Building up a new dataflow can be very time-consuming, mainly when there is no data acquisition layer to extract data from. Setting up a proper data acquisition layer means considering which fields to extract towards the data warehouse system. Since not all fields of a table used in the source system it is advisable to first analyze which fields are useful. Extracting all fields results in empty and unused objects in the Data Warehouse system, which technically results in a bigger database.
In order to make everybody’s life easier I created the ABAP program “SAP Business Warehouse extractor and table analyzer”. This program can be used to analyze Business Content extractors (like 2LIS structures) or SAP tables.
Based on the given parameter the program analyzes all relevant fields that are part of an extractor or table and suggests which fields to extract. For Business Content extractors it also suggest if a field could be extracted with a standard append statement using the LBWE transaction. The analysis will result in an overview as seen below.
The “SAP Business Warehouse extractor and table analyzer” is also useful to verify if all available fields in a BW object are filled properly. This can be useful when doing unit tests. For this specific case the ABAP program must be executed from the SAP BW system and instead of filling in a extract structure name a table name is necessary.
Thanks to Sven van Leuken who contributed to this program by solving a shortdump!
