Overview of Common Data Sources

ERP and CRM Systems

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems contain a wealth of data in tables, columns, variables, and fields, but they lack several key features:

the ability to provide integration with other data sources
the ability to do backward-looking drill-down analysis into what caused the effect (Business Intelligence)
the ability to do forward-looking cause and effect analysis (Business Analytics)

New Data Surveyors

Previously, SAS provided data surveyors that relied on accessing the underlying database--Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server--and not the application APIs. SAS now provides, through software from Composite Software, both Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and SQL data services that unlock the data in PeopleSoft, Oracle Applications, Siebel, as well as the recently offered Salesforce.com. The following figure shows how SAS interacts with Composite Software:

Establishing Connectivity Using Composite Software

[Establishing Connectivity Using Composite Software]

The Composite Information Server uses a Data Service to access a data source through the data source's API. The Composite Information Server then offers the data through an ODBC interface. You configure an ODBC data source name on the SAS Application Server with the Composite ODBC driver. Then you use SAS Management Console to register an ODBC server and an ODBC library. For a detailed example of a Composite Information Server connection to Salesforce.com, See Establishing Connectivity to a Composite Information Server.

Data Surveyor for SAP

The Data Surveyor for SAP remains as in previous versions. It contains Java plug-ins to SAS Data Integration Studio and SAS Management Console, plus the required SAS/ACCESS engine necessary to get the information out of the DBMS system. Understanding the metadata of these business applications is at the heart of the data surveyor. The SAP Data Surveyor has knowledge about the structure of the tables deployed in SAP. This knowledge contains information about the ERP metadata that allows you to do the following:

understand complex data structures
navigate the large amounts of tables (SAP has over 20,000)

The following figure shows how connectivity to SAP servers is established:

Establishing Connectivity to an SAP Server

[Establishing Connectivity to an SAP Server]

For a detailed example of an SAP server connection, see Establishing Connectivity to an SAP Server.

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