This series is written for data professionals working on governance, analytics, data catalog, migration, and integration projects, particularly those whose organisations run ERP applications from SAP, Microsoft, Salesforce, or Oracle.
Each part can be read independently, but together they trace a path from the fundamentals of metadata through to the practical challenges of working with large, complex enterprise systems.
Contents
Part 1: Metadata Discovery and Data Intelligence
Part 2: Using Metadata with Data Intelligence Projects
Part 3: The Challenges of Metadata Discovery
Part 4: SAP and ERP Metadata: A Suitable Case for Treatment?
Part 5: Using Safyr for SAP and ERP Metadata Discovery
Throughout this series, we have built a picture of why metadata discovery matters and why it is hard, particularly for ERP applications. In this final blog, we introduce Safyr, Silwood Technology's specialist metadata discovery platform, and explain how it addresses the challenges that have tripped up so many data projects.
Safyr® is a metadata discovery and curation platform designed specifically for data analysts and data engineers who need to work with metadata from large, complex, and often heavily customised ERP and business applications. It supports SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, and Oracle applications: the systems that hold the most business-critical data in most large organisations, and the ones where standard metadata discovery approaches are least effective.
The fundamental principle behind Safyr is straightforward: data specialists should be able to access, understand, and curate ERP metadata without needing specialist knowledge of the ERP applications themselves. That means no ABAP, no deep SAP technical expertise, no reliance on internal SAP consultants or external specialists to provide the base information that a data project needs.
Harvest: connecting to source applications
Safyr uses the most appropriate connectivity mechanism foreach source application, and in each case it connects directly to the application's own data dictionary, rather than to the underlying database system catalog. This distinction is critical, because it is the data dictionary, not the system catalog, that holds both the business and technical metadata together.
For SAP ERP and BW applications, Safyr uses Silwood Technology's own SAP-certified Transports to connect to the ABAP Data Dictionary tables. These Transports have been certified by SAP, giving customers confidence in a safe and supportable implementation. For Salesforce and Force.com-based applications, connectivity is via the Salesforce API. For Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, Safyr connects to the Microsoft Dataverse. Safyr does not remove metadata from the source application; it copies it and stores it in a dedicated relational repository, called a Safyr Repository, whose structure is specifically designed for the purpose. There is no requirement for a permanent connection to the source system once the extraction is complete.
Discover: finding what you need
Once the metadata is in the Safyr Repository, the data team can search, browse, and analyse it through Safyr's own interface. The metadata retrieved includes tables with both their business and technical names, table types, row counts where available, the date metadata was last changed, attributes (columns) with both business and technical names, technical descriptions, domains, data elements, views, and other objects such as application components, programs, and transactions where available.
Critically, Safyr discovers the primary and foreign key relationships between tables: information that is invisible in the database system catalog but is essential for understanding how data connects. Safyr also delivers application hierarchies where these are available from the source, which provides a further navigational aid for large, complex data models.
Curate: building relevant subsets
For sources with very large data models (SAP S/4HANA being the most extreme example) the ability to curate manageable, relevant subsets of metadata is essential. Safyr allows users to create unlimited Subject Areas: named collections of tables, related tables, and other metadata objects that correspond to the requirements of a specific use case or data product.
To accelerate this process for SAP, Silwood provides approximately 1,000 pre-configured Subject Areas covering a wide range of business topics. These are derived from the customer's own SAP system, so they include any customisations that have been applied to the tables they reference. They can be used as a starting point and refined as needed, significantly reducing the time required to move from raw metadata to a curated, usable subset.
Integrate: delivering metadata to downstream tools
The final step is delivering curated metadata to the tools and platforms where it will be used. Safyr supports an extensive range of integration targets, including Collibra, Alation, Quest, Precisely, Actian, Ataccama, Informatica, and other leading data governance and catalog platforms, primarily through its JSON Export for Data Catalogs. In addition, export to data modelling tools including erwin Data Modeler, ER/Studio, IBM Data Architect, and PowerDesigner; and a range of standard export formats including XML, and CSV for use with other platforms are also supported.
Safyr is used by data specialists in organisations across a wide range of sectors, including financial services, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, government, and retail, to solve the challenges described in the previous blogs in this series. The consistent themes from customers are faster delivery, reduced reliance on expensive internal and external ERP specialists, and improved trust in data because its provenance can be clearly demonstrated.
Perhaps most importantly, Safyr gives data teams control. Rather than waiting for technical specialists to provide metadata (or working around its absence) data teams can drive their own discovery process, at their own pace, and deliver the metadata their projects need.
One increasingly common use case is the development of data products: curated, governed, reusable data assets with a defined owner, documented lineage, agreed quality standards, and a clear intended purpose. Building a data product that draws on ERP data requires a thorough understanding of which tables and fields contain the relevant data, how those tables relate to one another, and what the business meaning of the data is. For complex ERP systems, this metadata discovery work is often the most time-consuming part of the entire data product development process.
Consider a team building a 360-degree view of the customer, a common data product goal that requires bringing together data from sales, service, finance, and potentially HR systems, many of which are held in SAP or other ERP applications. The product owner and data engineers need to identify the relevant tables, understand their relationships, reconcile business definitions across systems, and map the data for downstream use. Without a tool like Safyr, this process typically involves weeks of consultation with SAP specialists, manual research through documentation, and iterative trial and error. With Safyr, the data team can drive the discovery process themselves, using Subject Areas to define and refine the metadata scope, and delivering the results directly to the governance or modeling tools already in use.
Safyr does make metadata extraction faster, but that is not its primary goal. Its purpose is to make the metadata of complex ERP systems accessible to the people who need it most: the data specialists building the governance frameworks, analytics platforms, and data products that modern organisations depend on.
To find out more about Safyr, request a trial, or book a demonstration