New in this release
The IBM® InfoSphere® Information Server Pack for SAP Applications has the following new capabilities.
Version 8.2.0.4
- Functional improvements
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- SAP OData stage
- Support for Insert & Update functions for the C4C application in the OData connector.
- Support for Hierarchical data source in OData connector.
- Multi-link support for OData Load.
- Log improvement done in SAP OData connector to support troubleshooting.
- SAP OData stage
- Documentation
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- Updated documentation in IBM Docs.
- Updated existing technotes, and created new technotes.
Version 8.2.0.3
- Functional improvements
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- SAP OData stage
- Support for Data load or write: With the OData stage, the SAP OData services can also be used to load or write data.
- Support OData Extract for SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud applications: The OData services that are provided in SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud can be used by OData stage to extract data.
- SAP OData stage
- Supported platforms
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- Red Hat 8 support
- IBM Cloud Pak for Data 3.5
- Documentation
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- Updated documentation in IBM Docs.
- Updated existing technotes, and created new technotes.
Version 8.2.0.2
- Functional improvements
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- SAP OData stage
- The stage is available in Data Flow Designer (DFD). It is only visible in the palette of DFD when SAP Pack Version 8.2.0.2 is installed.
- API Key authorization is available for extracting SAP metadata with IMAM.
- SAP OData stage
- Quality
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- Customer reported defects (APARs) and internally found defects are resolved.
- Documentation
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- Updated documentation in IBM Docs.
- Updated existing technotes, and created new technotes.
Version 8.2.0.1
- Functional improvements
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- SAP OData stage: Provides relations between entities to enable joined extracts. For instance, you can extract parent-child data together and store it in a single output link.
- SAP Delta Extract stage:
- Filters are available for the delta mode of the stage.
- Improvements for extracting Hierarchical data sources regarding validation and stability
- Improving Quality
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- Fixes for APARs and internally found defects (postponed from previous releases for instance)
- New features included with next service pack of Information Server 11.7.1
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- SAP OData stage is available in Data Flow Designer (DFD). SAP OData jobs can be designed and run with DFD.
- Documentation
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- Updated documentation in IBM Docs.
- Updated existing technotes, and created new technotes for OData connector stage.
Version 8.2.0.0
- Functional improvements
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- SAP OData Connector stage: A new stage to extract data by using SAP’s OData services. These services are available in SAP S/4HANA on-premises and cloud systems.
- Metadata support: Metadata extraction for OData services is available in IMAM. By using IMAM, the OData services catalog of an SAP Gateway can be accessed and metadata can be imported to the Suite repository. It can later be used for OData connector job design.
- Support for SAP CRM (Customer Relation Management) application for all Pack connectors.
- Usability
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- Improvements in ABAP stage designer regarding support of data types, DATS, TIMS, NUMC. These data types are not converted to Varchar anymore.
- Maintainability
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- Version information is displayed on all Pack stages GUI in DS Designer.
- Documentation
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- Updated documentation in IBM Docs.
- Updated existing technotes, and created new technotes for OData connector stage.
Version 8.1.0.1
- Functional improvements
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- Migration tool for ABAP stage programs: Sometimes it is needed to regenerate many ABAP programs, for example, when migrating to a new release of the Pack for SAP Applications or after installing a program fix. It might be a tedious and cumbersome task. Using this tool, the task can be automated and the regeneration of ABAP programs can be done significantly faster than manually and in a structured way.
- In Delta extract the package size can be configured on extractor level. For instance, in case of high activity at year end the package size might be increased for this specific delta processing.
- Multi instances of an ABAP stage job can be run in the background.
- When using CTS to upload programs in ABAP stage, you can select any allowed CTS task (not only user's own as before), making team collaboration possible.
- Performance
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- Larger IDOCs can be selected at design time.
- Reduced heap size (memory) requirement for the IDOC Listener component of Delta Extract stage (by as much as 40%).
- Usability
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- GUI improvements, automatic log cleanup, check, and validation extensions.
- Maintainability
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- Log improvements
- Documentation
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- Updated documentation in IBM Docs.
- Updated related Technotes
Version 8.1.0.0
- Security
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- SNC support for all stages is available, encrypted data transfer is enabled and also certificates instead of user ID and password can be used for authentication in design and runtime phases.
