17.4 BW Bridge Data Acquisition

1. Acquisition architecture

BW bridge can use SAP BW-oriented acquisition capabilities, including supported extractors and SAP application integration.

A simplified pattern is:

S/4HANA / SAP Business Suite
          |
      extraction
          |
     BW bridge
          |
     persistence
          |
      processing

2. Why acquisition remains important

Migration projects often focus on target models and underestimate source extraction.

But extraction defines:

• available fields,
• delta behavior,
• source workload,
• data completeness,
• recovery behavior.

3. SAP business content

SAP documents BW bridge support for connectivity and business content for SAP Business Suite and S/4HANA.

This can reduce custom extraction development where supported content fits the requirement.

4. Acquisition design checklist

Validate:

• source release,
• extractor or source object,
• delta capability,
• initial-load method,
• authorization,
• source workload,
• data volume,
• deletion semantics,
• monitoring,
• recovery.

5. BW bridge versus native Datasphere acquisition

Do not automatically route every SAP source through BW bridge.

Compare:

Requirement	BW bridge	Native Datasphere
Existing BW extraction investment	Strong fit	May require redesign
BW transformation semantics	Strong fit	Redesign
New cloud-native model	Evaluate	Often simpler
SAP extractor reuse	Strong fit where supported	Depends on supported connection
Minimal BW dependency	Weaker	Stronger

Exercise

For an S/4HANA Finance source, compare:

• BW bridge extractor,
• extraction-enabled CDS,
• native Datasphere replication.

Select one for a daily enterprise finance mart and one for near-real-time operational analytics.