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Access and process SAP data in Apache Airflow using the CData JDBC Driver.
Apache Airflow supports the creation, scheduling, and monitoring of data engineering workflows. When paired with the CData JDBC Driver for SAP ERP, Airflow can work with live SAP data. This article describes how to connect to and query SAP data from an Apache Airflow instance and store the results in a CSV file.
With built-in optimized data processing, the CData JDBC driver offers unmatched performance for interacting with live SAP data. When you issue complex SQL queries to SAP, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to SAP and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations). Its built-in dynamic metadata querying allows you to work with and analyze SAP data using native data types.
About SAP Data Integration
CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from SAP. Customers use CData connectivity to:
- Access every edition of SAP, including SAP R/3, SAP NetWeaver, SAP ERP / ECC 6.0, and SAP S/4 HANA on premises data that is exposed by the RFC.
- Perform actions like sending IDoc or IDoc XML files to the server and creating schemas for functions or queries through SQL stored procedures.
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Connect optimally depending on where a customer's SAP instance is hosted.
- Customers using SAP S/4HANA cloud public edition will use SAP NetWeaver Gateway connectivity
- Customers using SAP S/4HANA private edition will use either SAP ERP or SAP NetWeaver Gateway connectivity.
While most users leverage our tools to replicate SAP data to databases or data warehouses, many also integrate live SAP data with analytics tools such as Tableau, Power BI, and Excel.
Getting Started
Configuring the Connection to SAP
Built-in Connection String Designer
For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the SAP JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.
java -jar cdata.jdbc.saperp.jar
Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.
The driver supports connecting to an SAP system using the SAP Java Connector (SAP JCo). Install the files (sapjco3.jar and sapjco3.dll) to the appropriate directory for the hosting application or platform. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for information on using the SAP JCo files.
In addition, you can connect to an SAP system using Web services (SOAP). To use Web services, you must enable SOAP access to your SAP system and set the Client, RFCUrl, User, and Password properties, under the Authentication section.
For more information, see this guide on obtaining the connection properties needed to connect to any SAP system.
To host the JDBC driver in clustered environments or in the cloud, you will need a license (full or trial) and a Runtime Key (RTK). For more information on obtaining this license (or a trial), contact our sales team.
The following are essential properties needed for our JDBC connection.
Property | Value |
---|---|
Database Connection URL | jdbc:saperp:RTK=5246...;Host=sap.mydomain.com;User=EXT90033;Password=xxx;Client=800;System Number=09;ConnectionType=Classic;Location=C:/mysapschemafolder; |
Database Driver Class Name | cdata.jdbc.saperp.SAPERPDriver |
Establishing a JDBC Connection within Airflow
- Log into your Apache Airflow instance.
- On the navbar of your Airflow instance, hover over Admin and then click Connections.
- Next, click the + sign on the following screen to create a new connection.
- In the Add Connection form, fill out the required connection properties:
- Connection Id: Name the connection, i.e.: saperp_jdbc
- Connection Type: JDBC Connection
- Connection URL: The JDBC connection URL from above, i.e.: jdbc:saperp:RTK=5246...;Host=sap.mydomain.com;User=EXT90033;Password=xxx;Client=800;System Number=09;ConnectionType=Classic;Location=C:/mysapschemafolder;)
- Driver Class: cdata.jdbc.saperp.SAPERPDriver
- Driver Path: PATH/TO/cdata.jdbc.saperp.jar
- Test your new connection by clicking the Test button at the bottom of the form.
- After saving the new connection, on a new screen, you should see a green banner saying that a new row was added to the list of connections:
Creating a DAG
A DAG in Airflow is an entity that stores the processes for a workflow and can be triggered to run this workflow. Our workflow is to simply run a SQL query against SAP data and store the results in a CSV file.
- To get started, in the Home directory, there should be an "airflow" folder. Within there, we can create a new directory and title it "dags". In here, we store Python files that convert into Airflow DAGs shown on the UI.
- Next, create a new Python file and title it sap_hook.py. Insert the following code inside of this new file:
import time from datetime import datetime from airflow.decorators import dag, task from airflow.providers.jdbc.hooks.jdbc import JdbcHook import pandas as pd # Declare Dag @dag(dag_id="sap_hook", schedule_interval="0 10 * * *", start_date=datetime(2022,2,15), catchup=False, tags=['load_csv']) # Define Dag Function def extract_and_load(): # Define tasks @task() def jdbc_extract(): try: hook = JdbcHook(jdbc_conn_id="jdbc") sql = """ select * from Account """ df = hook.get_pandas_df(sql) df.to_csv("/{some_file_path}/{name_of_csv}.csv",header=False, index=False, quoting=1) # print(df.head()) print(df) tbl_dict = df.to_dict('dict') return tbl_dict except Exception as e: print("Data extract error: " + str(e)) jdbc_extract() sf_extract_and_load = extract_and_load()
- Save this file and refresh your Airflow instance. Within the list of DAGs, you should see a new DAG titled "sap_hook".
- Click on this DAG and, on the new screen, click on the unpause switch to make it turn blue, and then click the trigger (i.e. play) button to run the DAG. This executes the SQL query in our sap_hook.py file and export the results as a CSV to whichever file path we designated in our code.
- After triggering our new DAG, we check the Downloads folder (or wherever you chose within your Python script), and see that the CSV file has been created - in this case, account.csv.
- Open the CSV file to see that your SAP data is now available for use in CSV format thanks to Apache Airflow.