Introduction to DSO (Data Store Objects)

What is a DataStore Object?

A DSO (DataStore Object) in SAP BI platform is defined as the storage location to store cleansed and consolidated transaction or master data at the lowest granularity level and this data can be analyzed using the BEx query.

Typically, a DataStore Object contains various key figures and the characteristic fields and data from a DSO can be updated using Delta update or other DataStore objects or even from the master data. These DataStore Objects are commonly stored in two dimensional transparent database tables.

The Architecture of DataStore Object:

The DSO component consists of the following three tables −

• Activation Queue − This is used to store the data before it is activated. The key contains request id, package id and record number. Once the activation is done, the request is deleted from the activation queue.
• Active Data Table − This table is used to store the current active data and this table contains the semantic key defined for data modeling.
• Change Log − When you activate the object, changes done to the active data are re-stored in this change log. A change log is a PSA table and is maintained in Administration Workbench under the PSA tree.

When you load the new data in to a DSO and the technical key is added to records. A request is then added to the Activation queue. It can be triggered manually or automatically.

Types of DataStore Objects

You can define the DataStore Objects into the following types −

• Standard DSO
• Direct Update DSO
• Write-Optimized DSO

Direct Update DataStore Objects

DataStore Object for direct update allows you to access data for reporting and analysis immediately after it is loaded. It is different from standard DSOs owing to the way how it processes the data. This data is stored in the same format in which it was loaded in to the DataStore Object for any direct update by the application.

The Structure of Direct Update DSOs

These datastores contain one table for active data and no change log area exists. The data is retrieved from external systems using APIs.