SAP Business Objects and Denodo

Tarik Zaakour
November, 2020
1. Introduction Agenda
2. Architecture
3. Denodo as a source for SAP Business Objects
4. SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
5. Demo
Introduction
Introduction
SAP Business Objects

SAP Business Objects (often shortened to BO or BOBJ)

is an advanced BI and reporting tool, which offers a
semantic layer (BO Universe) allowing to decouple table
models from data sources from reporting consumption.
Independent supplier, was acquired by SAP in 2008.
BO was a widespread tool (around 50,000 customers
before the acquisition of SAP)
The current incentive to self-service and the simplicity
of reporting tools has considerably reduced its footprint
Data Blending
Definition

SAP Business Objects is part of the Data Blending concept. This is the ability of
reporting tools to integrate data from multiple sources,
Business users develop their own logic to integrate data from different data
sources, generally executed in memory in the tool (or temporary tables).
Introduction

Denodo has all the functionality of a Database with full middleware read and
write capabilities. It is used as a high performance query optimization engine to
deliver data across the enterprise providing enterprise governance and data
security.
Architecture
Architecture with SAP Business Objects

SaaS

OLAP

SOURCES
 Universes import
Architecture with Denodo

SAP BO

Universes Denodo access

DATA
SaaS ACCESS
LAYER

OLAP
And more …

SOURCES
Reusability
Denodo
▪ Corporate-wide common semantic layer
▪ Any client, any publishing format
▪ Includes browser based Information Self Service tool
for business user to find and discover information
▪ Full Data Abstraction layer, i.e. provides Many-to-Many
relationship with full read and write
▪ Full DB transformation func.
▪ Can provide Data quality and MDM capabilities
▪ Data views reused in multiple BI applications.
▪ Including analytical objects or complex calculations.
▪ Reduces development efforts and improves time to
market.
SAP Business Objects
• No Corporate-wide common semantic
layer
• Only for one client, one format
▪ Only provides Data Federation, i.e. One-
to-Many
▪ It is not possible to reuse data
transformations and combinations from
one BI tool to another
▪ Multiple efforts
▪ Additional maintenance effort to
maintain consistency between models
Enterprise Wide Governance and Security Layer
Denodo
▪ Data Security – meets all highest level standards
▪ Authentication : LDAP, Kerberos, OAuth2,
SAML,SSO,…
▪ Authorization: RBAC role based, fine
granularity (rows and column)
▪ Metadata Governance – across all sources
▪ Data Catalog (Data Lineage, search,
documentation,…)
▪ Impact Analysis
▪ The semantic layer defined once and shared by all
BI tools and applications.
SAP Business Objects
▪ Security for Reporting layer– data security has to
be managed at each data source or within the
reporting layer. Can’t leverage enterprise
entitlement systems, token based or credential
pass through.
▪ No Enterprise Wide Metadata Governance - for
doing impact analysis when source metadata and
schema changes
▪ High IT resources to maintain
▪ The semantic layer cannot be shared by any
other tool
▪ Several BI tools used simultaneously with
different data specifications / semantic layers
integrated into each tool
▪ Data inconsistencies between reports generated
by each tool
Universal Data Access Layer

Denodo SAP Business Objects

▪ Unlimited Connectivity to Any Data Type ▪ Does not have or limited access to:
▪ NoSQL
▪ Big Data (only SQL-on-Hadoop sources)
▪ Semi-structured
▪ Unstructured
Performance & Scalability
Denodo SAP Business Objects
▪ Denodo provides the fastest data virtualization tool ▪ Main problem with this approach

on the market. ▪ Designed for business users: Lack of query

optimization capabilities necessary for
▪ Denodo's main roadmap is to improve the query complex combinations handling huge data
optimizer in each version. sets

▪ Denodo offers different options to control the ▪ For good performance, this tool recommends
loading everything into memory first. Big Data
impact
environment issues due to the amount of
▪ The resource manager data. The data must be updated.

▪ Business users access data sources directly via

▪ Connection Pool and Queue
the BI tool.
▪ Custom policies ▪ No control over the impact on requests
▪ Clustered and high available architecture executed on source systems.

▪ No support for multi-location architectures

▪ Transparency of the location. support for multi-
(on-prem, cloud, multi-cloud, hybrid,…)
location architectures
Performance
How Denodo works compared to federation engines for reporting tools

SELECT c.id, SUM(s.amount) as total System Execution Time Transfered data Optimisation technique
FROM customer c JOIN sales s
ON c.id = s.customer_id Denodo 9 sec. 4M Aggregation push-down

GROUP BY c.id
Tableau 125 sec. 292 M None: full scan

group by join

2M
join
group by 2M
290 M 2M

Sales Customer Sales Customer

14
Denodo as a source for SAP
Business Objects
IDenodo as a source for SAP Business Objects

For a correct integration with Denodo, BO

needs a configuration, described in this
article of ourKB.
https://community.denodo.com/kb/view/d
ocument/How%20to%20access%20VDP%20
from%20SAP%20BusinessObjects?category
=Northbound+Connections

16
Denodo as a source for SAP Business Objects

Example of SAP
Universe :
Combining MSSQL
and Oracle source
through Denodo

17
SAP Business Objects as a source
for Denodo
SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
SAP Business Objects allows users to access data using the logical model called
universe.
SAP Business Objects provides a SDK to handle some objects like universe.
 SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
Example

Alias

Derived Table

Context Relationship
Table
SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
Example

Business Objects Relations and cardinality

SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
Universe Importer
Business Objects
connection

Denodo connection
Dry run
Create Denodo folder

Universe import

Logging
SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
Example
SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
Example
SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
Example
SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
Example
SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
Example using PowerBI

Denodo displayed as relational

Denodo virtual database & views database
SAP Business Objects as a source for Denodo
Example using PowerBI

Denodo associations PowerBI relations

Use cases
Business Objects use cases
Use cases:
1. Reduce the complexity of a BO universe by providing the semantic layer in the virtual layer
• A BO universe and the DV are not completely equivalent, because the DV has a database architecture
(receives SQL) and that BO is a report generation engine (generates SQL).
• For example, the DV does not have "report metadata", such as hierarchies, metrics with default aggregation
functions, etc., and BO does not have the query optimization engine that the DV, which will provide higher
performance for various data sources.
2. Extend access to sources not natively supported by BO (such as SaaS)
3. DV provides a common semantic layer, ‘Single View of Truth’ which can be shared on any reporting tool,
ensuring data consistency.
4. Denodo is able to reuse SAP universe and access data content.
5. SAP universe can be reused by other BI tools through Denodo semantic layer
References:

31
Q A
&
Thanks!

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