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SAP Data Services

SAP Gold Partner · Data Services · BODS · ETL · ELT · Data Quality · Data Migration

SAP Data Services

SAP Data Services (BODS) is SAP's enterprise data integration, data quality and data cleansing platform — a unified environment for extracting, transforming, loading, profiling, cleansing and matching data across SAP and non-SAP landscapes. It is ranked among the top 5 ETL tools globally and remains the primary data movement engine behind most SAP BW, S/4HANA migration and master data initiatives.

2iSolutions delivers SAP Data Services across the full lifecycle: ETL design and development, data migration for S/4HANA and BW/4HANA projects, data quality and cleansing implementations, HANA-optimised ELT configurations and ongoing BODS administration. As a SAP Gold Partner with 21 years of data management experience, our consultants have built and optimised BODS landscapes across manufacturing, pharmaceutical, financial services and distribution industries.

SAP Data Services — Three Processing Modes
ETL
Extract → Transform → Load
Classic data movement — extract from source, transform in BODS engine, load to target
ELT
Extract → Load → Transform
Push transformation down to SAP HANA for in-memory processing performance
RTL
Replicate → Transform → Load
Real-time replication with transformation — CDC-based near-real-time data movement
Data IntegrationSAP & non-SAP · Files · Databases · Cloud · Big Data
Data QualityProfiling · Cleansing · Standardisation · Matching
HANA Push-downELT optimisation — transform inside HANA in-memory
S/4HANA MigrationPrimary data movement engine for SAP migrations
How It Works

SAP Data Services — the engine that moves, cleans and governs your data

Data Services sits between your source systems and your analytical and operational targets — extracting data from SAP and non-SAP sources, applying transformation, quality and cleansing rules, and loading clean, governed data into BW/4HANA, S/4HANA, Datasphere, HANA and external targets.

SAP Data Services — ETL / ELT / RTL Flow Architecture
Sources → BODS Engine → Quality → Targets · Batch & Real-time
SAP Systems S/4HANA · ECC · BW Databases Oracle · SQL · DB2 · HANA Files & Web CSV · XML · JSON · APIs Cloud / Big Data AWS · Azure · Hadoop SAP Data Services BODS Engine Extract · Transform · Load Cleanse · Match · Profile HANA Push-down · CDC · RTL Data Quality Cleanse · Validate BW/4HANA · DSP Data Warehouse targets SAP S/4HANA Migration target External Targets HANA · Cloud · Files Extract Validate Load
ETL / ELT / RTL
Three processing modes in one tool
HANA Push-down
Transform inside HANA for max performance
CDC / Real-time
Change data capture for near-real-time loads
Top 5 ETL
Ranked #5 globally in ETL tools
Our Services

Six SAP Data Services capabilities we deliver

From ETL flow design and data migration through data quality implementation, HANA-optimised ELT and ongoing BODS administration — 2iSolutions delivers the full SAP Data Services lifecycle.

ETL Flow Design & Development

Data flow design in BODS Designer — source-to-target mapping, transformation logic, lookup operations, merge, join and pivot configuration, scheduling via job server and batch framework management. Built to SAP BODS best practices with error handling and restart capability.

S/4HANA Data Migration

BODS as the data migration engine for ECC to S/4HANA and greenfield S/4HANA implementations — master data and transactional data extraction, cleansing, mapping to the S/4HANA data model and migration cockpit integration. Our S/4HANA migration projects use BODS as the standard data movement tool.

Data Quality & Cleansing

Data profiling, standardisation, address cleansing, duplicate matching and data enrichment using BODS Data Quality transforms — including custom parsing rules, match scoring configuration and data governance workflows for master data (customer, vendor, material, GL).

HANA-Optimised ELT

Push-down optimisation for SAP HANA targets — converting ETL data flows to ELT mode where transformation logic executes inside HANA in-memory rather than the BODS engine. Delivers significant performance gains for large-volume data loads and complex transformations.

