needed skills for NetWeaver Gateway development

[Amey-Mogare]

Hello Experts,

I am working in SAP EP & Web Dynpro Java for last 6 years and have proficiency in Java programming language and know very basic ABAP.

Could you please let me know: -

1. What are the skills needed for NetWeaver Gateway?

2. What amount & complexity of ABAP coding is necessary in NetWeaver Gateway?

3. How difficult/easy it would be for me (person with my skill/background) to learn this?

Thanks &  Regards,

Amey Mogare

[ChandraMahajan · Accepted solution]

Hi Amey,

I will try to give answers to your question.

1. What are the skills needed for NetWeaver Gateway?

You need to be good at Data modeling of GW service as it is the main important aspect while developing GW service. it includes defining entities, relations between entities etc. then you need to know data sources from where you will populate(CRUDQ operations) on entities. Hence knowledge of application data is required. also as you need to code these operations in generated classes, you need to be good in OO ABAP.

2. What amount & complexity of ABAP coding is necessary in NetWeaver Gateway?

It depends on various GW service scenarios. in some cases, you can map standard BAPI/RFCs to create GW services whereas sometime you need to code as per your requirement.

 3. How difficult/easy it would be for me (person with my skill/background) to learn this?

This is kind of subjective. if you spend good amount of time to understand basic concepts of OData service creation along with sepnding time on ABAP, OO ABAP then you will be able to learn it faster.

In short, as SAP NW GW is based on ABAP stack, (AS ABAP), you need to know ABAP for sure.

Regards,

Chandra

[Amey-Mogare · Accepted solution]

Thank you for helpful & elaborate reply.

Thanks & Regards,

Amey Mogare

[former_member184867]

Hello Amey,

I could not resist myself from adding a couple of lines here ..

1. A lot of informative stuff is already available on the subject. A good starting point can be SAP NetWeaver Gateway Self-Paced Learning - Technologies - SCN Wiki  and Gateway Channel in Youtube.

2. Also a good resource that I  personally find to be elaborate and effective is the recently released SAP Press book on  Netweaver Gateway .

Of course you need to learn OData concepts first which is based on REST principle and language agnostic. In OData.org you get a lot of samples to start with. I have seen people picking up the OData concepts really very fast and I encourage you to give it a try.

Next is the OData modelling part - once you understand the OData concepts clearly, you can map ERP data to OData model. This requires little experience as the ERP data always can not be directly mapped to OData model. Gateway Offers eclipse based modeller tool as well as transaction SEGW for modelling. For simple cases there are tools and accelerators which will generate the model and service from data sources  like RFC/BAPI/Genil/SPI/BW/External OData /Search Help.  With a couple of  clicks you get a running OData service exposing ERP data. In these cases knowledge on the relevant transactions is sufficient.

For more complex cases manual modelling knowledge helps. Most of the modelling can be done without any ABAP coding. However the data provisioning needs ABAP coding if your requirement is not met by the above mentions techniques. For complex data provisioning logic ABAP knowledge is a must.

The complexity varies based on the use case and scenario. I have seen customers creating excellent UI applications based on simple models whereas some other depend of complex OData service for specific use case. 

And finally ... you need to understand the REST paradigm before you jump into development.

Give it a try, and I am sure you will find it easier than many  other technologies. 

BR,

Atanu

[Amey-Mogare]

Many thanks Atanu! That was really helpful and more important, encouraging! Thanks 🙂