Forum Discussion
Connect to SAP BW
Hello,
We have acustomer who is interested in connecting Power BI to SAP BW. They checked about it and found out that the connector costs money. I didn't find any reference to cost related to this connector. Is it so?
I also saw that you can build a dataflow that connects to SAP BW. 2 questions about this:
1. Does the online connector requires a paid component (other than Power BI Pro license)?
2. If I prefer to work with Power BI Desktop, can I create a dataflow and then use the dataflow as a source for Power BI Desktop - in order to avoid the need to install additional components on the development computer?
Thanks,
Barak
No Power BI connector costs money. Just use the SAP Business Warehouse connection. If SAP requires licensing on the back end, then that is between you and your IT department and SAP. But you will need to install additional components. Power BI doesn't have the full connection properties. Many connectors are like this. Oracle is the same way. MS just provides a nice hook for SAP, Oracle, etc. vs requiring a full custom connector.
3 Replies
No Power BI connector costs money. Just use the SAP Business Warehouse connection. If SAP requires licensing on the back end, then that is between you and your IT department and SAP. But you will need to install additional components. Power BI doesn't have the full connection properties. Many connectors are like this. Oracle is the same way. MS just provides a nice hook for SAP, Oracle, etc. vs requiring a full custom connector.
Hi barakb32,
Microsoft does not charge separately for the SAP BW connector. A Dataflow can avoid installing SAP .NET Connector on each developer computer, but the connector and on-premises gateway are still required on the gateway machine.
Alternatively, if the required BW data is exposed through OData, you may evaluate Power BI Connector for SAP:
It does not connect directly to BEx queries.
Documentation:
https://metricasoftware.com/docs/sap/Cheers,
Metrica TeamThe SAP BW connector itself isn't a paid Microsoft add-on. If you are using Power BI Desktop, you may still need SAP client components installed, depending on the connection type. Using a dataflow as the SAP source is a good option, and Power BI Desktop can connect to that dataflow afterward.
