Extractors belong to the data retrieval mechanisms in the SAP source system. An extractor can fill the extract structure of a DataSource with the data from the SAP source system datasets.

With a Metadata upload, the DataSource is replicated with its relevant properties in BW. Once there you can assign it to an InfoSource. The fields of a DataSource should be assigned to BW InfoObjects.

When you have specified the data flow in the BW Administrator Workbench by maintaining the transfer rules, you can schedule an InfoPackage in the Scheduler. The data loading process is then triggered to the source system by a request IDoc.

There are application-specific extractors, each of which are hard-coded for the DataSource that was delivered with BW Business Content, and which fill the extract structure of the DataSource.

In addition, there are generic extractors, with which you can extract more data from the SAP source system and transfer it into BW. Only when you call up the generic extractor by naming the DataSource does it know which data is to be extracted, and from which tables it should read it from and in which structure. This is how it fills different extract structures and DataSources.

You can run generic data extraction in the R/3 source system application areas such as LIS, CO-PA, FI-SL and HR. This is how LIS, for example, uses generic extraction to read info structures. DataSources are generated on the basis of these (individually) defined info structures. In the case of generic data extraction from applications, we speak of customer-defined DataSources.

Independent of a particular application, you can generically extract master data or transaction data from any transparent table, database views or functional areas of the SAP Query. For this, you can generate user-specific DataSources. In this case, we speak of generic DataSources.

The DataSource data for these two types are read generically and transferred to BW. This is how generic extractors allow the extraction of data that cannot be made available within the framework of Business Content.

You can find further information in the implementation guide to data extraction from SAP source systems. You get there by choosing Your Source System à Context Menu (right mouse click) à Customizing Extractors in the BW Administrator Workbench – Modeling.

BW-specific source system functions, extractors and DataSources are delivered by so-called plug-ins.