SAP Data Services Reviews

We use the solution to support data warehousing.

Also for data migration from any legacy system to S/4HANA.

Data Quality in legacy systems and from S/4HANA.

Data migration projects on time and on budget.

The solution is easy to use since it's a graphical tool. It also requires only low-level coding. 

The solution shows a lack of cloud support data services. It can be improved for cloud integration to on-premise environments.

I have been using the solution for more than 30 years. 

The solution is a stable and mature tool. It is standardized in such a way that you don't have issues after upgrading it to new versions.

I would rate the product's scalability a nine-point five out of ten. The tool is intelligent enough to split the workload. 

The support classifies your incidents as low priority, medium priority, and high priority. Usually, I am classified as a medium priority and get an answer in 24 hours. I get the fix in less than a week. Support has people who are very knowledgeable about the product. 

Positive

No

The product is simple to setup. If you are setting it up on Windows, then it's just a matter of a few clicks. 

Both, the SI contracted has a good expertise level.

Informatica.

I would rate the product an nine out of ten. The solution suits medium to large enterprise organizations and it would be expensive for small companies. The product is very useful for SAP customers. 

We use the product for data migration and integration. It also works as a pipeline for data warehouses.

The most valuable features of SAP Data Services lie in its ability to effectively observe and interpret the information within data related to people or facts, stands out. The preservation of this insightful aspect is the product’s best part.

An area for improvement in SAP Data Services could involve making the product more accessible to non-technical end-users. They could provide a simpler way to understand the ongoing business process. Additionally, they should include data catalogs in the next release.

We have been using SAP Data Services for ten years.

I rate the platform’s stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the platform’s scalability an eight out of ten. It depends on individual organizational needs and their choice of deployment, with cloud solutions offering better accessibility.

They could provide examples in the technical support tutorials.

The initial setup is simple. However, the complexity can increase if there is a need for collaboration with other teams, such as database administrators and security personnel. It takes a few days to complete the process.

The product’s on-premise version is expensive for a medium-sized company.

SAP Data Services acts as a support tool, providing the necessary infrastructure for ensuring data quality. However, ultimately it depends on the user’s ability to translate business requirements into technical specifications to achieve optimal results. The real-time data integration feature allows us to view granular data.

I recommend it to others and rate it an eight out of ten.

SAP Data Services is an ETL tool, which does extractions, transformation, and loads.

The BA reporting tools, such as Data Services, and ETL tool in SAP Data Services are the most valuable. When we had in-memory requirements, we used HANA. HANA is most preferably for most the customers for in-memory. SAP is the first company that created the in-memory concept.

There are a lot of SAP applications and they have good integration with SAP packages.

In the next release, they should be more advanced cloud functionalities and web services. More integration with other applications including SAPs and other applications. They should not switch to a complete solution but provide better integration with other applications.

Data Services SAP is lacking in sources and target databases compared to Informatica. SAP Data Services should have more connectivity.

I have been using SAP Data Services for approximately 12 years.

SAP Data Services is a scalable solution. There are plenty of users using the solution.

There are different levels of support SAP Data Services have. Based on the level that they have they are good. For most of the P1 tickets, we receive support within four hours. I'm comfortable with the support they provide.

I have used a number of similar solutions to SAP Data Services, such as Informatica. Informatica is a very mature solution.

The setup of SAP Data Services is straightforward for me because I have been doing it for over 12 years. I did a lot of internal implementation of SAP, HANA, and SAP Data Services. I have become familiar and comfortable. It is easy for me.

The price of SAP Data Services is a little high when compared to other solutions. Due to the pricing and capabilities, many clients are switching to other solutions.

My advice to others is if they're specific to SAP applications, such as SAP CRM or any other SAP-specific applications, SAP provides a bundle package. It focuses on primarily 100 applications. A type of end-to-end full solution.

I rate SAP Data Services an eight out of ten.

We use Data Services to pull data from a hospital system and transfer it to a centralized Oracle database. Then we use the tool to transform the data for reporting and analytics.

Data Services enables hospital staff to understand the data across disparate systems within the enterprise, helping the company to make more intelligent business decisions.

