Data Federation

Data federation in SAP Asset Intelligence Network replicates data to other data centers for which you've provided consent.

Using data federation, SAP Asset Intelligence Network allows you to connect and collaborate with business partners on other data centers, in addition to the source data center. Source data center is the data center on which you're onboarded.
When data federation consent is provided for a particular data center, an initial data replication happens to sync business parter data such as location, subsidiary details, industry IDs to the respective data center. Once initial replication is done and these business partner data is updated or deleted, the changes are synced across the data centers.

Example

To understand how data federation works in SAP Asset Intelligence Network, let us consider an example of two business partners on two different data centers, BP1 on DC1 and BP2 on DC2.

If BP1 wants to connect to and make their data available to BP2, the data available in DC1 must be replicated to DC2. In order to achieve this data federation, BP1 must provide consent to DC2. After data federation consent is provided, BP1 can view and connect with business partners on DC2.

Objects Supported

In addition to the business partner details, the following objects are also replicated in data federation:

  • Models

  • Templates

  • Documents

  • Business Partners

Known Limitations

  • If you share the data with a diverse group that involves users from other data centers as well, then the data is by default shared with EDIT access. The users from other data centers will have only a READ access to this data and can't edit the objects shared. However, users in your own data center will have READ or EDIT access to the data based on the authorizations provided.

  • You can't share an object with a business partner whom you've blocked.

  • Data federation doesn't replicate a shared object if the country/region of the object owner's data center is blocklisted by the organization.

    For example, an organization BP1 has blocklisted country/region C1 for a document D1. BP1 has shared the document with a group that has members from different data centers : DC1 with country/region C1, DC2 with country/region C2. Since C1 is blocklisted, data federation doesn't replicate D1 to DC1 even if data federation consent is provided for DC1.

  • If you share an object with Grant to Share option enabled, it can be further shared only within the same data center and not across data centers.

    For example, An object belonging to a business partner in DC1 is shared with a business partner in DC2. The business partner can't reshare this object to someone in another data center DC3.

  • Unsharing of objects is restricted to the source data center. For example, BP1 in DC1 shared an object D1 with BP2 in DC2. BP2 reshared D1 with BP3 and BP4 who are also in DC2. When BP1 unshares D1 with BP2, BP3 and BP4 can still view D1.

  • Object change logs are not replicated. So model usage, timelines, and card highlights from the source data center are not replicated across data centers and instead displays the details of the target data center.

  • Model usage statistics show the count of the equipment from the source data center only. It doesn't show the equipment count across data centers.

  • If a model is federated from the source data center and a piece of equipment is created out of it in the target data center, you can still delete the model. This will result in missing model information in the relevant equipment in the target data center.