Information Models/Business Object Models

[Former Member]

Many companies looking at implementing SAP and SOA/eSOA already have some information models/business object models based on the information/objects needed to drive the processes today. Probably SAP will play/are playing an important role/part of the landscape but there are and will be other solutions too. Are there any good documentation, e.g. entity relationship diagrams etc, that describes the SAP master data object models (Customer, Vendor, Material, Business Partner, Product etc) or the capabilities of the models (because they are configurable)?

Are there any good way of finding this information in the SAP system?

Related to this question, have anyone seen the detailed description of the Business Object which the SAP Enterprise Services are based on?

In the ES Workplace it seems like SAP have not released this information yet but I guess they have modeled it in the ESR to create the Enterprise Service definitions,do anybody know if this will be released and when?

Also related to this question, SAP NetWeaver MDM comes with predelivered data models based on the master data objects in the SAP busienss applications (ERP, CRM, SRM etc). How smiliar are these to the complete models in ERP, CRM, SRM etc?

Based on the question above, are/shouldn't these models be based on the eSOA/ES Business Object models in the ESR? Do anyone have any input on when or if there will be one common repository for this in the near future?

The last question related to this. When looking at general information modelling, for e.g. a whole enterprise, based on the needs of the business/processes, should you now, with SAP eSOA, try to map that to the Business Object models that come with the Enterprise Services or should you map to/start from the models that come with the SAP applications (ERP, CRM, SRM, SCM etc)?

From my knowledge there is not always a 1-1 mapping between these models. Any experiences/input?

Many questions in one go but I thought they where related so I posted them in one go. Feel free to only answer/give input on a subset.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Markus,

Please go through this link.

http://xml.coverpages.org/soa.html

www.intelligententerprise.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=191600470 - 35k -

blogs.progress.com/soa_infrastructure/semantic_data_integration/index.html - 70k -

I think this will be helpful for you.

Reward points if useful.

Cheers,

Swamy Kunche.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Swamy,

Thanks for the information but I am looking for more specifik and detailed information on my questions.

Regards,

Markus Johansson

[Former Member]

Thanks for all good input and discussion. Please continue to use this thread for discussion around this topic but I do mark this thread as answered now!

Regards,

Markus

[MendelKoerts]

Couldn't agree more with your point on the logical repository. Often, the 'data-layer' in a conceptual SOA model is seen as synonym for a 'persistency service', while it plays a pivotal role in eSOA-based SAP+ environments. Here's a link to my view on BPM/SOA, have a look at slide 4: http://www.vnsg.nl/temp/401777432/Parallel2_Capgemini.pdf

[Former Member]

Hello Mendel,

Thanks for the presentation and your view on this. I agree with your view and I can see that you also have some insight into SAP EAF. I heard something about that the next version of TOGAF perhaps being based on SAP EAF, have you heard anything around this?

Regards,

Markus

[MendelKoerts]

Markus,

Capgemini did submit a change request to the Open Group. They're still studying it. I have to refer you to the official Open Group communication, which states TOGAF 2008 will be delivered in 2008...

[Former Member]

Hi Mendel,

Got into your Presentation and other stuff as well.

Can you please make me clear on the following aspects.

1) What is the benefit for an SAP consulting/implementation Organization to go/know about EAF. Is there any?

2) EAF is more to understand the architecture/ framework to concatenate your business and IT needs. Am I right?

3) How to correlate BPM/BPMS with EAF?

4) Is it easy for organizations to revisit their complete landscape in terms for EAF?

5) EAF-- Only a concept or some tools available to scan your thoughts. If Yes, what are they?

6) Where does ARIS stand in between?

7) What apart from ESOA and packaged solutions does EAF focuses on?

Don't know whether these questions fall in easy or complex category

Piyush

[MendelKoerts]

1) The SAP EAF is an eSOA-aware method you use for planning your future SAP environment, so most convenient for SAP Enterprise and Solution Architects. It is not particulary interesting for people doing hands-on implemenation.

2) The SAP EAF is definitely a means to align business and IT.

3) The SAP EAF can serve as a method for developing an enterprise-level vision on BPM/BPMS (the automation of process management) and for architecting the Future State SAP environment needed to realize that vision.

4) When adopting (parts of) SAP EAF, you don't need to revise anything in your IT landscape.

5) The SAP EAF does provide suggestions for scanning thoughts, like Business Capability Analysis.

6) IDS-Scheer supports the SAP EAF meaning that al entities from the SAP EAF metamodel can be modelled in ARIS.

7) SAP EAF is based on TOGAF ADM, which is an open standard method for full scale Enterprise Architecture development. Thus, not limited to SAP or eSOA.

[Former Member]

Mendel,

First, let me thank you for your detailed response....

But to your point "IDS-Scheer supports the SAP EAF meaning that all entities from the SAP EAF metamodel can be modelled in ARIS" -

I have had a push-back from IDS Scheer regarding the SAP EAF (which I understand as being hosted in the ARIS platform).

Can you point us to any specific url/web link at the IDS Scheer or SAP site where you can download the SAP EAF and which mentions that it is maintained in the ARIS Toolkit ?

Thanks,

Dave S.

PS: I was also interested in the Cap Gemini presentation which you mentioned in a prior post <<http://www.vnsg.nl/temp/401777432/Parallel2_Capgemini.pdf>> - but the link isn't working...

[MendelKoerts]

Now these are the type of questions that belong in this forum, to my opinion!