Data Services' table comparison mechanism is very powerful. It's pretty hard to find a similar feature in other solutions. There isn't really a great solution in Raw SQL. Data Services' general programming features are strong. The programming language is pretty rich. You can significantly transform the data. It also performs well when pushing SQL down to the database server. The tool tries to do as much work in a database as possible, but there are times when it can't do that as well. In those cases, it will process the data in its own engine. All the connectors and the panelization capabilities are pretty useful as well.

Data Services' UI can be annoying. Searching through long lists of things takes time because of some limitations. Source code control is another headache. When your source code base gets too large, managing the source code becomes cumbersome. Also, it's not possible to generate the code. You have to code everything manually. There's no way they're going to fix this. It would be nice to generate code from another program, but you can't do that. 

For some tasks you need to do as an ETL developer, it doesn't make sense to code them all one at a time. You want to be able to read the metadata from something and generate the code. But the architecture of the tool doesn't play nicely with that. The ability to generate code would be one feature that would be nice to have. 

I'd also like to see a smoother code promotion check-in and check-out process for large codebases and fixes to the comparison mechanism. The tool allows you to compare your code against the essential repositories, but the comparison mechanism is buggy. It sometimes reports false positives for what has changed. SAP could maybe improve the performance diagnostics for the production environment. Data Services has some rudimentary performance analysis tools, but they're pretty basic. There's not a dashboard to view where you're doing things well and not well performance-wise. A comprehensive performance dashboard would be nice.

I've been using SAP Data Services for about six years.

Data Services is pretty solid. I would give it almost a perfect 10 for stability.

Data Services is highly scalable. Right now, there are a small number of direct users. They're all developers and software engineers. This isn't a user-facing tool like BOE or Webby that reports business objects. Data Services is an ETL tool that IT people use, so the user base is small. We are using it extensively, though, with about 150 jobs that run every night, but we are planning on decreasing our usage of the tool. However, that is because of what's going on in the hospital system rather than the tool's fault. Due to system changes, we don't have as much need for ETL work. So it will be probably decreasing over time. But we've used it extensively for six years.

SAP's support is good, but the process can be complex. If I were giving it a letter grade, I would say B-minus. 

My company was using SSIS for a short time before I came on board. They switched because my boss knows Oracle well, and this seemed like the best option. He did an entire evaluation, and they decided to go with SAP Data Services because it is a fully functional reporting suite. Data Services operates well with BOE and its reporting solution. However, the primary factor in the decision was that my boss isn't a SQL Server person. He's an Oracle person, and this tool is more robust in the Oracle realm. In addition, Data Services isn't overly expensive. I believe that it's considerably less costly than Oracle Data Integrator or Informatica PowerCenter. He would've gone with those two tools, but they were too expensive.

Setting up Data Services is moderately complex. It's a big tool with a lot of components that need to be configured. Data Services is an enterprise-level data extraction and transformation load tool. There are just a lot of pieces. We've struggled because we were trying to install it on Solaris. I just finished an upgrade. I set up our environment five years ago, and we just upgraded it again. 

It took much longer because they didn't have good support for Solaris. They say that they support Solaris, but they really don't. Since we moved over to Linux, we've been a lot better off. But it's a pretty sizable effort to set up the tool and configure it. You have to have DevTest and PRIDE. There are a lot of moving parts and various repository job servers. You have to understand the topology and architecture of the tool to know how to install and configure it. It's not like installing Microsoft Word.

The total amount of time needed to deploy depends on your environment. Generally, it should take about a month to get it up and running. In actuality, it took a lot longer than that. But once we got on the right OS, it was quicker. Our deployment strategy was to have three instances of the tool. First, we have DevTest and PRIDE. Then each developer has their own repository where they can do their work. So we have a development, test, and production repository. Every developer first runs their code in their own repository, which is where your code is stored. The code is then promoted to a common dev area. After that, it goes to a common test area, and finally, it heads to a common production area.

We've deployed Data Services several times, and each time we've had to do a net new install and transfer things over. We ran into some limitations on being able to upgrade in place. We have one person managing and maintaining the solution, but that person's workload fluctuates. It can be very demanding at times. It can use a lot of one person's time for short periods when you do upgrades. You have to know how to get onto SAP's website, open tickets, and work with SAP Support. That's another thing that adds to the time of the deployment. The amount of time you spend with SAP support is non-trivial. You have to understand the ticketing system and how to contact the engineers. It takes a little while to get used to that.