- A registered SAP namespace is available for SAP objects that are provided by IBM reg. Packs for SAP Applications. Objects cannot be modified by customers anymore. That prevents from accidental overwriting objects.
- Stronger encoding logic to store SAP connection password in encrypted form.
- Usability
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- ABAP stage provides dynamic gateway function. With this function, stage run time will dynamically decide on the gateway host or service to be used for registering RFC server for RFC data transfer.
- Simplified connection management: The edit function for connection management is available in SAP Administrator only. This function was removed from the individual stages. In the stage editors, the connections can be selected only.
- Extended Environment variables support:
- With DS_DELTA_EXTRACT_DATA_FETCHMODE, the mode that is selected in GUI can be overwritten.
- DSR3_ENABLE_UNICODE_TRANSITION can be used for jobs that are migrated from Non-Unicode to Unicode SAP connection.
- Maintainability
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- Additional information is written to log files: Information about SAP version, more details on Delta Extract and IDOC stages, code page information.
- Documentation
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- Updated documentation in IBM Docs.
- Updated related Technotes
Version 8.0.0.3
- All Stages
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- It is confirmed that the same characters can be used in passwords for both hardcoded values and when using job parameters (RFE 81542).
- ABAP stage
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- With RFC, it is now possible to transfer data adhering to the data package sequence. This capability is due to the newly supported bgRFC with qRFC protocol in the ABAP stage.
- Two listeners are now started by default, improving performance and reliability of the data transfer from SAP to DataStage when the stage is used in sequential mode.
- Delta Extract stage
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- Improved handling for SAP data source selection.
- Clarified which SAP data sources are supported. Details were added in the documentation, the stage user interface, and the job runtime logs.
- IDOC stage
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- Automatic log deletion can now be configured through environment variables.
- Documentation
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- Updated documentation in IBM Docs.
- Updated related Technotes
Version 8.0.0.2
- ABAP stage
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- Support protocol bgRFC: Stability and performance improvements for extracting a large amount of data.
- Multi-instance job support: Instances of the same job can run with different parameters.
- Row count check: Data inconsistencies can be detected early and easily.
- BAPI stage
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- Support table parameter: TYPE. New function to extract or load data of format TYPE.
- Support dynamic memory allocation for Load/Extract/Table parameters.
- Delta extract stage
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- Maintenance and operability improvements for logging and out of memory situations.
- IDOC Stage and reg. RM/RG
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- Minor quality issues resolved.
- DataStage SAP Administrator
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- A user authorization concept for connections provided.
- Documentation
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- Updated documentation in IBM Docs.
- Updated related Technotes
Version 8.0.0.1
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- Replacement of development SAP C-RFC SDK by SAP Netweaver RFC SDK as the former is being deprecated by SAP.
- The ABAP extraction is improved to detect listener conflict on the same RFC destination (JR50473).
- Updated documentation in IBM Docs, including links to external technotes.
Version 8.0
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- A new Delta Extract Stage is introduced which allows you to extract full or delta data from SAP data sources.
- Enhancements to the functions and fixes in the existing stages.
Version 7.1
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- Major enhancements to the user interface of InfoSphere Rapid Modeler for SAP Applications and InfoSphere Rapid Generator for SAP Applications.
Version 7.0
- ABAP stage
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- CPI-C is no longer supported as a data transfer method for ABAP.
- tRFC cleanup function.
- IDoc Connector stages
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- IDoc Connectors are new active stages with improved error handling.
- Unified column interface with same technical fields for IDoc Connector Load and IDoc Connector Extract stages.
- Parallel canvas support for both IDoc Connector stages and parallel engine support for IDoc Load Connector.
- No server engine support.
- BAPI stage
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- BAPI stage can now issue more than one BAPI call within one transaction.
- New tools
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- IBM InfoSphere Data Architect Rapid Modeler for SAP Applications can be used to extract the selected metadata from an SAP system and import it to an InfoSphere Data Architect Logical Data Model.
- The IBM InfoSphere Rapid Generator for SAP Applications is an extension of IBM InfoSphere Data Architect that generates DataStage jobs that extract data from or load data to an SAP system.
- CPI-C to RFC migration tool is used to migrate ABAP jobs that were previously configured to use the CPI-C data transfer method.
- IPv6 support.