Data ready to hand

Around 80 percent of SAP-using SMEs access data from their ERP system several times a day, according to the results of the "SAP in SMEs" study by Theobald Software. Around 15 percent even do so at least six times a day, and some even access data more than ten times a day. This intensity of use underpins the enormous importance of keeping the data used up to date. 

This is matched by the fact that almost 90 percent of the companies surveyed consider access to real-time data in SAP systems to be rather or very important. For 44 percent, the speed at which SAP data is available is also highly relevant - but almost a third see precisely this as a major challenge. This is because the current methods for data extraction have their pitfalls.

Complete data dump

A complete data pull from the SAP system can be a complex and time-consuming undertaking. While the data export process itself is relatively simple, numerous issues can arise that affect the duration of the data pull and performance.

One of the biggest problems with a complete data pull is the enormous amount of information that needs to be exported. Depending on the size of the company and the amount of data stored in the system, the data pull can take hours, days or even weeks. During this time, the SAP system is sometimes heavily loaded, often causing delays in other business processes. In addition, the export process can affect network bandwidth and cause other systems in the company to operate more slowly.

Finally, it may also be difficult to complete the data export without errors or interruptions occurring. These can slow down the export process, and data loss is also possible. 

The alternative is the incremental deduction of SAP data. This refers to a data export that only takes into account the changes to the data since the last pull. In contrast to a complete data pull, not all data has to be re-exported here, which leads to considerable savings in time and resources. The system is less burdened and other business processes continue to run.

Incremental deduction

In addition, an incremental deduction is significantly more reliable than a complete one. Since only changed data is exported, the risk of errors and interruptions is significantly lower. This also reduces the risk of data loss and increases accuracy.

But it is also true that this method requires in-depth expert knowledge due to its complexity. In addition, significant costs are involved. Companies need a simpler and more economical approach that also allows truly all SAP data to be extracted incrementally.

CDC software is a near real-time data extraction solution for SAP tables - with little SAP configuration. Change Data Capture (CDC) is a software technique for tracking data changes in real time, for example, by inserting, updating and deleting on the SAP side. The software then passes the captured changes to a downstream process or third-party system. Theobald Software offers such a component: Table CDC. This allows CDC to be used directly with SAP tables. The component, which requires little installation or configuration in SAP, extracts delta content from SAP tables. It creates a log table in SAP to record insert, update and delete operations.

Capturing changes in SAP as the source system and transferring them to the target system synchronizes both systems. The result is reliable data replication to the cloud or DB storage and cloud migration without downtime. Table CDC is suitable for almost all SAP tables. The new feature is not limited to specific tables, such as those with a timestamp, in order to be able to implement an incremental data dump. This saves resources and working time.