(Glue-2008) Additional Features of a Glue table

You may enable multiple additional features of a Glue table during its creation. These features with their description are listed below.

After you have selected your preferred additional features, complete the creation of a Glue table, as described in the chapter (Glue-2008) Create a Glue Table.

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

This setting is not relevant for standard ACID database storages.

To enable update

  1. Select Enable update on the Attributes tab.
  2. Then, choose if you either want to
    • Keep old data. During extraction, the original Glue table stores the original values, and the update table stores all the updated values.
      Check Keep old data.

    • Keep only updated data. During extraction, only the updated values are stored in the update table. The original Glue table is empty. 
      Clear Keep old data.
  3. Fill in the name of the Update table, which is automatically created.


Please note: By enabling an update, the Partitioning which is set on GLREQUEST, is not applied in the update table. If you have set the partitioning on the GLREQUEST field, it will be applied only to the original Glue table.

Data Enrichment  ( Meaningful values )

Data inserted into the storage doesn't always include values that can be easily understood. The values are often represented by their simplified or shortened versions. Data enrichment (or denormalization) includes data from SAP master data into transactional data.

To display more explicit versions of the values proceed as follows:

  1. Click button "Enrich fields" in the Fields tab.
  2. Select fields that you want to enrich, i.e. add additional fields with the naming "<ORIGINAL_FIELD>_ENR", which will store the meaningful values of the original fields.

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 generates some of the meaningful values. For more information, see the chapter Special content.


Example: Data enrichment inserts the master data - here SD document category (VBTYP) into the transactional data - here (VBTYP_ENR).

With disabled Data enrichment:

With enabled Data enrichment:


As a result, the data enrichment field (VBTYP_ENR) will store the descriptive terms such as the "Invoice", "Purchase Order", "Shipment" etc., while the original field will store only the shortened values such as "M", "V", "8" etc

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. The Meaningful fields feature alters those field names so they are easily understandable.

To use the meaningful fields in a table

in the Fields tab, check the Use meaningful fields checkbox or click the toolbar button Translate to meaningful field names.

Example:

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

Original field namesMeaningful field names

If the meaningful field names aren't displayed for all of the fields, you can generate them by executing the report /DVD/GL_MEAN_FLD_GEN. Specify the SAP table, from which you imported the fields to the Glue table and Execute. The meaningful field names will be automatically generated. Then again check the Use meaningful fields checkbox to display them.