SAP Master Data Governance, Cloud Edition FAQ

Frequently asked questions about SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition.

What is SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition?

What is SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition?

SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition is a complementary deployment option.

Find questions and answers about SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition, including information on how it is embedded in the overall MDG solution portfolio (specifically related to SAP Master Data Governance on SAP S/4HANA), how it can enable greenfield master data management projects to kick-start their initiative at a low entry barrier.
The questions are clustered according to the topics of Integration, Portfolio and Roadmap, Concept of Federated Governance, and Implementation and Use Cases.
SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition is generally available since May 2021.


Questions about SAP Master Data Integration and its relation to SAP Master Data Governance

What is the difference between master data integration and master data management?

Master Data Integration is about distributing master data based on SAP One Domain Model for a harmonized view across all applications. Companies expect a broad domain coverage for end-to-end process integration. According to the SAP strategy, this is planned to be provided by SAP Master Data Integration.

Master Data Management ensures sustained high quality for trusted master data across the enterprise. Companies prioritize quality for selected domains according to business needs. According to the SAP strategy, this is provided by SAP Master Data Governance.

While SAP Master Data Governance is used to consolidate, govern and ensure proper master data quality, the SAP Master Data Integration is a complementary cloud solution that enables harmonized data consumption based on an aligned data model for the intelligent suite. The solutions can be used together or independently of each other, and already existing MDG distribution scenarios can be kept in place.

See also the SAP Community blog post that deals with this question.

SAP is evolving from providing point-to-point connections to providing an integration infrastructure based on SAP Master Data Integration: Will this also be applicable for SAP ECC releases?

According to the Intelligent Enterprise Suite strategy, SAP S/4HANA is the digital core. Accordingly, SAP ECC is not included as generally applications must adopt to make SAP One Domain Model work, and we do not intend to invest in old releases with SAP Master Data Integration.

SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition uses SOAP as additional integration technology, because many customers have used this technology for quite a while and would like to continue to use it. This way, organizations that do not yet use SAP Master Data Integration (MDI) as their integration technology can now also benefit from SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition as it generally provides SOAP and REST-based MDI as integration technologies.

Where can I find more about SAP One Domain Model (ODM)?
Given that SAP One Domain model is not a canonical model, how does it support SAP S/4HANA to SAP S/4HANA replications?

SAP One Domain Model is supposed to be the lingua franca across applications for common attributes and for overlapping attributes that are typically shared between applications. SAP One Domain Model (ODM) and SAP Master Data Integration will be evolving over time to meet this scope definition. S/4HANA to S/4HANA replications can be achieved using SAP Master Data Integration for the range covered by ODM. If attributes outside the ODM definition shall be replicated, customers need to do custom expansions to the ODM definition or use other replication mechanisms.

What is the roadmap for SAP Master Data Integration with regards to onboarding applications?

See the Intelligent Enterprises Are Integrated Enterprises Whitepaper outlining SAP’s Integration Plan in the Cloud. In addition, the SAP One Domain Model roadmap can be accessed via SAP Roadmap Explorer (see Suite Quality – Aligned Domain Model).

Many customers are very interested in reading master data from one central place with an API. Do SAP Master Data Integration and SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition have read/write APIs?

SAP Master Data Integration will become the central layer for sharing and accessing master data in any system landscape. SAP Master Data Integration provides APIs to send or to retrieve master data. The communication with SAP Master Data Integration is triggered from the applications. Create, Update, or Delete requests are sent to Master Data Integration and put into an event log, from where the master data changes can be retrieved by the consuming applications.

SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition can participate in such a landscape as one of the apps contributing to the creation or update of master data and as such can take the role of the data owner for selected master data. It will always provide master data updates to SAP Master Data Integration where master data is combined with additional master data (attributes) coming from other owners. Consuming applications can retrieve the full scope of a master data record only from SAP Master Data Integration. In SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition there will only be the limited scope of core attributes managed by this solution. It is therefore not recommendable to retrieve master data directly from SAP MDG, cloud edition. Instead, it should always be retrieved from SAP Master Data Integration.

Which service will provide a duplicate check API to external systems? SAP Master Data Integration or SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition?

For all business applications, SAP Master Data Integration is the single point of access to master data. In the future SAP Master Data Integration shall also provide the means to search for master data. This search interface could then also be used to allow for duplicate detection in remote master data creation scenarios, if required. Else, the applications creating new master data will just inform SAP Master Data Integration about the new master data record. SAP Master Data Integration is planned to involve SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition if this system is configured as the “owner” for that master data in SAP Master Data Integration. In the case that SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition detects a duplicate, it will merge the core attributes of the new record with the appropriate existing record and thus create an updated best record. Thereafter, SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition will inform SAP Master Data Integration about the updated (original) record and notify it to deprecate the newly created record and update the key mapping (i.e., linking the new remote key from the application that created the new record to the already existing record in SAP Master Data Integration).

Which API protocols are supported by SAP Master Data Integration?

SAP Master Data Integration supports REST and OData API. The previously built SAP Master Data service for business partner uses SOAP but will merge under SAP Master Data Integration and additionally adopt REST/OData. SOAP-built service interfaces are planned to be supported until further notice.

Does SAP Master Data Integration include integration capabilities with non-SAP systems?

SAP intends to provide integration to SAP applications out of the box. Within the Business Technology Platform, integration with 3rd party applications is achieved through the SAP Integration Suite.

Will local systems use a "subscribe" approach to receive core attributes from SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition?

SAP Master Data Integration is the central layer for sharing master data. Communication with SAP Master Data Integration is triggered from the applications.