SDI - writing back to the source system ?

[former_member680959]

Morning all , we are looking at our integration architecture and believe that SDI is a good option but have an open question.

We are looking to extract data from onpremise to S/4 on the Cloud , and whilst SDi seems great for the ETL type processes we are not sure if we can also use it to write back to the source system .

Use case

Transfer from source (onpremise) to target (cloud) . Transform and calculate in target . Push back from target to source . Part of this result , even basic text needs to be written back to source onpremise system . All Sap to Sap integration .

Can we use SDI or SDA for this ? Are there other SAP integration tools we should be considering .

Thank you in advance

[li_jin · Accepted solution]

First I want to clarify the meaning of "Write back".
SDI is mainly used to transfer data from various of sources to HANA DB, for example, MSSQL DB to HANA, Oracle DB to HANA, etc. So HANA should be the target for most scenarios.
But SDI does support to write data from HANA back to source, like to MSSQL, to Oracle, etc. This kind of reversed flow is called "Write back" from SDI perspective. SDI supports this kind of write back for some of the adapter types, you will need to check SDI document to confirm if the adapter types you are using support write back or not.

Reading your description about "write back", it seems to be different scenario. Seems you need to transfer data from source to target and then back to source again.
If you want to write data to both HANA and other tables in source DB, it should be possible, but as mentioned above, please check if the adapter type supports write back or not.

There are other products from SAP you can consider, Data Services(supports to transfer data in batch), SLT(ABAP based tool, support real time replication, but supported DB types are limited), CPI(Mainly used to transfer data to HANA on cloud).

[werner_daehn · Accepted solution]

Very good answer: +1

The other thing to consider is if you really want to exchange the data on database level. For example, you cannot even write into the S/4Hana Cloud tables directly or your onPrem ERP. Yes, there are option to load an intermediate stage table and then batch-import that into the ERP but that is more for migration. Hence the best option would be to use BAPIs on both sides.

A dataflow like reading ERP data, assemble the BAPI call and then invoke the S/4Hana BAPI. And same direction back.

So you would need a tool that supports that nicely, hence I would consider Data Services or SAP Process Orchestration (SAP PI). The other tools can do it also but it is not their sweet spot.

[former_member680959 · Accepted solution]

Hi Li Jin

Write back for us refers to a business process mechanism . For example in some cases as part of the business process , we will extract data from the source system normally onpremise , say a customer invoice and then pass this on to our SCP environment , transform and then to a 3rd party . After which depending on the process the 3rd party will give us some form of number/text etc that needs to be passed through the SCP platform and "written back" to the original document from the source system .

Thanks for the rest of your answer seems that SDI can write back but we need to check the adaptor we end up using .

Many thanks

Paul

[former_member680959 · Accepted solution]

Thank you Werner we will not be writing back at DB level but at normal transaction level , in all cases we will add additional data to an already existing document in a standard field . We are also considering using BAPIs but we are trying to stay away from PI as it may be a bit too heavy for our needs . Thanks again Paul