When Data Services was first deployed, I was not working at the company. At the time, they used consultants. Since I came on, I've been handling it all in-house.

I rate SAP Data Services seven out of 10. It's a powerful tool that does a lot. It has a lot of strengths, but there are some annoyances that slow down the programmer. It gets frustrating over time. It's also crucial that your repository database technology performs well. I would say seven out of 10 because it's powerful. It would be a nine if it weren't for the clunky source code management and a few other hassles like its inability to generate code.

I probably wouldn't choose this tool for what we're doing because I don't think SAP views this tool as their go-forward technology. SAP now has HANA and a new set of tools that operate in the cloud. I believe the company is primarily in a maintenance situation with Data Services. So if I were starting a new ETL project from scratch, I wouldn't go with SAP Data Services.

SAP Data Services is used to integrate data sources. We use the solution service for other projects we are involved in.

The most valuable feature of SAP Data Services is the integration with data sources.

The solution could improve the overall features. There is a lot that can be done in the solution, therefor there are areas where it can improve. Additionally, there is a need to make it easier for one to create connections to other non-SAP systems. The flexibility to connect to other non-SAP systems is needed.

I have been using SAP Data Services for approximately 17 years.

SAP Data Services is stable.

I rate the stability of SAP Data Services a seven out of ten.

The solution is scalable. You are able to increase the services that can be used.

This solution is best suited for medium-sized companies and above.

We are using SAP Data Services extensively. Every time we have the requirement we use this solution, but it's not the standard way for us to collect data. If we need standard data collection we use this tool.

We have up to three people in the queue to use the solution. We use the tool once in a while.

I rate the scalability of SAP Data Services a seven out of ten.

If we have issues the support is there to assist us. For example, when there are new features, they collect information about the new feature and try to add it to the next release.

I have been using Informatica prior to SAP Data Services. Informatica is the better solution, it is more user-friendly and flexible for creating connections.

The initial setup of SAP Data Services is easy. The length of time it takes for the implementation depends on the tool you use. If you use the desktop tool it should not take long.

The license price is expensive but medium to large-scale companies, should be able to afford it. Other solutions, such as Talend are easier to afford for smaller companies. Depending on the sources of the data where you are receiving your data you could be paying for more than one license.

My advice to others is they should consider if you need to use SAP Data Services. If it is a new business use case it might not be necessary. For example, if you are in an area where the landscape is mainly SAP, then it might make more sense to use the solution. However, if there is a need to connect data from other systems, or other services, then you don't necessarily need to use SAP Data Services as an option. You have to make sure the use case fits the solution.

I rate SAP Data Services an eight out of ten

We use the solution to migrate data from legacy systems to other systems, including SAP and non-SAP systems.

The data migration is easy and convenient to extract, load, and transform. A minimal SQL knowledge is sufficient to handle the application. Syniti needs more technical knowledge. Getting the resourcing facilities is in high demand in India. It is easy for us to get the resources for Data Services. The resources also have the potential and knowledge in SAP. In addition, the loading mechanism in Data Service is much more efficient than Synity.

The cleansing feature is not as efficient as Syniti. The reporting is good because we have followed one standard template for years. Many customers are fine with the reporting mechanism, but it is time-consuming. We have to do the report manually, but Syniti can generate the reports.

The price could be lower, and technical support could be more responsive.

I have been using SAP Data Services for 15 years.

The product is stable.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support is good, but it is a time-consuming process. They also have their protocol, process, and product based on the client.

We have to pay for the support first. If you get an error, technical support will check, and we have to pay. We have to get approval from the client because we have to pay for it.

Neutral

The initial setup is simple and takes a week to complete.

We need an additional resource for deployment because one person handles administration and technical data migration.

We have a separate administration team to look after the deployment.

SAP Data Services costs are relatively high compared to other data services solutions. However, SAP has recently changed its pricing model to be more usage-based, which can make it more cost-effective for some organizations. The new pricing model charges based on the number of CPU processes used, which can be more expensive for organizations with high data processing needs. However, the new pricing model can be more affordable for organizations with lower data processing needs. Additionally, the cost of SAP Data Services can vary depending on the country where it is being used.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Usually, when clients have agile requirements and want to bring historical data into the new HANA architecture, we use Data Services. This may involve multiple years of data from different systems. We need proper business use cases to map and set up the tools. Additionally, after the data is brought in, we perform reconciliation to show the before and after data transformation. This helps the business understand the changes that occurred during the transformation. 

