SAP BODS- A Single Enterprise Solution for Data Integration

SAP BODS is a functional software module from the German company SAP AG. BODS stands for Business Object’s Data Integrator which is a data integrator and ETL tool that include new versions of software with data quality features. The SAP BODS application delivers an excellent single enterprise gateway for data integration, data quality, text analysis and data profiling which allows one to transform, integrate, improve and deliver secure data. It promotes important business processes and enables reliable decisions.

This software product mainly consists of Data Integrator Job Server and the Data Integrator Designer. The software is primarily used in developing data marts, data warehouses and ODS systems. The Data Integrator Designer has the capacity to store the created jobs or projects in a repository. With the implementation of Central Repository version control system, the Data Integrator Designer also accommodates team-based ETL development. This version control system provides the basic features like check-in, check-out, version labeling, get latest and undo check-out functionalities. It also executes, monitors and schedules the jobs which are created using designer.

A Single Enterprise Solution for Data Integration

SAP BODS provides a combination of services of data quality and integration on a single platform. The single platform provides a supportive environment for development, execution, management, data security and data connectivity. With SAP BODS, the organization can improve, organize and transform the data easily.

One of the main functionality of SAP BODS is ETL i.e. extraction, transfer and load data from varied applications into a single database or data warehouse. Application or jobs can be created using the Designer which specifies data mappings and transformations. Structured or unstructured data, flat files from the databases can be processed and the duplicate entries are removed. With the advanced parallelization and grid computing techniques, one can create projects more easily with the single user interface and deliver projects faster.

Real-time Interface

SAP BODS real time interface provides advanced options for real-time data access and data movement. The real-time interface has the functionality to immediately act upon the messages that are sent and performs predefined operations on the data. These components provide services to client and web applications.

Components of BODS

• Designer- It allows the developer to create, test and run jobs which populates a data warehouse. Designer is a unique development tool with advanced GUI options. Using this tool, developer can create objects, drag or drop and configure the objects by choosing the icons in a source-to-target flow diagram. Data mapping, transformation and logic control operations can be defined using Designer. Applications can be created by specifying the work flows and data flows.


• Job Server- It’s an application which launches the BODS processing engine and acts as an interface between engine and other components.


• Engine- It executes the individual jobs created in the Designer by the developer when the application is launched.


• Repository- The repository is a storehouse of Designer predefined system objects and also user-defined objects. The objects include source, target metadata and transformation rules. The developer can also optionally create a central repository for object sharing and controlling the version.

SAP BODS Advantages

• BODS is mainly used to develop ETL processes. It differs from other conventional databases as it supports applications, files and mainframes like SAP, PeopleSoft, Salesforce, CSV, Excel etc.


• Web services and Hadoop are also supported by BODS.


• It provides a solid integration with other SAP products especially SAP ECC and SAP BW. It has unique abilities to use the extractors as data source.


• Also, it has an extensive integration platform with SAP’s in-memory platform which is SAP HANA.


• SAP BODS can integrate the structured data from different databases and applications.


• It also has the capability to extract desired sentences from files be it MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat reader or PDF or MS Outlook and so on.

SAP is especially popular for its ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and data management programs.