ERPL Overview
ERPL is the DuckDB extension for on-premise SAP integration. One LOAD erpl brings in four
protocol implementations, all sharing the same sap_rfc secret.
Protocols
- RFC — Remote Function Call: read tables, call function modules, browse metadata
- BICS — BI Consumer Services: execute SAP BW queries and cubes
- ODP — Operational Data Provisioning: extract and replicate, full or delta
- APE — ABAP Pipeline Engine: extract CDS entities, with delta including deletes
Getting Started
Choosing between ODP and APE for CDS data
Both reach ABAP CDS entities, over different SAP interfaces. In short: use ODP when the view is already annotated for delta and you want server-side selections or parallel fetching; use APE when you need deletes, or when the ODP RFC API is not available to you.
ODP (ABAP_CDS context) | APE (pipeline engine) | |
|---|---|---|
| Delta prerequisite | @Analytics.dataExtraction.delta.byElement on the view | none |
| Deletes in delta | no | yes |
| Server-side filters | yes | no — filter in SQL |
| Parallel package fetch | yes | no |
The APE guide covers the comparison in full, including why the second path exists at all.