Discover how a bimodal integration strategy can address the major data management challenges facing your organization today.
Get the Report →How to Connect to SAP Data in Using Python: 6 Steps
Create Python applications on Linux/UNIX machines with connectivity to SAP data. Leverage the pyodbc module for ODBC in Python.
The rich ecosystem of Python modules lets you get to work quicker and integrate your systems more effectively. With the CData Linux/UNIX ODBC Driver for SAP and the pyodbc module, you can easily build SAP-connected Python applications. This article shows how to use the pyodbc built-in functions to connect to SAP data, execute queries, and output the results.
How to Use the CData ODBC Drivers on UNIX/Linux
The CData ODBC Drivers are supported in various Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems, including Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora. There are also several libraries and packages that are required, many of which may be installed by default, depending on your system. For more information on the supported versions of Linux operating systems and the required libraries, please refer to the "Getting Started" section in the help documentation (installed and found online).
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.
-
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
1. Install the Driver Manager
Before installing the driver, check that your system has a driver manager. For this article, you will use unixODBC, a free and open source ODBC driver manager that is widely supported.
For Debian-based systems like Ubuntu, you can install unixODBC with the APT package manager:
$ sudo apt-get install unixodbc unixodbc-dev
For systems based on Red Hat Linux, you can install unixODBC with yum or dnf:
$ sudo yum install unixODBC unixODBC-devel
The unixODBC driver manager reads information about drivers from an odbcinst.ini file and about data sources from an odbc.ini file. You can determine the location of the configuration files on your system by entering the following command into a terminal:
$ odbcinst -j
The output of the command will display the locations of the configuration files for ODBC data sources and registered ODBC drivers. User data sources can only be accessed by the user account whose home folder the odbc.ini is located in. System data sources can be accessed by all users. Below is an example of the output of this command:
DRIVERS............: /etc/odbcinst.ini
SYSTEM DATA SOURCES: /etc/odbc.ini
FILE DATA SOURCES..: /etc/ODBCDataSources
USER DATA SOURCES..: /home/myuser/.odbc.ini
SQLULEN Size.......: 8
SQLLEN Size........: 8
SQLSETPOSIROW Size.: 8
2. Install the Driver
You can download the driver in standard package formats: the Debian .deb package format or the .rpm file format. Once you have downloaded the file, you can install the driver from the terminal.
The driver installer registers the driver with unixODBC and creates a system DSN, which can be used later in any tools or applications that support ODBC connectivity.
For Debian-based systems like Ubuntu, run the following command with sudo or as root:
$ dpkg -i /path/to/package.deb
For Red Hat systems and other systems that support .rpms, run the following command with sudo or as root:
$ rpm -i /path/to/package.rpm
Once the driver is installed, you can list the registered drivers and defined data sources using the unixODBC driver manager:
List the Registered Driver(s)
$ odbcinst -q -d
CData ODBC Driver for SAP ERP
...
List the Defined Data Source(s)
$ odbcinst -q -s
CData SAPERP Source
...
To use the CData ODBC Driver for SAP ERP with unixODBC, ensure that the driver is configured to use UTF-16. To do so, edit the INI file for the driver (cdata.odbc.saperp.ini), which can be found in the lib folder in the installation location (typically /opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-saperp), as follows:
cdata.odbc.saperp.ini
...
[Driver]
DriverManagerEncoding = UTF-16
3. Modify the DSN
The driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties. Additionally, you can create user-specific DSNs that will not require root access to modify in $HOME/.odbc.ini.
You can connect to SAP systems using either librfc32.dll, librfc32u.dll, NetWeaver, or Web Services (SOAP). Set the ConnectionType connection property to CLASSIC (librfc32.dll), CLASSIC_UNICODE (librfc32u.dll), NETWEAVER, or SOAP.
If you are using the SOAP interface, set the Client, RFCUrl, SystemNumber, User, and Password properties, under the Authentication section.
Otherwise, set Host, User, Password, Client, and SystemNumber.
Note: We do not distribute the librfc32.dll or other SAP assemblies. You must find them from your SAP installation and install them on your machine.
For more information, see this guide on obtaining the connection properties needed to connect to any SAP system.
/etc/odbc.ini or $HOME/.odbc.ini
[CData SAPERP Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for SAP ERP
Description = My Description
Host = sap.mydomain.com
User = EXT90033
Password = xxx
Client = 800
System Number = 09
ConnectionType = Classic
Location = C:/mysapschemafolder
For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).
You can follow the procedure below to install pyodbc and start accessing SAP through Python objects.
4. Install pyodbc
You can use the pip utility to install the module:
pip install pyodbc
Be sure to import with the module with the following:
import pyodbc
5. Connect to SAP Data
You can now connect with an ODBC connection string or a DSN. Below is the syntax for a connection string:
cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER={CData ODBC Driver for SAP ERP};Host=sap.mydomain.com;User=EXT90033;Password=xxx;Client=800;System Number=09;ConnectionType=Classic;Location=C:/mysapschemafolder;')
Below is the syntax for a DSN:
cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DSN=CData SAPERP Sys;')
6. Execute SQL on SAP
Instantiate a Cursor and use the execute method of the Cursor class to execute any SQL statement.
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
Select
You can use fetchall, fetchone, and fetchmany to retrieve Rows returned from SELECT statements:
import pyodbc
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DSN=CData SAPERP Source;User=MyUser;Password=MyPassword')
cursor.execute("SELECT MANDT, MBRSH FROM MARA WHERE ERNAM = 'BEHRMANN'")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
for row in rows:
print(row.MANDT, row.MBRSH)
You can provide parameterized queries in a sequence or in the argument list:
cursor.execute(
"SELECT MANDT, MBRSH
FROM MARA
WHERE ERNAM = ?", 'BEHRMANN',1)
Metadata Discovery
You can use the getinfo method to retrieve data such as information about the data source and the capabilities of the driver. The getinfo method passes through input to the ODBC SQLGetInfo method.
cnxn.getinfo(pyodbc.SQL_DATA_SOURCE_NAME)
You are now ready to build Python apps in Linux/UNIX environments with connectivity to SAP data, using the CData ODBC Driver for SAP ERP.