In today’s enterprise IT landscapes, data is often dispersed across multiple systems, both SAP and non-SAP, residing on-premises or in the cloud. This fragmentation presents challenges for business users who require unified, real-time access to data for analytics, reporting, and decision-making. Data Federation—the ability to access and query data across diverse sources as if it were a single repository—has become a crucial strategy.
SAP Data Services, a leading data integration and management platform, offers robust capabilities to implement data federation, enabling seamless access and integration across heterogeneous data environments.
This article explores how to implement SAP Data Services to enable effective data federation within SAP-centric organizations.
Data Federation is a data integration technique that provides a virtualized view of data from multiple sources without physically moving or copying it. Users and applications can query this unified view in real-time, abstracting underlying complexity.
Key Benefits:
- Real-time access to data across systems
- Reduced data duplication and storage costs
- Simplified data access for analytics and reporting
- Enhanced agility for business insights
SAP Data Services supports data federation by:
- Connecting to multiple heterogeneous data sources including SAP ERP, SAP BW, SAP HANA, cloud databases, and third-party systems
- Providing virtualization layers that integrate and present data in a consolidated, queryable format
- Enabling transformation and harmonization of federated data on-the-fly
- Supporting metadata management and data lineage to ensure governance in federated environments
¶ 1. Assess Data Landscape and Federation Requirements
- Identify all relevant data sources and their formats (relational, NoSQL, cloud, on-prem).
- Determine use cases for federation—real-time reporting, ad hoc querying, or application integration.
- Define performance, security, and governance needs.
- Use SAP Data Services adapters and connectors to establish secure connections to all target systems.
- Ensure connectors support query pushdown to optimize performance.
- Create virtual views or data services that combine data from multiple sources.
- Apply necessary data transformations, joins, and filters within the virtualization layer.
- Use SAP Data Services Designer to build these models without replicating data physically.
¶ 4. Implement Data Harmonization and Quality Checks
- Standardize data formats, units, and coding schemes on-the-fly.
- Apply cleansing and validation rules dynamically during federation to ensure data consistency.
- Leverage query pushdown capabilities to execute filtering and aggregations at source systems.
- Cache frequently accessed data if needed to reduce latency.
- Monitor query execution and tune the virtualization layer accordingly.
¶ 6. Ensure Security and Compliance
- Implement access controls, encryption, and masking within SAP Data Services.
- Track metadata and lineage for auditability of federated queries.
A multinational enterprise wants a consolidated view of customer data residing in SAP CRM, SAP ERP, and a cloud marketing platform. Instead of replicating data into a warehouse, SAP Data Services can federate these data sources, enabling:
- Real-time queries combining customer transactions, marketing interactions, and support tickets.
- Consistent customer profiles for reporting without data duplication.
- Secure access governed by data privacy policies.
- Agility: Quickly combine data from new sources without heavy ETL processes.
- Cost Efficiency: Minimize storage needs by avoiding data duplication.
- Timeliness: Access up-to-date information without batch processing delays.
- Governance: Maintain control and auditability across federated data queries.
¶ Challenges and Considerations
- Performance depends on source system responsiveness and network latency.
- Complex transformations may require hybrid approaches combining federation with physical ETL.
- Governance and security policies must span all federated sources consistently.
Implementing data federation using SAP Data Services empowers organizations to break down data silos and provide unified, real-time data access across diverse SAP and non-SAP systems. This capability supports smarter, faster decision-making while reducing costs and complexity.
SAP professionals who master data federation techniques with SAP Data Services can drive significant business value by enabling seamless data integration and governance in distributed enterprise landscapes.