Welcome to MDA Workbench

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MDA Workbench is a Windows application that understands the definition of an SAP IDoc, table, or structure. It's a powerful tool for transforming functional knowledge into functional and technical deliverables for data migration, interface mapping, or generally working with SAP data.


For data migration, the single most important advantage of using MDA Workbench is simplicity.


  1. Download the definition of an IDoc from an SAP system (yes, including enhanced IDocs).
  2. Select the relevant Segments and Fields of the IDoc, and indicate primary key fields.
  3. Maintain sample data per the selected Segments and Fields.


With these three steps (made possible by your functional knowledge) the end-to-end requirements for a data migration object have been described.


A great deal can then be accomplished by automation, enabling repeatable, consistent, and accurate production of functional deliverables. Simply click the Publish button and MDA Workbench speedily creates the following:




What's the Challenge?


We must simultaneously reduce complexity and increase the speed of achieving repeatable results while recognizing and accommodating data models that are fundamentally different across the data migration landscape.



The shape of data -- the technical definition of data -- changes with each step.



One source of complexity is identifying and accommodating one-to-many relationships that are the nature of some business objects. For example, a customer may have multiple telephone numbers, multiple shipping addresses, multiple associated contact persons, and more.


Beyond the complexity represented by the business object itself, it's important to recognize that components of the data migration landscape represent one-to-many relationships in fundamentally different ways. For example, one-to-many relationships may be expressed differently by relational database tables (i.e. Staging Tables) versus the same data in a structured document (i.e. an IDoc). What's more, there's a third consideration, which is the data model assumed by conversion programs (i.e. Legacy System Migration Workbench, LSMW). What are the key differences demanding our attention?






Deftly managing the above complexity, simplifying the process for every functional resource, and increasing the speed of achieving predictable results is the comprehensive challenge.



What's the Solution?


MDA Workbench ... of course :-) MDA Workbench is a tool, but it's really just one piece of a proven data migration strategy, architecture, and functional-resource-driven data migration process that consistently produces successful results.  


MDA Workbench supports every step in moving data from Legacy systems to SAP ERP.







The Strategy


Reduce Complexity



Increase Visibility




The Architecture


Focus Complexity



The data migration architecture is typical, with a Staging Database (external SQL Server, not part of SAP) for data transformation.



The Process


Iterative by Design



The data migration process is driven by functional resources and includes Best Practice steps:


  1. Analysis
  2. Extract
  3. Clean
  4. Validate <- MDA Workbench helps with this step!
  5. Load <- MDA Workbench helps with this step!
  6. Reconcile