User Management via Web Services

[Former Member]

Hi,

We are investigating building a user management application that will control user creation and management across a range of applications, including SAP ECC6 and BW. The idea is to use web services to interact with the systems. I have seen that a range of BAPIs exist for managing users (e.g. BAPI_USER_CREATE, BAPI_USER_CHANGE) - does anyone have any experience in using these BAPIs via web services that they would be willing to share?

Thanks

[jurjen_heeck]

Why build it? What's wrong with SAP NetWeaver identity Management? Or another identity management system for that matter?

Just curious

Jurjen

[Former Member]

The simple answer is cost - ID Management suites cost a fortune!

[koehntopp]

Even if I'm taking off my SAP hat: I seriously doubt that anything you start building yourself will be significantly cheaper in the long run.

Frank.

[jurjen_heeck]

 Even if I'm taking off my SAP hat: I seriously doubt that anything you start building yourself will be significantly cheaper in the long run.

Similar thoughts, without having an SAP hat, triggered my curiousity. Colin, can you please elaborate on the expected savings ?

[Former Member]

We're not sure that there will be savings - we are just evaluating options at the moment, and as we have a large, in-house development department, a bespoke application is something that we are considering to compare against a package.

An in house solution will also allow us to build up to cover a range of apps and technologies over time without the large initial outlay.

[jurjen_heeck]

In that case I'd still have a good look at SAP IDM. Hooking up SAP systems only should be ok within your current SAP license. (do please check that statement with your SAP sales rep)

As far as I know SAP IDM also uses the bapi's you mentioned so I do not have any additional information on your original question.

Please keep us updated on your findings and experience!

Jurjen

[Former Member]

HI Colin,

We did that successfully. It was webservice/infopath based Interactive . net form which would do user management and also Workflow funtionality. In summary from my experience

- Initial cost would be cheaper, however ongoing maintainance on whole infrastructure should be considered.

- SAP BAPI/FM/webservice development was very easy

- Integration with Infopath was challange

- Fronted development was pain as you would need other people to do that for you

- Once operational, was very easy to managed

- Future enhancement was limitless

- Limitation of integration to other technology

- Should only be justifiable in absence of IDM solution

- Too much custom development

- Change management in SAP was easy (Transport, testing, QA etc) however Infopath and Frontend change Management was not easy

Let me know what other information you need. Finding BAPI's and designing in SAP is the easy part, you should think more about how you are going to deploy Webservice to end users.

However if your IT department has more bucks to spend, think about more longer term solution and towards IDM or product such as GRC etc.

[Former Member]

Thanks for that Kinjar, it's good to know that the SAP side of this is fairly straight forward.

We have a large .Net development team, and have been making use of web services from .Net front ends for about 2 years now, so hopefully that side wont be as difficult for us as it was for you.

There look to be a good range of BAPIs to control everything from user creation and role allocation through to deletion, so hopefully we can do everything we need.

Cheers

Colin

[mvoros]

Hi,

it's even better. They are well [documented|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/668e6629-0701-0010-7ca0-994cb7dec5a3].

Cheers