Initial Data Transfer (SAP Library

Initial Data Transfer

Prerequisites

Before you start the initial data transfer, you should have answered the following questions:

Which business objects are to be transferred?

The objects to be transferred depend on the business applications that you are using. If you are using sales and distribution processing, for example, you have to transfer the material master records as well as the sales master records .

How should the business objects be transferred?

Various techniques are available for loading the data.

Process Flow

The graphic below describes the possible tasks involved in transferring the data:

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

The Data Transfer Workbench provides integrated project management for all the required steps involved in transferring data to your system.

A project consists of one or more subprojects, each subproject consists of one or more run definitions, and each run definition consists of one or more tasks. These objects are displayed in a hierarchy in the project management.

When the run is started, all the tasks of the run definition are carried out in sequence when the associated programs are called.

You need to use programs or function modules for the various steps.

Once you have created a project, you can start a run. The tasks of a run definition are processed in order. The result of a run is displayed as status information in color (green, yellow or red) in the hierarchy.

The process of transferring data for each object can be divided into the following steps:

Preparing the data transfer

Extract: In the first step, you extract the existing data from a source system into a file.

Cleanup: Clean the data in this file if necessary (see Analyzing and Cleaning Legacy Data and Creating Example Files and Analyzing Structures).

Conversion: You have to convert your extracted and cleaned data into the structures of the transfer file. You can use your own conversion program or a standard one, such as SAP's Data Mapping and Conversion Tool.

Executing the data transfer

Create projects: With the Data Transfer Workbench, you can create projects, sub-projects, and run definitions (see Organizing Transfer in Projects).

Load: SAP provides a range of transfer programs and interfaces (BAPIs) for loading data. These require a transfer file in the correct SAP format.
One of the techniques available is used to load the data into the system, depending on the type of business object. If more than one of these techniques is provided for a particular object type, you should read the documentation to find out what the different uses are.
For more information, see Data Transfer in Runs.

Check: After the data has been successfully loaded into your system, it can be checked there.