How to Build an ETL App for SAP BusinessObjects BI Data in Python with CData

The rich ecosystem of Python modules lets you get to work quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. With the CData Python Connector for SAP BusinessObjects BI and the petl framework, you can build SAP BusinessObjects BI-connected applications and pipelines for extracting, transforming, and loading SAP BusinessObjects BI data. This article shows how to connect to SAP BusinessObjects BI with the CData Python Connector and use petl and pandas to extract, transform, and load SAP BusinessObjects BI data.

With built-in, optimized data processing, the CData Python Connector offers unmatched performance for interacting with live SAP BusinessObjects BI data in Python. When you issue complex SQL queries from SAP BusinessObjects BI, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to SAP BusinessObjects BI and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connecting to SAP BusinessObjects BI Data

Connecting to SAP BusinessObjects BI data looks just like connecting to any relational data source. Create a connection string using the required connection properties. For this article, you will pass the connection string as a parameter to the create_engine function.

To connect to your SAP Business Objects BI instance, you must set the following connection properties:

• Url: set this to the rest API URL. After logging into the Central Management Console, choose 'Applications' from the combo box. Double-click on 'RESTful Web Service' and you'll see the access URL. By default it is, http://{Server-Name}:6405/biprws.
• User: set this to the username of your instance.
• Password: set this to the password of your instance.

After installing the CData SAP BusinessObjects BI Connector, follow the procedure below to install the other required modules and start accessing SAP BusinessObjects BI through Python objects.

Install Required Modules

Use the pip utility to install the required modules and frameworks:

pip install petl
pip install pandas

Build an ETL App for SAP BusinessObjects BI Data in Python

Once the required modules and frameworks are installed, we are ready to build our ETL app. Code snippets follow, but the full source code is available at the end of the article.

First, be sure to import the modules (including the CData Connector) with the following:

import petl as etl
import pandas as pd
import cdata.sapbusinessobjectsbi as mod

You can now connect with a connection string. Use the connect function for the CData SAP BusinessObjects BI Connector to create a connection for working with SAP BusinessObjects BI data.

cnxn = mod.connect("User=username;Password=password;Url=http://myinstance:6405/biprws")

Create a SQL Statement to Query SAP BusinessObjects BI

Use SQL to create a statement for querying SAP BusinessObjects BI. In this article, we read data from the MyCustomReport entity.

sql = "SELECT StoreName, TotalRevenue FROM MyCustomReport WHERE State = 'CA'"

Extract, Transform, and Load the SAP BusinessObjects BI Data

With the query results stored in a DataFrame, we can use petl to extract, transform, and load the SAP BusinessObjects BI data. In this example, we extract SAP BusinessObjects BI data, sort the data by the TotalRevenue column, and load the data into a CSV file.

Loading SAP BusinessObjects BI Data into a CSV File

table1 = etl.fromdb(cnxn,sql)

table2 = etl.sort(table1,'TotalRevenue')

etl.tocsv(table2,'mycustomreport_data.csv')

With the CData Python Connector for SAP BusinessObjects BI, you can work with SAP BusinessObjects BI data just like you would with any database, including direct access to data in ETL packages like petl.

Free Trial & More Information

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData Python Connector for SAP BusinessObjects BI to start building Python apps and scripts with connectivity to SAP BusinessObjects BI data. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.

Full Source Code

import petl as etl
import pandas as pd
import cdata.sapbusinessobjectsbi as mod

cnxn = mod.connect("User=username;Password=password;Url=http://myinstance:6405/biprws")

sql = "SELECT StoreName, TotalRevenue FROM MyCustomReport WHERE State = 'CA'"

table1 = etl.fromdb(cnxn,sql)

table2 = etl.sort(table1,'TotalRevenue')

etl.tocsv(table2,'mycustomreport_data.csv')