(e)SOA minimal Requirements for consuming Services

[Former Member]

Hello everyone,

as mentioned in an previos thread I'm currently writing my diploma about "Enterprise SOA Bundles in SAP". In order of this I also need to write a Consumer-Application in Java which consumes services of the Bundle "Quote to Order for configurable products". The communication needs to been done over the IPC (Application <-> IPC <-> Services). I must NOT create new services. Now I'm sitting in my company and have the job to find out what is needed to realize this.

What I know:

- I need the Enhancement Package 3

- Because of this I need SAP Sollution Manager (at least version 4.0 with the highest Support Package Level

in the system environment (SAP_BASIS SP13 & ST SP14))

- Newest SPAM/SAINT-Upgrades

What i think to know:

- I need a provider- and a consumerside. The services which are meant to be consumed are stored in an ESR on

the providerside. For the ESR i need an XI (PI) or an CE with ESR installed

What I don't know:

- What exactly do I need on the consumerside?

- What kind of SAP System do I need for the providerside? Is only ERP 2005 suitable? Or does an

corresponding IDES, CRM etc. system also suite the requirements?

- Do I need any aditional components/upgrades I haven't mentioned?

- Do I really need the ESR for my mentioned purposes? Clearly: Do I really need the CE or PI?

- Are there any aditional points to be mentioned for installing the Enhancement Pack 3?

I would be very happy to get answers soon. In fact i need to hold a presentation on friday about my needs and what has to be done to get a proper system environmant for my diploma. Because of this eventually hardware has to be bought which costs money. And I really don't want to be the reason for buying expensive money which isn't really needed.

Greetings, Marco

P.S. I would also be happy if you could give me URLs of proper sources to answers for my questions. I don't really find the things I ask for in the "information jungle".

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

You can use any available UI & Service tools available (WDP, Visual Composer, CAF, EJB etc) in CE to be the consumer.

In "Quote to Order for configurable products", you will need ESs like Read Customer Quote, Find Customer Quote Basic Data by Elements, etc. Go to "View ES" -> Technical Data, then you will see the "Software Component Version" and "Application component" needed for that ES. Make sure it's available in your ERP. Upgrade or Patch it if necessary.

For SOA, you need an ESR. Otherwise, it would just be a plain "web service". I would suggest you use ESR available in CE instead of PI, as for your POC/prototype. That would save you times & cost . Use PI unless you need the ESB, ccBPM and other unique functionalities there.

- julius

[former_member325030]

Hi Macro,

I think to consume services from the ESR, you only need to create the consumer proxy in your system and provide the URL for the wsdl file and logical port while creating the proxy. You have to create the endpoint for the server proxy and logical port for the consumer proxy to connect both of them. And you can call this consumer proxy using logical port which you have created and then make use of it.

Thanks,

Priyanka.

[Former Member]

Hi Marco,

> What I know:

> - I need the Enhancement Package 3

> - Because of this I need SAP Sollution Manager (at least version 4.0 with the highest Support Package Level

> in the system environment (SAP_BASIS SP13 & ST SP14))

> - Newest SPAM/SAINT-Upgrades

>

> What i think to know:

> - I need a provider- and a consumerside. The services which are meant to be consumed are stored in an ESR on

> the providerside. For the ESR i need an XI (PI) or an CE >with ESR installed.

It is not mandatory. ESR is s repository of services, where you can see all the service definitions and also define new services. For consumption of services, ESR is not important.

After defining a service in ESR, you provide implementation in ABAP or JAVA( only for custom services which you are defining). SAP already provides implementation in the form of Enhancement packages. Now when you want to consume a web service, you can search in service registry (which is again an optional task) and finally you consume the service with endpoint URL provided in the WSDL file either by using Java or other technology. So, if you merely wants to test the service for POC , you can directly consume it by knowing the URL of that service. No need for PI,CE,ESR or service registry. But these components are required for governance and monitoring of large SOA environment.

> What I don't know:

> - What exactly do I need on the consumerside?

Only Java Application with the URL of the WebService which is provided by producer.

> - What kind of SAP System do I need for the providerside? Is only ERP 2005 suitable? Or does an

> corresponding IDES, CRM etc. system also suite the requirements?

You can use any system(ERP,CRM) to expose a service.

> - Do I need any aditional components/upgrades I haven't mentioned?

> - Do I really need the ESR for my mentioned purposes? Clearly: Do I really need the CE or PI?

No, for consuming only one service as you mentioned, no need for CE,PI or ESR

> - Are there any aditional points to be mentioned for installing the Enhancement Pack 3?

You need to check whether it is availble without solution manager or not.

Regards,

Piyush

[Former Member]

- Do I need any aditional components/upgrades I haven't mentioned?
Do I really need the ESR for my mentioned purposes? Clearly: Do I really need the CE or PI?
No, for consuming only one service as you mentioned, no need for CE,PI or ESR

If i'm not mistaken, you are doing SOA, not plain web service.

SOA is about enable loosely-coupled application to be distributable and accessible across the network. Hence, there are 3 important parts in the SOA, ie, Service, Registry (ESR) and Client. What is SOA without the benefits of discovering, publishing and governing the services.

- julius

[Former Member]

> If i'm not mistaken, you are doing SOA, not plain web service.

> SOA is about enable loosely-coupled application to be distributable and accessible across the network. Hence, there are 3 important parts in the SOA, ie, Service, Registry (ESR) and Client. What is SOA without the benefits of discovering, publishing and governing the services.

SOA is a wide concept and is not comparable to merely web services. If somebody wants to do POC and want to consume only one service, there is no need to go for components like ESR, PI etc. You can use any technology directly to consume that.

And ESR is not service registry. ESR and service Registry are different components. In ESR, only definition of service is provided whereas with service registry, the service is registered after provided implementation and creating an service endpoint.

Regards,

Piyush

[Former Member]

Thank you for your answers. Based on your information I could write down the requirements for the testing environment. It will be an CE Standard Server. The Reason for this was already mentioned in some of your postings.

Greetings, Marco

[Former Member]

Hello Marco,

Answers to few of your questions.

>>What exactly do I need on the consumerside?

Nothing specifically from SAP's suite. Once you know what and where the service is located through your ESR, you can use any webservice consumption technology like plain java programs, .net components etc to consume the service.

>>What kind of SAP System do I need for the providerside? Is only ERP 2005 suitable? Or does an corresponding IDES, CRM etc. system also suite the requirements?

Any will do. The services can be provided directly by ERP as BAPIs and RFCs exposed as web-service or it can be provisioned through PI, wherein PI connects to backend system using RFC or IDOC adapter.

>>Do I really need the ESR for my mentioned purposes? Clearly: Do I really need the CE or PI?

As mentioned above the BAPIs and RFCs can be easily exposed as webservice without need of CE or PI, but that will be just a web service communication. As you might have studied by now, communication using web service protocols cannot simply be called as SOA. An SOA should provide discovery, provisioning, monitoring capabilities and other quality of services, which the ESR adds.

Regards,

Vandana.