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SAP TDMS - comparison with Data Sync Manager

Former Member
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Dear All,

Does anyone know the difference between SAP TDMS and Data Sync Manager.

My client asked me to realize a comparison, but it seems to be similary and it is very hard for me to find the difference between the both?

If someone has input about it...

Regards,

Benjamin

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

rajesh_kumar2
Active Participant
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Hello Benjamin,

There are several additional features of TDMS over DSM -

- Flexibility to choose a RFC based transfer or File based transfer.

- Refresh multiple receiver clients with one File extract from a source system.

- Possibility to use File transfers in WAN independent environments

- Automate the whole copy procedure through PEM.

- Notification Services on the copy progress.

- Incremental solutions to extract a 100 % consistent Material Ledger data from a Live production

  system with active ML.

- On device mobile applications for TDMS to keep you informed on the completed porgress

- Solution to copy Several industry Solutions with TDMS

- SAP TDMS can extract the required data from the snapshot system without causing any performance    bottlenecks in the production system.

-  many more new features to come.............................

And the very important aspect TDMS is completely backed up by SAP itself

Thanks,

Rajesh

Former Member
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Thank you everyone for your feedback,

Former Member
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Hello Rajesh,

There are some factual inaccuracies in your post that I would like to kindly point out:

  1. DSM has supported file and RFC transfer since the very first version (1997 - yes DSM had been around much longer than TDMS). TDMS initially only supported RFC and added file support only recently. When exporting data with DSM via file, you can import the same extract into multiple targets.
  2. DSM compresses data on the fly to allow fast and efficient transfer over WANs. This feature also existed in DSM well before TDMS added it.
  3. DSM can notify one or more people via SMS or email with status updates (scheduled kick-off, progress updates, completion update, etc.)
  4. PEM is specific to TDMS and was recently added to ease some of the complexity of TDMS' copy procedure. DSM has a very simple two-step process for doing client refreshes. DSM's easy of use is one of its strongest attributes...
  5. DSM Object Sync support over a thousand business objects that can be copied (with related master data and document flows) in a fully consistent manner, even with a live source or target system.
  6. DSM has an iPhone app to track progress. A SAPUI5 app will soon be available.
  7. DSM has support for multiple industry solution, e.g. IS-Utilities, IS-Oil, IS-Public Sector, etc.
  8. DSM can also extract data from a system created via a snapshot.

Lastly, DSM is developed and supported by EPI-USE Labs, a company with more than 18 years' experience in SAP test data provisioning. The EPI-USE Labs global support team is renowned for exceeding customers' expectations. DSM is also an SAP certified product (including HANA certification).

Is it not in customers' best interest that they are provided with accurate information that allows them to make informed decisions? I would strongly suggest that customers research, and ideally evaluate, both products.

Kind regards,

Phillip

Former Member
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Hi Phillip Stofberg,

Your information is very interesting for take a decision.

Best Regards,

E.H.

Former Member
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Hello Phillip,

Please let me point out the inaccuracies related to TDMS only posted by you. I have not spoken about any feature of DSM as I don't want to repeat the same mistake as done by you.  Also I completely agree to your last point where you mention that “Is it not in customers' best interest that they are provided with accurate information that allows them to make informed decisions? I would strongly suggest that customers research, and ideally evaluate, both products”

  • The most recent version of TDMS which is now currently in the market is TDMS 4.0 which was released 3 years back. The earlier versions were SAP TDMS 3.0 and TDMS 2005. So counting the no. of years, its been over a decade that TDMS in there in the market successfully implemented by thousands of customers globally with over 3000+ shipments so far and competing with the market by adopting the latest innovations and market situations. In TDMS, you can transfer data using RFCs or file transfer methods. Below I list out few use cases of file – based scenario.

Creates multiple receiver systems without impacting the sender system

Copies and transfers data across data centers

Can create export files for the same dataset

  • There is a technique in TDMS where the selected data is stored in clusters in compressed format. This technique is being followed since was launched in the market.

