SAP ECC OCF Connector: Overview

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

The OCF Connector for SAP ECC was developed by Alation and is available as a Zip file that can be uploaded and installed in the Alation application. The connector is compiled together with the required database driver, so no additional effort is needed to procure and install the driver.

To download the SAP ECC OCF connector package, go to the Alation Connector Hub available from the Customer Portal. Go to Customer Portal > Connectors > Alation Connector Hub. Only Alation users with access to the Customer Portal can access the Alation Connector Hub. If you don’t have access to the Customer Portal, contact Alation Support.

Extraction from an SAP ECC data source requires the use of a separate tool—Alation Rala.

Note

Create a ticket with Alation Support about receiving the SAP ECC connector package, Alation Rala installer, and Rala documentation.

Cataloging an SAP ECC data source in Alation includes two stages:

  1. Using Alation Rala to extract metadata from SAP ECC and export it to JSON files.

  2. Using the OCF Connector for SAP ECC to extract metadata from the source JSON files into Alation.

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The exported JSON files that you want ingested into the Alation catalog need to be placed onto a supported storage system. The connector can work with three storage systems:

  • Amazon S3

  • Azure Storage

  • Windows SMB file share.

The connector can be used on both Alation on-premise and Cloud Service instances. It extracts and catalogs such SAP ECC assets as:

  • Schema

  • Table

  • View

  • Column

  • DataAsset

  • DataAssetGroup

Object Mapping Between SAP ECC and Alation

Refer to the table below for information on how the extracted SAP ECC objects are mapped onto Alation objects:

  • Asset types are represented as schemas.

  • Tables are inferred from Table asset names. The logical name and the full path to a table-level object will be extracted into the Source Comments field on the catalog page of this object.

  • Columns are inferred from Column asset names.

SAP Asset Type

Alation object

  • Schema

  • Table

  • View

  • DataAsset

  • DataAssetGroup

Schema

Table asset name

Table

Column asset name

Column

Tables and columns are mapped to asset names. In the example below, the asset with assetName = /ABC1/NAME will be a table /ABC1/NAME under a schema named Table in Alation:

{
 "assetType": "Table",
 "assetName": "/ABC1/NAME",
 "displayName": "/ABC1/NAME",
 "attributes":
    {
     "PhysicalName": "/ABC1/NAME",
     "LogicalName": "Shipped items",
     "LongDescription": null,
     "TableType": "Transparent",
     "RowCount": 0,
     "MetaDataChanged": "2004-02-10T13:59:10"
    }
}

In the next example, the asset with the assetName = /ABC1/NAME > DEF2 will be a column with the name DEF2 under the table /ABC1/NAME in Alation:

{
  "assetType": "Column",
  "assetName": "/ABC1/NAME > DEF2",
  "displayName": "DEF2",
  "attributes":
    {
      "PhysicalName": "DEF2",
      "LogicalName": "Client",
      "LongDescription": "A legally independent unit",
      "ColumnPosition": 1,
      "IsPrimaryKey": true,
      "IsNullable": false,
      "DataType": "CLNT",
      "LogicalDataType": "String",
      "DbmsDataType": "VARCHAR2(3)",
      "Size": 3,
      "DataElement": "DEF2",
      "Domain": "DEF2"
    }
}

Supported Relationships

The connector processes asset-to-asset relationships in SAP exports in order to build foreign key and lineage relationships in the Alation catalog. The following relationships are analyzed:

Relationship

Used for

ColumnFKeyColumn

Table-level lineage or foreign key relationships

ViewComposedOfTable

Table-level lineage

ViewComposedOfView

Table-level lineage

ColumnViewLinkColumn

Table-level lineage or foreign key relationships

DataAssetGroupHierarchyRef

Table-level lineage

DataAssetGroupToDataStructure

Table-level lineage

Supported Asset Attributes

Asset Attributes

Is Supported?

Extracted as

PhysicalName

Yes

Name of the Alation object

LogicalName

Yes

Source Comments

LongDescription

Yes

Source Comments

ColumnPosition

Yes

Ordinal position of column object

IsPrimaryKey

Yes

Primary key information

IsNullable

Yes

Column properties

DataType

Yes

Column properties

LongDescription

No

TableType

No

RowCount

No

Size

No

DecimalPlaces

No

DataElement

No

Domain

No

LogicalDataType

No

DbmsDataType

No

IsMarkedColumn

No

IsLinkedToMarkedColumn

No

IsMarkedOrLinkedColumn

No

MetaDataChanged

No

Team

You will need the assistance of your SAP administrators and your infrastructure administrator to configure the use of the SAP ECC connector end to end, which involves the following activities:

  • Install Alation Rala in your network

  • Provide a database as the Alation Rala Repository

  • Grant the appropriate access rights for Alation Rala to connect to SAP ECC

  • Extract metadata from SAP ECC into Alation Rala Repository

  • Export metadata from Alation Rala to the JSON format

  • Procure storage for the exported JSON files and collect access information for Alation

  • Install the connector in Alation

  • Create and configures an SAP ECC data source in Alation

More details are available in SAP ECC OCF Connector: Install and Configure.

Scope

The table below describes which metadata objects are extracted by the connector and which catalog functionality is supported.

Feature

Scope

Availability

Authentication

Depends on the storage system

  • Azure Storage

    • Azure Storage account name

    • Azure Storage key

  • Windows SMB

    • SMB file share user

    • SMB file share password

  • Amazon S3

    • User access key ID

    • User secret access key

Yes

SSL

No

Kerberos

Not applicable

No

LDAP

Not applicable

No

Metadata extraction (MDE)

Default MDE (full extraction)

Extraction of metadata from JSON exports stored on a supported storage system.

Selective MDE is not supported.

Yes

Custom query-based MDE

Not applicable

No

Extracted metadata objects

Data Source

Data source object in Alation that is parent to extracted metadata

Yes

Schemas

List of schemas

Yes

Tables

List of tables

Yes

Columns

List of columns

Yes

Views

List of views

Yes

Source comments

The LogicalName and LongDescription field values are extracted as source comments.

Yes

Primary keys

Primary key information for extracted tables

Yes

Foreign keys

Foreign key information for extracted tables

Yes

Sampling and Profiling

No

Query Log Ingestion (QLI)

No

Compose

No

Popularity

No

Lineage

Direct lineage based on MDE *

Alation calculates lineage based on the relationship files exported from SAP ECC. The relations represent references between SAP ECC assets. Alation extracts the source asset names, target asset names, and relationship type, and builds lineage between source tables, target tables, and dataflow objects. The name of the relationship is added to the dataflow content. Lineage data is available on the Lineage tab on catalog pages of tables.

Yes

* Direct lineage extraction from OCF data sources is enabled by default from version 2023.1. It is controlled by the alation_conf parameter alation.ocf.mde.direct_lineage.enable_extraction. With this setting in True, Alation will calculate the direct lineage data for your ECC data source during MDE.

Limitations

  • The connector does not support parallel streaming and only streams from one source at a time.

  • You may notice a delay in displaying lineage after a successful MDE, as the direct lineage calculation takes some time to complete. The delay is proportional to the size of the extracted data and may vary from several seconds to 1 minute.

  • Some assetName values may include the “greater than” special character >. The connector splits such values and ingests the content after the “greater than” symbol as the column name. As the result, you may see an incorrect column name on the corresponding catalog page.