Real-Time Replication (RTL / CDC)

Change Data Capture configuration for near-real-time data replication — BODS RTL mode for continuous source-to-target data movement with transformation on the fly. Used for operational reporting, near-real-time BW loads and cross-system data synchronisation.

BODS Administration & Managed Services

Post-go-live BODS platform management — job monitoring, batch failure resolution, performance tuning, server administration, patch application and enhancement delivery. Management Console administration, impact and lineage analysis support. SLA-backed.

Processing Modes

ETL, ELT and RTL — three ways BODS moves your data

SAP Data Services supports three processing modes in one tool. The right choice depends on data volumes, transformation complexity, target database capabilities and latency requirements. Most enterprise implementations use a combination of all three — which is why BODS remains the standard tool for complex SAP data landscapes.

ETL

Extract → Transform → Load

The classic mode. Data is extracted from sources, transformed inside the BODS engine (joins, lookups, calculations, cleansing) and loaded to the target. Best for complex transformations involving multiple sources, extensive business logic and data quality rules that require BODS's full processing capability. Most S/4HANA data migrations use this mode.

ELT

Extract → Load → Transform

Data is extracted and loaded into the target first, then transformed inside the target database — specifically designed for SAP HANA, where the in-memory engine processes transformations faster than the BODS engine can. BODS's intelligent optimiser automatically pushes qualifying operations down to HANA. Best for high-volume loads where the target is HANA-based.

RTL

Replicate → Transform → Load

Change Data Capture (CDC) mode. BODS monitors source systems for changes and replicates them in near-real-time with transformation applied on the fly. Best for operational reporting, near-real-time data feeds and cross-system synchronisation where batch windows are too slow.

Why 2iSolutions

What our Data Services practice brings to your data landscape

BODS + S/4HANA Migration Together

BODS is the data migration engine behind our S/4HANA implementations — the same team that designs the target data model builds the BODS flows that populate it. This alignment eliminates the most common migration failure: ETL logic that does not match how the target system was actually configured.

21 Years of SAP Data Movement

From Data Integrator to BusinessObjects Data Services to BODS 4.x — our consultants have worked with every generation of this tool. Institutional knowledge of which transformation patterns perform and which create bottlenecks at scale is not in the documentation.

Data Quality Is Not Optional

Every SAP migration project has a data quality problem. Our BODS implementations include data quality from day one — profiling, cleansing and match rules are designed as part of the data flow, not bolted on after the first failed load.

HANA ELT Optimisation Expertise

Knowing when to use ETL versus ELT versus RTL — and knowing which transformations qualify for HANA push-down and which do not — is the difference between a BODS landscape that performs and one that becomes a bottleneck. Our consultants tune this based on experience, not trial and error.

Delivery Credentials

SAP Data Services delivered by a team that has moved SAP data for 21 years.

From ETL flow development through S/4HANA migration, data quality implementation and HANA ELT optimisation — 2iSolutions delivers BODS as a SAP Gold Partner with 300+ consultants and a 98% on-time delivery record.

21 yrsSAP DATA DELIVERY
300+SAP CONSULTANTS
98%ON-TIME DELIVERY
SAP GoldPARTNER CERTIFIED
FAQ

SAP Data Services: questions we hear most

SAP Data Services (BODS) is an on-premise ETL and data quality tool — it physically extracts, transforms and loads data between systems. SAP Datasphere is a cloud-based data management and virtualisation platform — it provides federated access to data, semantic modelling and data marketplace capabilities without necessarily moving data. They serve different purposes and often coexist: BODS handles the physical data movement (ETL jobs, data migration, data quality) while Datasphere provides the governed analytical layer above it. In an SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) architecture, Datasphere is the data management component within BDC. BODS remains the standard tool for batch data migration, complex ETL orchestration and data quality processing — especially for S/4HANA migration projects where large volumes of master and transactional data need to be physically moved and cleansed.