  • In TDMS, you can receive e-mail notifications about the status of activities in your package. TDMS 4.0 sends you the notifications using the Notification Engine for the status like: Successful starts for activities, Execution results for activities, including successful completions, terminations, and completions with errors or warnings.

  • SAP TDMS provides a single interface both for process execution and process monitoring, so the overall execution status of your project is available in the Projects work center. You can predefine and automate the execution of a TDMS migration process using the Process Execution Manager (PEM). You can also set the values for certain reusable parameters before a migration process execution. Choosing the parameters enables an automated process execution. You can set migration parameters at different levels of your project. Using PEM you can schedule activities for the specified date and time.

  • SAP TDMS supports IS like - IS-Healthcare, IS-AFS, DIMP, IS-O&G, IS-Retail, IS-Utilities, IS-Banking and more in the list.

  • You  can use TDMS Business Process Library (TDMS BPL) to select business objects and their specific data environment in the sender system and transfer them to a receiver system. TDMS BPL provides a BPL object for each business process to select and transfer objects. The BPL object enables the transfer of data relevant to its corresponding business process. There are 5 categories of BPL Objects available with TDMS BPL:

Master Data: You can choose this category to transfer only the master data of the selected BPL object.

Transaction Data: By choosing the transaction data category you can transfer only the
transactional data of the selected BPL object.

Processes category contains the BPL objects where business process-related data is transferred.      

Custom Objects category contains the BPL objects that you create or copy. No objects are part of this category in the standard delivery from SAP.

Common Sub-objects category of BPL objects mainly includes the sub-objects in the other BPL objects.

The BPL Modeler feature is available which is integrated with the TDMS workcenter where you can model the BPL objects. You can view existing BPL objects, copy a BPL object and create a new BPL object using the BPL modeler based on your business requirement.

  • Manage TDMS Execution is a transactional FIORI app to help the TDMS user execute, monitor and troubleshoot several TDMS activities. Manage TDMS Execution is a simple and easy to use experience that works seamlessly across devices – desktop, tablet, or smartphone.

  • Sender system supplies data to the non-production system, which you want to set up using SAP TDMS. However, if you do not want to have any impact on the performance of the production system during a TDMS run, you can use a recent copy of the production system. You can create the copy by using the snapshot technology method or a full system copy.

Another most important features of SAP TDMS is Data Scrambling and Shell Creation:

Data scrambling is a security measure to protect confidential data from internal and external threats. This security measure masks the sensitive data to prevent the risk of exposure to unauthorized users. The data
scrambling features with SAP TDMS help prevent the loss of sensitive data or the unauthorized access of confidential data in the non-production systems.

A system shell is an SAP system that only contains client-specific master data and the required client specific user and address data but no transactional data.

For more information on this product, please refer to the TDMS guides available in the Service Market Place.

Regards,

Farheen

Answers (3)

Answers (3)

Former Member
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  • Folks

just wanted to seek your opinion , guidance and direction... to see which is a better tool for generated reduced volume system copies from / for SAP Business Suite on HANA and BW on HANA.

TDMS and EPI-USE - do very well when SAP runs on Non-HANA RDBMS.... what about when SAP runs on In-Memory HANA....

Do you have any experience or can you advise - which is the best tool/ methodology for creating smaller Dev, QA etc from production size HANA systems..



shouvik
Explorer
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Hi Ajay,

I cannot comment on the applicability and comparison between SAP TDMS and DSM, as I have never worked on DSM before.  However, I would like to point out the fact that TDMS can be used very successfully on in-memory DB HANA (even in MCOD configuration). I performed a successful TDMS refresh for a customer on HANA (Version 97) last month. The current version of TDMS 4.0 (SP 10) is very robust for all SAP Solutions, and is a one-of-a kind tool when it comes to HCM Data Scrambling and BPL.

Feel free to reach out to me offline if you require any further information.

Best Regards,

Shouvik

Former Member
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Hi Ajay,

I'll answer on behalf of EPI-USE Labs for DSM. Many of our existing customers have migrated to the HANA database and we have also assisted new customers in migrating to the HANA platform by means of our products and services.


