Open Mirroring for SAP sources – dab and Simplement
Fabric Mirroring
Database mirroring has been a hot topic in Microsoft Fabric since its introduction in 2024. It offers a user-friendly replication capability that allows you to connect to a source, select the tables you want to replicate, and mirror them into Fabric OneLake. The mirroring engine fetches an initial snapshot from the source and continuously updates the replicas with any changes, ensuring they are always in sync with the original tables. This results in an up-to-date copy of your source data in Fabric, which can be utilized across all Fabric workloads.
Open Mirroring
In November 2024, we announced open mirroring (Introducing Open Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric) as an enhancement to the mirroring technology. With open mirroring, we make data replication an extensible platform capability which partners and customers can use to plug in their own data integration capabilities. Once data is brought in through open mirroring, it can be used in all Fabric workloads. Fabric provides monitoring capabilities to check the status of the replication and automatically creates a SQL endpoint and a default semantic model for your data. For more information on open mirroring, see Open Mirroring (Preview).
The diagram explains how open mirroring works:
The mirroring process is broken up into two parts:
- Source data (initial snapshot or changes) is written into a landing zone.
- The mirror engine automatically picks up new data from the landing zone and merges it with the sink table according to the type of change (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE).
So, the key to integrating with open mirroring is the landing zone and the specification of how data is expected to land there. Details can be found in the open mirroring docs: Open Mirroring (Preview) Landing Zone Requirements and Formats.
For established data integration tools, it is therefore relatively straightforward to integrate with open mirroring, and several partners have already adapted their tools accordingly. For an up-to-date list, refer to Open Mirroring (Preview) Partner Ecosystem.
Open Mirroring for SAP sources
The most recent additions to our ecosystem are partners who have specialized in integration of data from SAP sources. At FabCon Europe in September 2024, we announced a collaboration with a number of partners who enabled their data integration solutions for SAP to also support Fabric OneLake as a sink: Integrate your SAP data into Microsoft Fabric.
We’re pleased to announce that the first two of these partners, dab and Simplement, have taken the next step in integrating with open mirroring, and are ready to onboard customers.
dab Nexus is an SAP-certified solution for SAP data extraction and analysis. It offers full and delta extraction capabilities for SAP S/4HANA (on-premises and Private Cloud Edition), SAP ECC, CRM, SRM, SCM and EWM solutions based on NetWeaver 7.40 or higher.
Beyond data integration, dab also offers consulting services and predefined packages for SAP standard processes such as Order to Cash, General Ledger, etc.
With its latest release, dab Nexus also supports open mirroring. To get an overview of the solution, refer to Effortless SAP Data Integration in Microsoft Fabric.
Simplement Roundhouse comes with an SAP-certified ABAP Add-On that can perform bulk loads for initial snapshots and change data capture replication from SAP. It supports a wide range of ABAP-based SAP applications, including SAP ECC, SAP CRM, SAP CFIN, SAP S/4HANA across all releases.
Simplement offers report templates, declustering for any table, long texts, domains, date/time conversions, exchange rates, as well as consulting services to empower customers to leverage their data in days.
The latest release of Simplement Roundhouse now also supports open mirroring. For an introduction, refer to Simplement integration into open mirroring in Microsoft Fabric.
Conclusion
Open mirroring significantly enhances Microsoft Fabric’s data integration capabilities for SAP sources. With dab and Simplement, the first partner solutions are now supporting mirroring of SAP data into Fabric – but stay tuned for more!
To finish, here’s episode #225 of the SAP on Azure podcast, where we are taking a closer look at both dab Nexus and Simplement Roundhouse with experts from their teams.
