Services Variants.

[avishek_gorai2]

Hi,

A concept called Services Variants was introduced in SAP TechEd 2009, where in any of the Enterprise Services or Custom Services can be customized for a particular usage scenario by creating a subset its Input Output parameters as a variant called as Service variant, in the ABAP backend system.

Has anyone used it already and can guide me to some documents on the subject. Also does anyone know which version of NetWeaver/ABAP this will be available from.

Regards,

Avishek.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I guess you are talking about customization of input/output parameter (not aware of word "Service Variant").

You can do it by going to proxy definition of service from transaction SE80 and then in "External Parameter" tab you can chose to expose parameter or not.

For ES you can create variant while you are testing service in ABAP backend (from sproxy), you can type test data and then save them as variant but not sure if you are looking for it.

I'll look into it and let you know if found something.

Regards,

Gourav

[avishek_gorai2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Gourav,

Please let me know how to enable/disable input output parameters of a Service. What I could find in External definition tab was a button called 'Toggle enable/disable nodes', however the same did not have any effect on the Service parameters. Also this button is not present for all Service definitions. Please let me know the exact way to do whatever you have suggested.

However what I wanted was not exactly this, rather a feature where the Service definition could be customized and stored as multiple variants of the same service for different use cases. Here nodes can be disabled or pre-filled with default values and also each of these variants could be published in SR. This was demoed in TechEd but I missed the version of ABAP/BASIS from which this will be available, now it seems there is no information in this on SDN too. Please pass me any relevant information if you stumble upon some.

Regards,

Avishek.

[OwenPettiford · Accepted solution]

Service Variants are available for NetWeaver 7.02 (Enhancement Package 2)

[avishek_gorai2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Owen,

Thanks a lot for the reply. If you have links to any help documents on this topic (Service Variants), could you please update the thread with the same.

Regards,

Avishek.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Owen,

I'm also curious to know more about this feature...Until now all I've seen from SAP (with regards to Enterprise Services) is merely version stepping the operation on a Service Interface to create a variant.

I've also seen web service variants in terms of web service behaviours but not in terms of a variantion in the parameter set/s, see guide:

[http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/30f1b585-0a01-0010-3d96-ad0ea291c4f9?quicklink=index&overridelayout=true]

It's a necessity though because some consumers require less information than others using the same service operation & you want to reduce the overhead where possible. This could prove quite a nifty feature indeed.

Regards, Trevor

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Avishek,

Here is the documentation for 7.0.2: [Working with Service Variants|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70ehp2/helpdata/EN/9b/dbdfdf6e924364a89493414df5d2c3/frameset.htm]

Hope this helps,

Rossen

[avishek_gorai2 · Accepted solution]

Thanks a lot everyone for your Inputs. Service Variants are definitely a wonderful feature especially considering the complexity of the Service Definitions of Enterprise Services, most of the fields of which are not used by consumers. Also this will help in customizing the same Service for various consumers by defaulting/deleting/mandating certain fields.

Closing this thread, hope discussion on this continues in some other forum in future once people get to do a hands on of the feature.

Regards,

Avishek.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Rossen,

I am not able to access the link.

Can you please provide me the link again?

It seems to be really helpful thing.

Again i need to know that , is this same concept is applicable for the custom web services or not?

Because for me I have to create one custome Enterprise service which will have around 100 fields.

One of the consumer wants just 10 fields where as the otherone wants all the fields as response.

I am new to SOA also so if possible please let me know what all the configuration steps i need to do if i want to use SAP PI also in this? Specially ID steps.

Thanks,

Hetal Shah

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Hetal,

Unfortunately, the link provided above is not available currently. I am not sure when it would be possible to provide a new link to the "Working with Service Variants" document.

While I am not expert in the area, I think the "service variants" feature - when available for your release - would allow you create variants of any service, no matter if it is custom or not.

Hope this helps,

Rossen

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Rossan.

One question, if we use PI then still this concept is applicable or not?

If you can clarify that this service Variant we can create on ECC or on ESR that would be great.

If you can even provide me the transactions to do that it will be really a big help.

I am on ECC 6.0 and PI 7.1, so is this concept going to be helpful for me? as required is NWDS 7.0.2 which is i guess older than 7.1,

Thanks,

Hetal

Edited by: hetal shah on Sep 23, 2010 7:01 PM

[avishek_gorai2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Hetal,

As far as my understanding goes (from Tech Ed presentations and the material from the link which was available), Service Variants is a concept only in the backbend system (Service provider system), this still has not got any linkage to the Service Designer of ESR.

It's not the PI but rather the ECC system which Should be on the required NW level to use these variants.

Even we are waiting for our R/3 systems to be moved to NW 7.0 EhP2, to use this feature.

Please update the thread if you find a way out on having variants of Services without NW 7.02

Regards,

Avishek.