SAP CE/SOA - The first steps?!

[Former Member]

Dear users,

Apologies for posting this here in CE forums again, I wasn't quite sure if SOA forums was the right place.

We are in the process of looking into SAP Composition Environment as an addition to our technical landscape. We understand that the main benefit is Service enablement and usage of Adobe forms and well, various others. The appreciated fact that benefits are huge stays intact, but what isn't clear is the approach. And on top of it, we are planning to get the Discovery V4 box very soon to learn the various possibilities.

Having seen quite a few threads on the forums, I would only get information about the specifics and not the approach. A few set of questions here:

1. What is the starting point for development in SAP CE? Is it knowledge of any technical language like JAVA? or is it SAP Netweaver? Eclipse? Any ideas?

2. What is the approach? Example: Learn a language first, then learn a technology like CAF, then learn something else?!!

3. What level of expertise is needed for these starting steps? Example: Should one be a JAVA Pro to work on CE?

Would be much appreciated if one can help us out with the basic approach.

Please refrain from posting links to study material. I hope this thread will only be a place to discuss how different vendors have approached this and what experts think the best practices are. Thanks very much in advance.

Cheers!

[Former Member]

Vijay,

Briefing about SAP CE/SOA.I hope this can avoid the dilemma

1. What is the starting point for development in SAP CE? Is it knowledge of any technical language like JAVA? or is it SAP Netweaver? Eclipse? Any ideas?

Answer:First of all we have know just summary in simple terms.

SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment(CE) provides design time and runtime infrastructures for developing, running, and managing composite applications that comply with SAP Enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture (enterprise SOA) technologies.SAP NetWeaver CE consists of multiple composite application layers(4 layers) like portal/Process/UserInterface/BusinessLogic.

Now come to technical point of view.CE(defination itself saying composition) not fixed for java or abap or any fixed language.It constitutes different technologies and also different languages.As I mentioned layers above, every layer has some technology for development.For example

enterprise portal used in portal layer

BPM/GP used in process layer

VC/adobe/Webdynpro used in UI layer

Java/ABAP/CAF used in Business logic layer

So now we have to decide which capability we have and which layer is suited as per our capabilities/skills.There is starting point or ending point to use CE.just cyclic.Suppose if we are expert in java ,involve in particular layer development.

2. What is the approach? Example: Learn a language first, then learn a technology like CAF, then learn something else?!!

Answer:Depenting upon our capabilities and skills approach is decided.Java programing helps a lot for CE.Because almost three layer involve java/j2ee knowledge.

3. What level of expertise is needed for these starting steps? Example: Should one be a JAVA Pro to work on CE?

Answer:Java pro is not mandatory.Non-java guys can also involved in CE.But we can say java/j2ee helps more than other in CE development.

For refernce lot of links in sdn.

Thanks,

Murthy.