More relevant than ever — BODS is the standard data migration engine for S/4HANA implementations. SAP's Migration Cockpit integrates with BODS for complex data migration scenarios that exceed the cockpit's native capabilities. For greenfield S/4HANA implementations, BODS extracts data from legacy systems, applies cleansing and transformation rules and loads into the S/4HANA data model. For brownfield migrations (ECC to S/4HANA system conversion), BODS handles the data conversion tasks that cannot be done in-place. Additionally, BODS's ELT mode is specifically optimised for SAP HANA — the intelligent optimiser automatically pushes qualifying transformations to execute inside HANA in-memory rather than the BODS engine, delivering significant performance improvements for high-volume loads into any HANA-based system.

HANA push-down is BODS's ELT capability — the intelligent optimiser analyses your data flow and automatically converts qualifying transformation operations into SQL that executes inside SAP HANA rather than the BODS engine. This leverages HANA's in-memory processing for joins, aggregations, calculations and filters — often running 5–10× faster than processing the same logic in the BODS engine for large data volumes. Not all transformations qualify: lookups to non-HANA tables, certain complex custom functions and some data quality operations cannot be pushed down. The practical approach is to design data flows for push-down from the start — structuring transformations so that the maximum number of operations qualify for HANA execution. Our consultants know which patterns push down and which do not, which eliminates the trial-and-error approach most teams take.

BODS includes a full data quality suite — it is not just an ETL tool. The Data Quality transforms within BODS cover: data profiling (discovering the actual state of your data), standardisation (normalising formats, abbreviations, titles), address cleansing and validation (postal standardisation with address directory integration), matching and consolidation (duplicate detection with configurable match scoring) and custom parsing (extracting structured fields from unstructured text). For most SAP data quality requirements — particularly around customer, vendor and material master data cleansing before an S/4HANA migration — BODS's built-in data quality is sufficient and avoids introducing a separate tool into the landscape. Organisations with enterprise-scale master data governance requirements may additionally deploy SAP Master Data Governance (MDG), which BODS integrates with for cleansing at the point of entry.

BODS has one of the broadest connector libraries of any ETL tool. Supported sources and targets include: relational databases (Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Teradata, SAP HANA, Sybase), file formats (CSV, XML, JSON, fixed-width, Excel, PDF text extraction), web services and APIs (SOAP, REST), big data platforms (Hadoop, HDFS, Hive, Spark), cloud platforms (AWS S3, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Platform), and SAP systems (all SAP modules via RFC/BAPI, IDoc, CDC). It also supports MongoDB, Vertica and mainframe connectivity via supplementary adapters. For most enterprise data landscapes — particularly those with a mix of SAP and non-SAP systems — BODS can connect to every source without third-party middleware, which simplifies the architecture and reduces the total number of integration tools to manage.

SLT (SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server) and BODS serve different purposes and are often used together. SLT is a trigger-based replication tool — it captures changes at the database level and replicates them in real time to HANA or other targets. It is the fastest option for SAP-to-SAP real-time replication with minimal source system impact. BODS is a full ETL engine — it extracts, transforms, cleanses and loads data with complex business logic, data quality rules and multi-source integration. The practical guidance: use SLT when you need simple, fast replication of SAP table data to HANA (typically for BW/4HANA real-time loads or operational reporting). Use BODS when you need transformation logic, data quality, multi-source integration or non-SAP source connectivity. Many landscapes use both: SLT for real-time replication, BODS for batch ETL and data quality. Our architects design the right combination based on your specific data landscape requirements.

Ready to build or optimise your SAP Data Services landscape?

Whether you need ETL for an S/4HANA migration, data quality for master data cleansing, HANA ELT optimisation or ongoing BODS administration — 2iSolutions brings SAP Gold Partner data integration depth and 21 years of delivery experience to your project.

Discuss Your BODS Project →