Connect SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) to Azure and Power BI
SAP Business Data Cloud
SAP Business Data Cloud offers data as files on an Azure Data Lake or Blob endpoint. Yres has a dedicated source type for this: you enter a SAS URI, a container and a SAS token, and Yres reads the files on the cloud runtime of Azure Data Factory. No user name, password or SAP user is involved. The data is loaded into an Azure SQL database in your own Azure tenant; for incremental loading Yres always uses ETL_DATE as the delta column. The data is then available to Power BI.
At a glance
- Connection
- Files on an Azure Data Lake/Blob endpoint, accessed with a SAS token (Shared Access Signature)
- Fields
- SAS URI, container and SAS token. No user name or password
- Input validation
- The SAS URI holds the host name only and ends with a slash; the token contains sig, sp, se, spr and st and does not start with a question mark
- Integration runtime
- Cloud; no self-hosted integration runtime is needed
- Incremental loading
- For this source type the delta column is fixed to ETL_DATE
- Also used for
- SAP S/4HANA data offered as files through Business Data Cloud, and SAP Datasphere (a different product with the same connection shape)
- Where the token is kept
- The Azure Key Vault in your own Azure environment; the Yres web application holds no secrets
What you arrange yourself
- 1Agree with your SAP administrator which data is offered as files through Business Data Cloud and which container it ends up in.
- 2Request the SAS URI (the host name of the storage endpoint), the container name and a SAS token with at least read and list permissions.
- 3Check the token: the part after the question mark, including the sig, sp, se, spr and st parts. Save it straight away, because Azure shows it once.
- 4Add a source of type SAP BDC in Yres, fill in the three fields and enter the token's expiry date, so Yres warns you before it expires.
When you need this — and when you don't
A standalone connector is enough if…
If the BDC files already sit in a data lake your reporting tool reads directly, and a snapshot is sufficient, you do not need a load process.
Yres adds value if…
Yres earns its place when those files have to become tables in a SQL database, each run should load only the new rows (on ETL_DATE), and the SAP data is combined in Power BI with sources outside SAP.
Frequently asked questions: SAP BDC
What are the requirements for the SAS URI and the SAS token?
The SAS URI is only the host name of the storage endpoint, in the form https://<host>/ with a trailing slash. The SAS token must contain the sig, sp, se, spr and st parts and must not start with a question mark. Yres checks both when you enter them.
How does incremental loading work for SAP Business Data Cloud?
For other sources you pick a delta column yourself. For the SAP BDC source type Yres does it for you: the delta column is fixed to ETL_DATE.
Can I also load S/4HANA or Datasphere data through this source?
Yes. If S/4HANA data is offered as files through Business Data Cloud, this is the route for it, next to OData. SAP Datasphere is a different SAP product without its own option in the wizard, but it uses the same connection shape and is therefore connected through this form.
What happens when the SAS token expires?
Yres can then no longer read the files and the load fails. So enter the credentials expiry date when you create the source; Yres will warn you in time. You enter a new token on the source, after which Yres writes it to the Key Vault and you restart the load.
Full technical description in the knowledge base →·Last reviewed:
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