(GLUE-1812) Additional Features

Meaningful fields

SAP table fields tend to have field names that are not self-explanatory. An unskilled SAP-user doesn't understand the meaning of these fields. This can be solved by setting the Use meaningful fields checkbox during the creation of the table.

Example:

Here is a comparison of 2 tables, both created from SAP SFLIGHT table. The first table was created with original field names, the second using meaningful field names.

Original field names	Meaningful field names

If the meaningful field names aren't displayed for all of the fields, you can generate new values based on SAP tables through the report /DVD/GL_MEAN_FLD_GEN. Then again mark the Use meaningful fields checkbox to display them.

Meaningful values

Data inserted into the storage doesn't always have values which can be easily understood. The values are often represented by their simplified or shortened versions. To display the more explicit versions of the values select the checkbox Use meaningful values in the Attributes tab.

Please note: After the installation of Glue it is necessary to execute the report '/DVD/GL_BPL_SPKFL_CONTENT_GEN' and the '/DVD/GL_DD_SPKFL_CONTENT_GEN' which generate some of the meaningful values. For more information, see Special content.

Example:

Table: SFLIGHT: field CARRID (Airline Code):

value in SAP table	translation to meaningful value
AA	American Airlines
AB	Air Berlin
AC	Air Canada
AF	Air France
AZ	Alitalia
BA	British Airways

As a result, instead of the shortened values such as AA, AB, AC, etc., the descriptive terms such as the American Airlines, Air Berlin, and Air Canada are displayed in a Glue table.

Data Enrichment

Data enrichment (or denormalization) includes data from SAP master data into transactional data, for example by inserting the master data - here airline code (CARRID) into the transactional data - here flight number (CARRID_ENRICHED).

With disabled Data enrichment:

With enabled Data enrichment:

Enable update

The functionality simulates the update operation for tables on storages, such as Apache Hive and Apache Impala, which don't support the update operation.

Please note: This setting is not relevant for standard ACID database storages.

Select Enable update on the Attributes tab.

The functionality automatically creates an update table, which is a copy of the original Glue table without the GLREQUEST field. During an extraction the update table stores updated data transferred from the original Glue table.

Select the following settings:

Keep old data:

If you select this option, then during an extraction the original Glue table stores the original values and the update table stores all the updated values.

If you clear this option, then during an extraction you store only the updated values in the update table. The original values are not stored.

Update table: Name of the update table which stores updated data.

Please note: Selected partitioning is applied only for the update table. The original table can have partitioning only on GLREQUEST field.