Item: SAP Data Intelligence
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SAP Data Intelligence

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have used [SAP] Data Intelligence for internal learning purposes in order to build up know-how within our team. For this purpose, we have re-implemented an existing showcase using [SAP] Data Intelligence.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Provides lots of standard operators and default pipelines
Good Python notebook integration for data discovery
Graphical UI to develop pipelines reduce amount of code written

Cons

Better documentation with examples of how to use connectors (i.e. what input/output must look like)
Debugging functionality required to understand where pipelines fail and how data looks at that point
SAP libraries (e.g. python hana_ml) should be STANDARD and pre-installed to avoid dockerfiles and other workarounds
Dockerfile execution takes long times without giving a status where it is failing/held up
HANA Read/Write Table operator throws TLS errors which are unlikely when HANA connection generally works

Return on Investment

Complete Data Integration
Single Platform for Data Integration
System Consolidation
Ease of use for developers

Alternatives Considered

I have worked with SAP Data Services for data integration, but think that it is not as strong as [SAP] Data Intelligence when it comes to data integration across landscapes and open source integration.
I have also worked with Spark to build pipelines, which cannot really be compared to DI.

Key Insights

Do you think SAP Data Intelligence delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with SAP Data Intelligence's feature set?

Yes

Did SAP Data Intelligence live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of SAP Data Intelligence go as expected?

Would you buy SAP Data Intelligence again?

Yes

Other Software Used

SAP BW/4HANA, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP HANA

Likelihood to Recommend

I believe [SAP] Data Intelligence is well suited for scenarios where data sits both in SAP systems as well as in additional files or other databases and needs to be integrated for joint purposes. Due to the large amount of standard operators, this can be done quite nicely. Also, [SAP] Data Intelligence integrates well with open source technologies such as Python, which makes this tool interesting for both DWH developers and Data Scientists as these two worlds are brought together.

SAP Data Intelligence Support

Support Rating

Using SAP Data Intelligence

Usability

Good tool with lots of potential, but I still see a lot of room for improvement, e.g. when it comes to debugging functionality to understand exactly where pipelines fail and what the data at that point looks like (similar to BW debugging). Also, I am missing SAPs standard machine learning libraries (Python) to be pre-installed, among some other general usability improvements.

Comments

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SAP Data Intelligence offers a lot of potential for SAP/Open Source data integration