Overview of SAP OData Connector stage

IBM InfoSphere SAP OData Connector stage was introduced in version 8.2. Using this stage, you can extract the data from SAP systems by using the SAP exposed OData services. SAP OData Connector stage supports extraction of data from SAP on-premises systems that are supported by SAP Pack and SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Systems.

From Pack version 8.2.0.3 onwards, following two features are also available in the SAP OData Connector stage:
  • You can extract the data from SAP Sales Cloud, and SAP Service Cloud by using their exposed SAP OData services.
  • You can also load the data into SAP systems by using SAP Exposed OData services. Hence, you can either create a new business entity or update an existing entity by using SAP OData Connector stage. Currently, you can load the data only to a single business entity.

From Pack version 8.2.0.4 onwards, OData Connector stage also supports deep-insert where in a single run of the job, you can load data for multiple entity-sets following a parent-child hierarchy. You can accomplish it by creating multiple input links for each entity set to provide input data for the entity set. This feature is not applicable for the Update load option. Also, the feature is applicable only for the connector that is available for IBM® InfoSphere® DataStage® product.

OData (Open Data Protocol) is an ISO/IEC approved, OASIS standard protocol for exchanging the data over the internet. OData is built on the REST (Representational State Transfer) architecture, which is based on HTTP protocol. OData follows a resource-oriented architecture (ROA) and exposes different resources to run various ad hoc queries against these resources. It is similar in approach to the database systems where you have tables that represent data and ability to create various SQL queries. The only difference is that in ROA you create queries by using HTTP-based OData services. In general, it supports all (create, retrieve, update, and delete) operations and as mentioned the ODATA Connector supports only Extraction (Read) currently.

SAP implemented OData support in the SAP NetWeaver Gateway. Tools for design, implementation, deployment, and test of OData services are part of the SAP NetWeaver. With the increasing importance of running application on the cloud and the resulting need for an open, uniform connectivity to SAP systems, OData became the method of choice for accessing an SAP system from the internet.

However, on the SAP on-premises system, you find many standard SAP OData services across different function modules. You can also expose different resources like BAPIs, Remote Function Modules (RFMs), CDS (Core Data Services) views by generated OData services. SAP S/4HANA cloud alternatively exposes many standard OData services with different business objects. These services help in integrating SAP S/4HANA Cloud solution with other third-party solutions.

Note: Although the stage is supported in the parallel engine (PX Engine), it currently supports extraction through sequential mode only. Therefore, the data is extracted sequentially by using one node irrespective of the number of nodes that are configured for the job.
Therefore, the SAP OData Connector stage is a source stage and supports only extraction of data by using SAP OData services. Stage currently supports only one output link and Sequential job execution mode.
Note: You can use the OData stage only in Parallel DataStage jobs. Server jobs are not supported.