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Guidance for Partners on certifying their data integration offerings with SAP Solutions

sauravchetry
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎10-12-2023 3:50 PM

[This blog was updated to include additional information on data integration certification options for partner solutions]

The SAP Integration and Certification Center(ICC) offers optional certification services which SAP partners can select to validate their software in alignment with SAP's best practices and recommendations. In this blog, we will review certification options available to SAP partners for data integration use cases with SAP solutions. 

SAP’s solution offerings can help customers achieve an end-to-end data management and analytics requirements for intelligent decision making. To achieve this, customers can use their data from the digital core solutions like SAP S/4HANA Cloud and leverage SAP’s Business Technology Platform based solutions like SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud. 

For generic data access from SAP applications, we recommend leveraging SAP Datasphere. SAP Datasphere is the new semantic layer, which enables a business data fabric architecture that uniquely harmonizes mission-critical data across the organization from various SAP and non-SAP sources. SAP has partnered with an open data ecosystem of leading technology vendors to provide tailored integration between SAP Datasphere and their solutions, alleviating organizations’ need to simplify, integrate, secure, and govern the data landscape. For more details on SAP Datasphere, refer the help documentation & roadmap - Roadmap Explorer. 

 Certification of partner-built integrations: 

SAP ICC certification offerings focus on integration of use cases that span a specific end-to-end business process. While traditional integration approaches are still available for customers and our ecosystem to use, SAP certification program of partner solutions will focus on the latest SAP innovations. 

Customers will always choose to select and integrate partner solutions based on their own due diligence and decision processes, when working with our partners. Certification is an optional service offered by the SAP Integration and Certification Center, which partners can select to validate their software in alignment with our best practices and recommendations. 

Below is a decision flowchart that will help partners self-assess if their integration is certifiable.

 

The comprehensive list of all integration certification options for SAP solutions can be found at SAP Integration Certification Finder.

Below are some of the common integration scenarios for partner certifications in the context of this blog:  

    • SAP Datasphere: Currently, Partners can certify the business content for Datasphere. We plan to offer additional certifications options for SAP Datasphere in the near future. 
    • SAP S/4HANA: Certification option is available for SAP S/4HANA Cloud(public/private) based partner solutions that fulfill specific functional use case. Integration certification with SAP ECC is no longer offered. 
    • SAP BW/4HANA: Certification is currently offered for Analytical applications or platforms (non ETL) that integrate with SAP BW/4HANA via released SAP APIs. Partner Business content built for SAP BW/4HANA is also certifiable. 
    • SAP HANA: Before we review the certification options for SAP HANA, here is a brief overview of the licensing models. 
        • SAP HANA in On-Premises, SAP Private Cloud Edition and Private Tailored Option offerings: From an SAP HANA use rights perspective, there are two primary licensing   models,runtime, and full use.

            • Runtime is a restricted use license of SAP HANA, restricted for use where data platform capabilities are only available by and through an SAP licensed application package. There are some limited exceptions to this, most notably the ability to model views for reporting purposes and consumption of those views by SAP and certified 3rd party BI tools. All data extraction must occur via the application layer, no direct extraction from the database layer is permitted. At the application layer, the policies governing Indirect Static Read and/or Digital Access are applicable. 
            • SAP HANA, enterprise edition is a full use edition of SAP HANA with no limitations on access to platform capabilities. SAP HANA, enterprise edition can be used to run any application, contain any data, and allows open access to all 'engines' of HANA natively via the platform or the application layer. 
        • Use rights are defined in the applicable SAP Software Use Rights or SAP Service Description Guides as found on the SAP site for Software and Cloud Service Agreements. 
        • SAP HANA in S/4HANA Cloud (and SAP public SaaS offerings): All interaction with the database to occur via the application, no database use rights are granted.  

       SAP HANA Integration Certifications: We offer the below integration certifications for SAP HANA: 

    • Third-Party BI Client Tools Connected to SAP HANA via SQL Certification (HANA-BI-SQL) Certification is offered for Analytical applications for SQL based integration utilizing HANA client interfaces with SAP HANA On-Premise. Third-party business intelligence (BI) vendors integrate their front-end solution BI solutions, for reporting purposes only. Data distribution scenarios are excluded.  Certified 3rd party BI tool vendors are referenced in both the SUR and SDGs for SAP HANA runtime, to grant the use right to access SAP HANA, runtime directly. 
    • Native HANA applications utilizing HANA features are also certifiable.

            Outbound from SAP HANA: Currently, certifications are not offered for outbound ETL scenarios for SAP HANA. 


Approaches Not Recommended For Certifications: 

Below are some examples of the not recommended approaches for certification of partner built integrations.

    • Usage of HANA Transaction Log: Some external applications have utilized direct measures to read SAP HANA’s redo transaction log in binary or logical way and tried to create information out of the embedded log streams for transforming and loading data into other products. However, there is no published SAP API for the redo-log information extraction, which we have clarified in SAP note 2971304 and listed the potential issues with this approach. 
    • Usage of ODP RFC API: For real-time integration with external applications the usage of RFC modules of the Operational Data Provisioning (ODP) Data Replication API by customers or third-party applications is NOT permitted, as documented in SAP Note 3255746.Similarly, usage of other unreleased RFCs directly or via OData/Webservices is not a recommended integration approach.
    • Usage of SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT): Currently, certification is not offered for SLT based integration scenarios.
    • Usage of Smart Data Integration ABAP Adapter : Data provisioning adapters can connect to a variety of sources to move data into SAP HANA. Certification is not offered for integrations involving non HANA targets.
    • Usage of Database triggers in ABAP dictionary: Usage of database triggers created by non SAP applications is not recommended as they are non-manageable triggers as described in the SAP Note 2814740


Credits:

Many thanks to Rahul Tiwari [Cross Product Management, HANA Database and Analytics] for his support and collaboration in validating this guidance.

Hope you find this blog helpful. 

For more information or to discuss your use cases, please contact the SAP Integration and Certification Center at icc@sap.com. 

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