The step in the background of your first screen shot, SAP ERP Table Input
is not a standard Pentaho step, but a Plugin developed by IT-Novum. It is a product that has to be purchased (see here). But even that step doesn't allow direct queries using the table input step from Pentaho, it delivers its own input step. The reason is that SAP ERP doesn't allow direct database access at all, you have to retrieve data through RFC modules if you want to go through the SAP Netweaver server instead of accessing the database directly. This youtube video contains a demo around 7 minutes into the video, showing the plugin specific step.
You can use remote function modules like RFC_READ_TABLE
to access tables and views with pentaho (and the sapjco
library) alone, but it doesn't work through the regular Table Input step in Pentaho, you need to use the SAP Input step. And RFC_READ_TABLE
has a number of limitations that make it pretty much useless for extended ETL tasks without a few modifications (see for instance this SCN thread)
If you only need to access a very small number of tables with few fields and ideally only in a few transformations, the SAP input step can help you do that. But if this a cornerstone of a large ETL process, start looking into commercial tools to help you. Or, if this is a viable alternative for you, access the database directly. But there are possible license limitations (the Oracle db licensed by SAP only allows access for the SAPSR3 user) as well as technical reasons (for instance security risks) to avoid doing that.