Integrate your SAP data into Microsoft Fabric
SAP systems hold some of the most valuable data of many enterprises, large or small. Whether it is operational data in ERP systems like SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA, data from SAP’s data warehouse suite of products like SAP BW or SAP Datasphere, or data from SAP’s SaaS solutions – a comprehensive view on the state of the business typically involves SAP data to be combined with data from various other sources.
Working with SAP data often requires a variety of skills: Setting up pipelines for incremental extraction of vast amounts of financial or sales order data along with maintaining and monitoring those pipelines is typically a task for data integration professionals. Alternatively, use case-specific and department-specific data consumption, along with enrichment from non-enterprise sources, is best managed by citizen data integrators and developers.
Consequently, an analytic platform like Microsoft Fabric, which provides a single, comprehensive environment for all developer personas, provides an ideal foundation to work with SAP data.
There are several approaches to integrating your SAP data into Microsoft:
- Microsoft Fabric comes with a rich set of built-in SAP connectors, serving the needs of business users as well as professional data integrators, and providing access to the most widely adopted SAP applications.
- Given the openness of Microsoft Fabric as an analytic platform, many partners have enhanced their SAP data integration solutions to support OneLake.
- And last, but not least, SAP’s data integration portfolio – most prominently SAP Datasphere – can (in combination with OneLake shortcuts) be used as well.
In this blog post, we will provide an overview of these options along with some guidance on the respective use cases.
Built-in connectivity for SAP sources
Using the built-in connectivity of Microsoft Fabric is, of course, the easiest and lowest-effort approach of adding SAP data to your Microsoft Fabric data estate. The current options provide connectivity to SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW or BW/4HANA, SAP HANA or HANA Cloud, and SAP Datasphere.
All these connectors are supported via the On-premises data gateway (OPDG), which is installed in network proximity to the SAP source system. This architecture supports SAP systems running virtually anywhere – whether in a customer’s data center, Microsoft Azure, or any other hyperscale infrastructure – in a secure way since direct network access to the SAP source system is only required for OPDG. Note that OPDG is required even for SAP systems running on the Microsoft cloud since the connectors require SAP specific drivers which cannot be redistributed by Microsoft due to the associated license terms.
Let’s take a closer look at these connectors:
SAP BW (Application Server or Message Server) connector
This connector is primarily used to access the multidimensional analytic query layer consisting of BW queries in SAP BW or BW/4HANA. It’s important to note that the analytic query layer of SAP S/4HANA – based on the ABAP CDS virtual data model – is supported with this connector as well.
While this access method is not optimized for mass data extraction in terms of tens or hundreds of millions of rows, it typically provides access to highly curated and easy-to-consume data, containing complex, business relevant KPIs. In addition, data security is handled in this layer as well, which makes it an extremely valuable access point for self-service analytics.
The SAP BW connector can be used for data import into OneLake via Dataflow Gen2. It also supports direct query in PowerBI.
Configuration of the SAP BW connectors is described here:
Set up your SAP BW Application Server connection – Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
Set up your SAP BW Message Server connection – Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
SAP HANA connector
The SAP HANA connector supports two access layers: SAP HANA’s multidimensional analytic layer comprised of HANA calculation views as well as the underlying data in tables and (SQL) views.
When connecting with Dataflow Gen2, standard access of the SAP HANA connector is via HANA Calculation Views. Like BW queries, this layer is frequently used to prepare data for rendering in BI clients, thus containing business relevant KPI definitions and data security.
However, many customers also use HANA Calculation Views for more SQL-style relational data modeling and have even built data extraction layers in their SAP source systems based on this technology. Also, SAP BW-on-HANA or SAP BW/4HANA provide HANA Calculation Views as an external interface for third-party tools. Therefore, this option can also be considered for integration of larger data volumes via Fabric dataflows.
In addition, Dataflow Gen2 offers an advanced option of fetching data via a SQL statement, by which the SAP HANA connector can also be used to extract data from SAP HANA tables and SQL views.
When used in a Fabric pipeline, the SAP HANA connector by default provides access to database tables and (SQL) views in the HANA database. This option provides some features tailored towards larger data volumes such as partitioning to fetch subsets of the source data in parallel. Overall, capabilities are very similar to Azure Data Factory’s SAP HANA connector.
For HANA Calculation Views, this connector also supports direct query in PowerBI.
The SAP HANA connector can also be used to import data from SAP Datasphere. By creating a SQL user with read access within an appropriate Space in SAP Datasphere, tables and views of the underlying SAP HANA Cloud database can be accessed. Note that SAP Datasphere does use proprietary HANA artifacts like Calculation Views, but only employs standard SQL artifacts.
Configuration of the SAP HANA connector is described here: Set up your SAP HANA database connection – Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn.
ODBC connector
For access to SAP HANA SQL artifacts like tables and (SQL) views, the Microsoft Fabric’s ODBC connector provides an alternative to the SAP HANA connector. Since it is less geared towards proprietary SAP HANA artifacts like Calculation Views, some customers prefer it when working with SQL objects.
Especially in the case of SAP Datasphere which works mostly with standard SQL objects in its data layer this might be the more natural choice than the SAP HANA connector.
Like the SAP HANA connector, the ODBC connector can be used in both Dataflow Gen2 and Fabric pipelines.
