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17.2 BW Bridge Architecture

1. What BW bridge provides​

SAP BW bridge brings selected SAP BW capabilities into the SAP Datasphere public-cloud ecosystem.

SAP documents capabilities including:

  • BW modeling,
  • BW data acquisition,
  • BW transformations,
  • DTPs,
  • monitoring,
  • SAP Business Suite and S/4HANA extraction,
  • migration tooling.

2. Architecture​

                 SAP Datasphere Tenant
                         |
              +----------+----------+
              |                     |
         Datasphere            BW bridge
         spaces                environment
              |                     |
              |              BW Modeling Tools
              |                     |
              +----------+----------+
                         |
                   Shared ecosystem
                         |
                 semantic consumption

The bridge should be treated as a specialized execution and modeling environment rather than as another generic Datasphere space.

3. BW bridge space​

Datasphere provides a BW Bridge space through which users can access bridge capabilities.

Current SAP documentation describes adding users to the BW Bridge space and opening the BW Bridge cockpit from Data Integration Monitor.

4. Tooling​

BW bridge uses BW-oriented tooling for its modeling experience.

This is important operationally:

  • Datasphere Data Builder is not the complete BW bridge modeling environment.
  • BW Modeling Tools remain relevant for BW bridge development.
  • Datasphere remains the broader platform for cloud data modeling and consumption.

5. Runtime boundary​

Separate:

BW bridge runtime

from:

Datasphere runtime.

Do not assume that every Datasphere object can directly execute inside BW bridge or vice versa.

6. Architect decision​

Use BW bridge when preserving BW semantics creates material business value.

Do not introduce it merely because the team knows BW.

Exercise​

Draw the runtime boundary between:

  • S/4HANA,
  • BW bridge,
  • Datasphere,
  • SAC.

For each boundary identify data movement, metadata movement, security and operations.