Saphir ERP metadata analysis tool

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Saphir is a software tool for understanding the metadata of complex ERP and CRM environments like SAP, PeopleSoft and Siebel.

1 How it works
2 Uses
3 Features
4 ERP Packages Addressed
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] How it works

Saphir extracts metadata from the package data dictionary. In the case of SAP, it does this using an ABAP function. For Siebel, PeopleSoft, etc. it uses SQL. The extraction process pulls data related metadata from each package. That is, metadata describing tables, fields, relationships, indexes, etc. Saphir gets both ‘logical’ names for tables and fields, and (where they exist) field definitions. Extracted metadata is stored in a repository. The user can then use the Saphir interface to search for tables; fields, etc. (see Features) A range of interfaces are available to data modelling tools like ERwin, ER/Studio and PowerDesigner.

[edit] Uses

Packages like SAP make use of RDBMs’ like Oracle and DB2 to store the large amounts of data entered and used by the packages functions. The structure of this data is largely opaque to the user, so any project that needs to interface to the ERP in someway and needs an understanding of how these packages store the data may find Saphir of interest. Typically these projects include:

Business Intelligence (BI)
Data Warehousing/Data Marting
Building Corporate datamodels
Integration with other ERP and non-ERP systems

[edit] Features

Navigation Features: One of the main ways to see the metadata in Saphir is as a searchable list of tables. For each table, users can drill into details of the fields for the table, and explore relationships between tables. An alternative navigation approach groups the tables in a searchable hierarchy, tables and views being grouped by ERP module. Searching/Grouping Features: There are a range of useful searching features including exact or wild-card searches on table name, field name and description. Tables can be grouped using a Subject Area approach. Having created a subject area, the user’s view of the tables can be restricted to just those tables in the subject area. Export Features: One or more of the created Subject Areas can be exported into a range of 3rd party tools, mostly in the data modeling space (Erwin, PowerDesigner, ER/Studio, System Architect being some of the most popular).