BusinessObjects Data Services

BusinessObjects Data Services is a complex platform for the data integration process and constitutes the latest version of Business Objects application.

In comparison with previous versions of BO ETL (BusinessObjects Data Integrator), a Data Quality module is the integral part of Data Services.

The SAP BusinessObjects Data Services platform has a modular structure and consists of the following tools:

Data Services Designer

It is a fat-client application that enables the data workflows which are classified in tasks to be monitored. Data Designer helps define connections with the various data sources that are stored as separate data sources (DataSource) and all changes in a given connection are updated once and any other occurrences of data sources will be updated automatically.

BusinessObjects Data Services application offers a number of pre-defined transformations and functional objects that allow modeling of the ETL flows.

Among other, these objects are:

• data merging (MERGE),
• column mapping (QUERY),
• performance of SQL queries (SQL),
• validation of records (VALIDATION),
• comparison of table contents (TABLE COMPARISION),
• Parent-child relationship management
• Surrogate and natural keys generation
• conditional expressions which model the data flow

There is also a possibility to programme specialized functions with the use of the particular script language. Thanks to those functions it is possible to manage data operations, refer them directly to the data sources and communicate with controls and objects.

Any data flow that is already defined and loaded into the repository can be used repeatedly and constantly. Using Data Designer gives the opportunity to design and monitor the executions of the data flows.

Management Console

This application is available from the internet browser (Internet Explorer and Firefox) and consists of the following functional modules:

Administrator

This module is designed for the ETL platform and the application repository management and for scheduling and monitoring ETL jobs. Each of the tasks processed by the ETL server generates log file that is available for a given period of time. The administrator is allowed to access the transformed tasks and check the details such as starting and finishing time of the task, execution time and the status of the data.

The monitoring process can show incorrectness of some tasks (on a log-level) which delivers specific reports of these errors (from the ETL server or database). There is also a possibility of defining our own reports using the script language. ETL tasks can be executed on demand or using a schedule. Schedules can vary from simple to advanced with the use of Data Services scheduler or BusinessObjects Enterprise platform scheduler ( available in the BOE BI portal).

Auto Documentation

This module generates the ETL projects documentations (rft/pdf) with required level of specifications.

Data validation

It allows to preview data validation on the basis of the defined rules and estimation and identification the potential errors or inconsistencies of the data source

Impact analysis and Data Lineage Analysis

This module integrates metadata of the SAP Business Objects platforms from the source to the report. It allows tracing a given raport element or value back to the source system and find out what transformations has been performed to calculate this value.

Operational Dashboard

This module presents statistics and history of the ETL server tasks as functional dashboard. The user has an opportunity to preview the execution status of the tasks with the detailed information in the defined period of time.

Data Quality Reports

This module allows to review the predefined set of reports. Reports are generated during the ETL jobs implementing the Data Quality data processing.

Central Repository

BusinessObjects Data Services solutions are built based on a central repository which is independent from the local repositories of the ETL developers. Without the necessity of installation of the additional modules, it supports the team work in the ETL projects. The central repository allows adding tested scripts and then import them to local repositories or check them out and open them in exclusion mode. Versioning is also fully supported.