How to Activate and Capture Data with the SAP Extractor

SAP Extractor captures and prepares data via an extract structure that is transferable to the Business Warehouse (BW) of SAP. It is a program in SAP ERP and can either be customized or taken from a standardized Data Source. Both the options assist in describing a delta load process or various types of full load with the SAP BW being able to access remotely the data transfer facets of the SAP Extractor.

The point now to consider is whether all data will be lost if the SAP Extractor is moved to S/4HANA or even other SAP BW Extractors that are compatible with S/4HANA. Let’s analyze what happens in such cases.

The SAP ECC system can only be used for operational and transactional purposes and not for any form of analysis. Hence, to analyze ECC data, the SAP Extractor is used to extract data from the SAP ECC systemto be moved to the SAP Business Warehouse system. Therefore, given this factor, it can be said that an SAP Extractor is a link between the CC system and that of the BW. Later, the BW system can be enabled to carry out analytics by connecting to the Business Intelligence (BI) system.

The data extraction process with the SAP Extractor begins with assistance from several application-specific extractors. These are then hard-coded for the Data Source to be delivered along with the BI Content for the BW. The SAP Extractor is designed to precisely match the structure of the Data Source.

Additionally, multiple generic extractors can be used for extracting SAP data from source systems and transferring it to the SAP Business Warehouse. Since the full process is automated, the SAP Extractor will know which data has to be extracted and from which tables the data has to be read after the Data Source is identified by the generic extractor.

Users also have the option to generically extract the SAP data. This comprises master data texts or attributes, transaction data from all transparent tables, database views, and SAP query functional areas. This type of data at the Data Source is generically read and transferred to the Business Warehouse. The benefit here is that the SAP data can be moved directly to Excel sheets by selecting the exporting icon and clicking on the specific Spreadsheet button.

Three types of SAP data extraction are executed by the SAP Extractor.

1. Content Extraction: It is used to extract BW content, FI, HR, CO, SAP CRM, and LO cockpit.

2. Customer-Generated Extraction: Here, SAP BW Extractor is used for LIS, FI-SL, CO-PA.

3. Generic Extraction: This is based on DB View, Infoset, Function Modules.

From these, the SAP Extractor used for a specific extraction activity depends entirely on the exclusive needs of an organization. Primarily, SAP Extractor was developed to cater to the applications of the SAP Business Warehouse.