and consistent data provided by the Data Product owner.
• Security: Access data securely and in a governed manner.

Data Product providers follow a standardized process (needs analysis, design, delivery) and are responsible for providing accurate data in the correct format. Key characteristics include:

• A "data set" of master or transaction data.
• Exposed by a "producer" to fulfill the needs of "consumers."
• Optimized toward "intensive reads" and consumed read-only.
• Self-describing, using Open Resource Discovery (ORD).
• Owned by domain owners, ideally the same team responsible for operational data.
• Grouped into Data Packages.

Examples of Data Products: CountryRegion, HANACurrency, Cost Center, Journal Entry Header, Ledger, Financial Planning Entry Item. The Financial Planning Entry Item Data Product is a combination of entity types like Financial Planning Entry Item and Planning Category. A Data Package could contain CountryRegion and HANACurrency Data Products (cross-application items) or all Data Products for Accounting and Financial Close (e.g., Journal Entry Header and Financial Planning Entry Item).

Delta Sharing: Zero-Copy Data Access for Scalable Analytics

Analytical environments often require handling massive data volumes, making relational database storage expensive. SAP Business Data Cloud uses a Data Lake approach, storing data in files to widen the range of consumption tools. Data Products are primarily consumed through the Delta Sharing protocol, an open protocol enabling:

• Zero-Copy Access: No data movement/copying.
• Broad Compatibility: Support for most consumption tools.
• Central Governance.
• Scalability.

With Delta Sharing, a data provider shares cloud-stored tables or partitions in Delta Lake format. Delta Lake is an open-source file format that accelerates metadata operations for large tabular datasets, offering relational-like features (caching, SQL-on-files commands). The data provider manages access through a sharing server. The data consumer uses a Delta Sharing client (e.g., Apache Spark, Python). The client authenticates, is authorized, and receives temporary URLs for direct file downloads from the cloud provider, enabling fast, large-scale data transfer without going through the sharing server. (See delta.io for more). Note that Delta Sharing differs from sharing in SAP Datasphere Spaces or the SAP Datasphere Marketplace.

Foundation Services: Your Gateway to SAP Data Products

SAP Business Data Cloud provides Data Products and Delta Sharing via the Foundation Services. These services discover Data Products managed by different SAP Lines of Businesses (LoBs) using the Open Resource Discovery (ORD) protocol. SAP will onboard LoBs progressively, starting with SAP S/4HANA Cloud. You can explore Data Product Definitions and trigger data extraction. The data is stored in the SAP Business Data Cloud Data Lake as Delta Lake tables, ready for analytics or machine learning.

Key Takeaways

• Foundation Services help you get to the visualization point without knowing the underlying operational data model.
• Operational data is seen as a product with a predefined and stable structure and interfaces, lifecycle management, and documentation.
• Any changes to the data preparation behind the scenes are the responsibility of the Data Product owner.

Conclusion: Embrace the Future of Data Management

As organizations continue to navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape, leveraging robust solutions like SAP Business Data Cloud becomes essential for driving business success. By adopting Foundation Services and utilizing Data Products effectively, businesses can enhance their analytical capabilities while ensuring trustworthiness and security in their operations. The ability to access high-quality data effortlessly empowers teams across various functions—from finance to supply chain—to make informed decisions quickly.

Don't let traditional barriers hold you back; embrace this new era of data management with SAP Business Data Cloud. Explore how you can unlock your organization’s potential today!