ESA and NetWeaver

[Former Member]

Hello,

After reading a lot of presentations and papers about ESA the following question is not well clarified for me:

How the NetWeaver-Stack concretely support the Enterprise Service Architecture??

Someone has further information for me?

Thanks for your help!

[david_sonnenschein · Accepted solution]

Thomas,

Jason covered a lot in his response, and I hope that helps. I would like to turn the sequence around a little and hopefully provide some details that make the use of NW capabilities even more concrete. A lot of ESA benefit comes from leveraging existing systems (and their in-built processes) to other parts of the organization and partners. In many cases the first order of business is to expose specific, high value functions as Services. NW-XI allows for easy exposure of those embedded functions through its many product adapters, JMS, and WS infrastructure, which we then in turn expose as Web Services for the Enterprise (in a central Directory). One difference between what I just described and simply Web Service enabling each existing application with what ever SOAP stack that is handy is that each service exposed through XI has associated and consistent management, monitoring, transformation, and composition services (and tools). Many of the “high value” services need to be decorated (via composition) with infrastructure services that help insure Quality of Service, meet Audit requirements, and provide more complete abstraction from the underlying implementation. NW-XI and the included BPM engine (ccBPM) provide both the development tools and runtime services to do this easily. NW facilitates the exposure and consumption of Enterprise Services by not requiring either consumer or provider to create the additional infrastructure services. Enterprise queues in NW-XI also provide key infrastructure for async web services that again do not need to be bolted on individually by consumers and providers. NW-WebAS underlies all NW components (XI, BW, etc.) so inherent capabilities of each are available consistently through WebAS and all non-SAP Web Services can be utilized by NW though the Eclipse-based tools of NW Studio as Jason mentions, and operated, orchestrated, and evolved through NW.

What we are seeing in the rollout of ESA at customers is that many of the services come from SAP systems (no surprise) but a number of key consumers and some providers are from other technologies. The approach I described above provides for a more robust rollout regardless of if the underlying implementations are SAP or non-SAP based. The ability to version interfaces that represent the same underlying system, but reflect the service evolution as needed by the business and business processes is a key benefit of the NW approach to Service enablement and operations.

-- David

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hallo,

does this mean that Enterprise Services as the foundation of the Enterprise Services Architecture can only be orchestrated and exposed as Web Services through the SAP XI? This would imply that you need to own XI to use Enterprise Services designed by SAP. If this is wrong I would like to know where I can design Enterprise Services in SAP NetWeaver. This this is the only topic which is not explained in the literature concerning NetWeaver or ESA. And I think this would be very important to know

Martin

[STALANKI · Accepted solution]

Hi Martin,

I look at the enterprise service is a collection of various webservices which provides the enterprise functionality like a single thread of business process like Customer-To-Cash etc.SAP XI is just an option to use webservices as it has inbuilt SOAP adapter specifically designed for integrating with any webservices.We can also expose RFC as webservices from the ABAP stack using XI.However there is no hard and fast rule that webservices has to be designed only in XI.It can be designed in SAP EP or webdynro also.We can also use the SAP CAF for buliding the enterprise service out of the web services exposed SAP XI/SAP EP/Web Dynpro.Web Service providing a common enterprise business functionality can be termed as Enterprise Service...The way we are going to expose various business proceeses as enterprise services is based on ESA.I can even relate it to "Object Orient Programming is based on Object Oriented Design" might be synonymous to "Representing Enterprise Service is based on the "Enterprise Services Architecture ".I hope I made some sense.This is how I understood the jargon "Enterprise Architecture" and critics are always welcome as the best way to learn is to "brain storm"..!!

[Former Member]

Hi Thomas,

The short answer is that NetWeaver is both the "compsition platform" and the "runtime platform" for ESA.

Enterprise Services can be accessed from a shared repository through a number of design tools within the NW Studio. These tools provide a range of design capabilities for different types of users (from deep code development to analysts that work with high level business objects). This is enabled by the WebAS capability within NW, which is both the development and runtime engine.

These services can then be combined to form complete business processes that enjoy uniform Master Data, and their flow can be managed centrally regardless of which back-end system the data or transaction resides. The back-end landscape can be defined and accessed through a central XI hub, which allows strong de-coupling of the process from those systems.

To these business processes, comprised of enterprise services, we can then add capabilities of analysis (BI/analytics), content managent, and collaboration (KMC).

Finally we can expose these procesesses through various presentation mechanisms such as web browsers or mobile devices (EP, MI).

The ESA is therefore enabled by NetWeaver, and NW is the composition platform both for SAP developers building our applications as well as for customers and partners building other customer applications.

Regards,

Jason