Some amazing performance results have been reported; this can be credited to the HANA technology itself but also speaks our efforts to optimize our solutions for HANA. We have worked closely with key customers that have large and specialized HANA installations to ensure that our solutions scale well to a variety of HANA implementations.


Another key metric is that customers have realized significant size reductions when subsetting production systems to refresh their QA and Development systems. The DSM product suite is certified for SAP HANA.

You can message me directly if you need more specific information or you can contact EPI-USE Labs support.

Best regards,

Marius

Former Member
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Folks

just wanted to seek your opinion , guidance and direction... to see which is a better tool for generated reduced volume system copies from / for SAP Business Suite on HANA and BW on HANA.

TDMS and EPI-USE - do very well when SAP runs on Non-HANA RDBMS.... what about when SAP runs on In-Memory HANA....

Do you have any experience or can you advise - which is the best tool/ methodology for creating smaller Dev, QA etc from production size HANA systems

bxiv
Active Contributor
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I would have to agree with your assessment of DSM; it does appear to have the same level of features as TDMS, the email feature is amusing too as TDMS 4.0 SP06 is the pre-req with TDMS.

Consideration for your client, going with DSM and needing SAP assistance for a data issue would not be likely to happen; so hopefully DSM can figure out any issues that arise.

And with TDMS you have the company that makes the product as making the application/DB setups; the understanding of how things work/flow or pulling a resource from another functional area to assist with a copy issue would be possible.

Former Member
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Thank you for this feedback, it will very helpful, but do you have some functional differences that i can use to highlight SAP TDMS?

Regards,

Benjamin

bxiv
Active Contributor
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My company has been using TDMS for less than 6 months now and currently we are trying to have our functional team validate that time slices work so we can refresh all systems on a re-occurring basis.

I know prior to TDMS 4.0 SP05 it was required for someone to click down a list of executions, SP05 introduced a term known as PEM and it will automate the process (still requires an observer in case of an error).  I have validated that with PEM you can set a weekend date/time for the data transfer piece and actually start the TDMS package ahead of time so all the 'heavy lifting' (aka data deletion/transferring) happens on a weekend during low hours.  May be worth asking DSM folks if they can meet the same functionality.

Akshay_G
Contributor
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Hi Billy,

This would be rather a quite late response in return to your response.

I was curious to understand how you had setup TDMS as you explained above.

My organization has been using TDMS for a while, but now we are looking for a better solution which can allow us to perform system refreshes frequently rather than quarterly or half yearly, but with the huge Production Databases upto 10+ TBs it makes a challenge to perform TDMS runs unless at the cost of highly powerful machine which can host TDMS, but still there are other challenges as well. We are looking for more robust and automated solution to do those kind of stuff.

We are starting to evaluate SAP LVM now for that particular situation.

Can you please elaborate about what you mentioned above or maybe point me to some resource/documentation about how you have been able to automate the TDMS runs just in time and manage to finish those and can run frequently. I would like to re-assess the solution.

Would appreciate your response.

Thanks & Have a nice day,

Akshay

rajesh_kumar2
Active Participant
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Hello Akshay,

Could you please share some more details like the time slice used and the overall runtime that

you normally get while performing the client refresh using TDMS.

Also some top 5, time consuming activity that you face in your copy.

Although you are correct that more powerful machines can really help really optimize the runtimes,

but it may be possible that you may have not set up the TDMS copy properly to leverage the latest

optimizations and automation.

If you can provide some more details may be I can help you with some good suggestions.

Thanks,

Rajesh


bxiv
Active Contributor
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Have you reviewed the BPL process of TDMS to see if that will work for your scenarios?

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_tdm40/helpdata/en/1f/e0bf582d9a4e30aeba32f072bad337/content.htm?frameset...

They have a lot of various things by default and I believe you can modify some to fit your requirements.

The PEM portion that I was referring to is an automated (until it errors) method of running through TDMS packages to avoid having to click down the list of actions and making the overall process take longer than needed.