Configuration of the ODBC connector is described here: Set up your Odbc connection – Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
To summarize, here‘s an overview of the connectors, supported sources and typical scenarios:
| Connector | Sources | Access Layer | Connectivity Option |
| SAP BW (Application Server or Message Server) | SAP BW, SAP BW/4HANA SAP S/4HANA | Analytic Query (BW or CDS) | Dataflow Gen2 |
| SAP HANA | SAP HANA, SAP HANA Cloud SAP Datasphere SAP BW-on-HANA, SAP BW/4HANA | HANA Calculation Views (custom-built, exposed by SAP BW or BW/4HANA) SQL artifacts (tables, views) | Dataflow Gen2 Pipeline |
| ODBC | SAP HANA, SAP HANA Cloud SAP Datasphere | Access to SQL artifacts (tables, views) | Dataflow Gen2 Pipeline |
OneLake Shortcuts
For SAP data that already resides in some hyperscaler data lake storage, OneLake shortcuts provide a quick and easy-to-setup option. Via shortcuts, existing data lake artifacts like files or Delta tables from Azure Data Lake Gen2, Amazon S3 and others can be accessed from OneLake without the need to physically copy the data.
This opens a variety of scenarios. For example, if you have already extracted large amounts of data from your SAP systems into ADLS Gen2 using Azure Data Factory or Azure Synapse Analytics, that data can be made available to Microsoft Fabric users and workloads within seconds. Even if you’re using non-Microsoft tools like SAP Datasphere/Data Intelligence or others to extract SAP data into a data lake, shortcuts can be very handy to make that data accessible within Microsoft Fabric.
For more information on OneLake shortcuts, please visit OneLake shortcuts – Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn.
SAP Datasphere
Datasphere is SAP’s SaaS solution for data and analytics. Beyond that, it can also be used as a pure data integration tool between SAP source systems and 3rd party environments like Microsoft Azure. With this option, called Datasphere “premium outbound integration”, customers can use Datasphere’s replication flows to extract data from their SAP source systems and ingest it into Azure Data Lake Gen2 without storing data in SAP Datasphere. Microsoft Fabric Onelake is currently not supported out-of-the-box, but Onelake shortcuts can be used to make data available in Fabric.
Partner solutions
We are excited to announce our collaboration with several partners who have worked with us to enhance their existing SAP data integration capabilities to support Microsoft Fabric. We truly appreciate their commitment to provide our customers with choice when selecting the SAP data integration option that best fits their needs.
Stay tuned for more announcements over the next months as we deepen this collaboration to demonstrate Microsoft Fabric’s position as an open platform for all analytic needs.
AecorSoft offers SAP extraction capabilities through its Data Integrator tool. It supports SAP S/4HANA, SAP ECC, SAP BW, and SAP HANA as source systems. The extraction mechanisms include batch processing and change data capture (CDC), utilizing AecorSoft’s own ABAP Turbo Framework for both full and delta data loads. AecorSoft’s solutions are designed to integrate seamlessly with on-premises and cloud data platforms.
AecorSoft’s SAP certification is available on the SAP Certified Solution Directory. With its 2024.07 release, Aecorsoft supports data ingestion into Microsoft Fabric Onelake.
The ASAPIO Fabric connector integrates SAP ECC or S/4HANA systems directly with Microsoft Fabric, enabling efficient data integration and real-time analytics. It supports both batch data loading for initial and historical data, as well as event-driven updates for delta changes. Leveraging SAP business object events, it captures changes in SAP systems, such as updates to sales orders, purchase orders, and inventory levels, and propagates them to OneLake in near real-time.
Based on the ASAPIO Integration Add-on it supports SAP ECC 6.0, SAP S/4HANA (On-prem, private cloud, and RISE with SAP private cloud edition) as well as a wide range of SAP NetWeaver ABAP based solutions and is certified by SAP.
DAB Nexus is a comprehensive solution for SAP data extraction and analysis. It offers fully 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. The solution comes with predefined packages for SAP standard processes such as Order to Cash, General Ledger, etc.
DAB Nexus comes with an SAP certified extraction module to be installed on the SAP application server.
Simplement Roundhouse comes with an SAP-certified ABAP Add-On that can perform bulk loads for initial snapshots and CDC (change data capture) replication on SAP table level, including pool and cluster tables, long text and hierarchies.
It supports a wide range of ABAP-based SAP applications, including SAP ECC, SAP CRM, SAP CFIN, SAP S/4HANA across all releases. With its latest innovations, Simplement Roundhouse can now also ingest data into Microsoft Fabric.
SNP Glue offers robust integration capabilities with SAP systems, including SAP ECC, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP BW. Via an ABAP Add-On, SNP Glue allows seamless access to structured SAP data, including tables, CDS views, and SAP extractors, without relying on third-party APIs such as the ODP framework. With the recent release of its Microsoft Fabric Onelake connector, it facilitates near real-time data ingestion, efficiently capturing changes for use in advanced analytics and AI-driven applications.
SNP Glue is SAP-certified for NetWeaver, SAP S/4HANA and RISE with SAP.
Theobald Xtract Universal offers comprehensive SAP extraction capabilities via an ABAP Add-On. It supports – and is certified for – SAP ECC, SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW, and SAP BW/4HANA as source systems. The extraction mechanisms include snapshots and change data capture from SAP tables, SAP extractors, BW Objects, CDS views and more.
For October 2024, Theobald plans to launch a preview of its Microsoft Fabric Onelake connector.