Data Services, along with tools like Information Steward, allows the usage of machine learning and artificial intelligence to maintain business rules and mappings, making the process easier. When we want to handle data migration internally, instead of relying on external tools like Xfinity, we usually use Data Services.

I have worked with Data Services for a long time, and currently, I find the dashboarding and reporting part to be the most important function. Earlier, this function was not as advanced, but now it provides excellent dashboarding and reporting capabilities. After every data load for each object, we can identify and understand any errors. This helps us schedule and manage data migration projects effectively. It has improved significantly.

The only thing is that it's a very specific product. It works well only for our SAP clients. That is its limitation. There is a lot of competition in that regard. 

It will work fine only in an SAP environment. It could be said that the integration with other vendors could be better. It is built specifically for the SAP environment and follows best practices for SAP. When we want to work in a different environment, it becomes a bit more complex.

On adding additional functionality to improve artificial intelligence, machine learning, and integration, I think most of it is already considered in the roadmap.

I have been working with SAP Data Services for a very long time. I started using it at the time for business projects. We have extensively used it for data migration and other purposes.

It's a very stable product now because it has been around for many years. I would rate it a ten out of ten. 

Data Services is a highly scalable product. I would give it a nine or ten.

Around two hundred users use Data Services.

We seek technical support from SAP when we encounter errors that we can't resolve on our own, especially those related to standard master data. We have a support agreement with SAP, and our customer has maximum attention, so we get immediate assistance. It's been very good.

I mainly work with SAP, but I do familiarize myself with competitor products to stay informed. There are reasons why competitors have an edge. Flexibility and scalability are areas where other vendors like Xfinity or SMP might perform slightly better. They are more heterogeneous in that regard.

The setup process is not very complicated, and the integration is also straightforward. Connecting to systems and using prebuilt extractors through interfaces make it easier. So the setup is not very complicated.

Only one or two people are required from a system maintenance perspective because there aren't many technical problems. Additionally, there are four people dedicated to technical development. So, in total, it's less than five or six people handling the technical aspects.

Usually, we work with the business team. Once they bring in the system, they install the best practices and such. Then they connect the system, and that's when I get involved to start the integration process, mapping, and working with tables. It's quite easy. I also do some test driving. So, I work with teams.

In our current project, we are using it in a hybrid manner. However, in other projects, I have worked with both on-premises and cloud deployments.

I would give it around a three, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price. It's relatively expensive compared to other vendors, but it is competitive.

I work with HANA, group reporting, analytics cloud, and other BW-related solutions as a functional architect. I've been working in SAP for more than 22 years. I primarily focus on finance and controlling.

In general, I would give it a rating of nine or ten.

We're primarily using it at a customer's company. It's used in the banking sector. We use it for dashboards and reporting.

It's a good product overall. 

The dashboard is great. It allows us to drill down on data. 

It offers good flexibility.

The solution is doing some good R&D. We have found the technology to be quite good in general.

The initial setup is not complex. 

The solution is stable.

It is scalable.

There is some room for improvement across the product, however, for the most part, we are happy with it. 

We have had some language issues. There needs to be multi-language support, however, my understanding is they are working on multi-language now.

It is expensive. 

I've been using the solution for about 15 years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. I'd rate it eight out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution is scalable. If you want to expand it, you can expand it, depending on how the customer is using it.

We have various customers using the solution. It's suitable for both small and enterprise-level companies. 

We get proper support. It is in English and we'd like different language options, however, their responsiveness and help are fine. Whenever we open a case, we get support.

I have previously used various different solutions.

It is easy to initially set up. If we do have questions, we're always able to reach out to them to get support.

The implementation timelines depend on the customer. Sometimes clients know what they want to do quickly. Others are more slow and steady and take their time. 

The pricing is okay, however, you do pay a lot. It's expensive. The costs vary from client to client. There are different mechanisms for licensing, including user and CPU-based licensing. 

That said, I don't directly deal with licensing and can't get into specifics. 

I've evaluated other options, however, we do use this tool as we have an agreement with SAP.

We are SAP partners.

The solution can work for big or small banks. 

I'd advise users to try this product, however, it needs to be implemented well with requirements taken into consideration properly. However, it does work very well.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.