I may be taking a short-circuit here, but the physical data-entity itself and the ES code will remain in the back-end for many many years. Therefore I'd say keep these as the basis reference for data modeling, provided the master record is maintained there (since you mention MDM). Regard the potential limited access to the BO-attributes via the ES as a constraint. My consideration here is that you can always extend the data-entity attributes in the back-end system and modify the ES to make it all work again.

[Former Member]

Hello Mendel,

I agree with your "short-circuit" and that is probably the correct approach right now, but the ES BO models are there some where inside SAP and as SAP is becoming more and more open, the external community should in my opinion get access to the models. This would benifit both SAP and the community and could also be the foundation to really moving to model based development.

Concerning SAP MDM, in a landscape where SAP is only a part I see a value of using solutions like SAP MDM but the it should be "one" logical repository for BO because you do not want to update or model your BO several times. By having one logical metadata repository you should be able to model (metadata wise, e.g. BO, processes, ES, Process Components, integration scenarios, GDT etc) your complete IT landscape. This would be a godd foundation for Governance :-).

This will also be even more interesting and important now when SAP (sometime this year) releses the "Project Galaxy" (the new Eclips based BPM environment). It is not really clear to me (or SAP at this stage perhaps ) what will be included but potentially (and in the presentatiosn from SAP) the will be a information/BO perspective that relates to the processes described in BPMN.

It will also be interesting to see how SAP have done in the new "Application Platform" (which the "SAP Business By Design" is based on) when it comes to process modelling. My understanding is that SAP have really used the "model to code" based approach which hopefully mean that the processes are not "hard coded" in ABAP or at least have easy to use models to extend the processes and functionality in SAP.

Regards,

Markus

[Former Member]

Hi Markus,

There are not any internal models available describing the relationship between different objects. This is the core of their ERP products and I don't think that they would be exposing to the outside world. If something is really available, then it is not known to me.

Difference Between SAP BO and ES BO.

There is not much difference between these two. Most of the business objects are similar.

There are two ways of adoptiing SOA/eSOA.

1) Develop/Design your product in the form of reuasble business services.

2) Leverage existing investments and create a wrapper around existing product to provide business services.

First one is true SOA approach.

It is not easy for the SAP to come up with first approach at this moment and launch their new product for customers. So they are going with Second approach to make customers adapt to ESOA framework/architecture with a steady speed which has of course fasten up these days.

If you look at the future roadmap for ESOA, side by side complete redesigning for the product is going on which may be available for customers by 2010. And at that time ,there would not be any difficulties promoting their new product to market which would be completely Services based.

The models or BO from ES perspective would not be much different as being evolved from the same business methods/processes defined with ERP. The core object around which business revolves would be the same.

Please share your views/thoughts in this context.

Piyush

[Former Member]

Hello Piyush,

Thanks for the good input and discussion!

I agree with what you are saying around different approaches to SOA and with the long history of SAP ERP, some parts (objects, functions, processes etc) dating back many years now, SAP are doing its best at wrapping and exposing the functionality as Enterprise Services. But when SAP is doing this, my understanding (not based on facts but some "indications from SAP) SAP also takes the chance of simplifying and doing some "clean up" around the business objects from a meta data perspective (the BO models for the ES). SAP can cover/hide some complexity through the ES implementation layer and make the BO models for the ES look "simpler".

I agree with you that many object models are the same in eSOA (a ono-to-one mapping to the application models more or less) but some are actually simplified. As SAP has not released the BO models that the ES are based on, you have to find this out by your self and when doing architecture work is not a straigh answer what you should "map to", the BO models for the ES or the BO models inside the applications (ERP, CRM, SRM, SCM, PLM etc). As SAP solutions often is only one part of the complete landscape customers taking architecture seriously want to do both business process and business object modelling covering both SAP and non-SAP. Before SAP released the first version of SAP EAF (Enterprise Architecture Framework) I heard discussions around that the BO models for the ES should be released but I have not seen anything of this yet.

What I do not understand or agree on is why the SAP BO models could not be documented/described using some kind of entity relationship/object diagrams (delivered from SAP or that SAP delivers functionality to "generate" the documentation from the system), either from a metadata capability point of view or that the actual implemented/configured BO model (as SAP models to different degrees are configurable). You can do this work by your self through more or less reverse engineering (as customer receives the source code). If you discuss with an SAP application consultant around how the models looks like or the capabilities of the models from a metadata perspective, most of them can not draw any standard diagram that discribes this, they alway want to have a look at the SAP GUI screens. It many cases the mapping of more technical table field names to understandable names is done in at the GUI level.

If you want to work top-down and start with enterprise architecture it would be very valuable to have the models well documented (in a standard and "readable" format) so that you can understand the capabilities you have in you landscape and what information drives your processes. E.g. you can use IDS Scheer ARIS (or any other modelling/BPM/EA tool) to model you processes and look at the SAP reference models. Do you have any experience of also doing the information modelling in ARIS (or similiar tools) to see/document (from a metadata perspective) which information is needed to drive the processes from a general point of view?

I see SAP Enterprise Services Repository as a potetial candidate to store this information and I guess SAP alread have the models for the ES BO. Do you have any experioence or comments on using the ESR to more or less model all your landscape/BO from a metadata/documentation perspective?

If you decide to go for the physical implementation in SAP (ABAP/Java) you can to some degree get things gererated.It should also be possible to exted this to generate MS .NET code from the metadata descriptions in the ESR (if you decide to do the implementation in .NET). Have you heard anything or have any thoughts on this?

Related to this I also think that the SAP MDM will be able (or at least should be to just "drag-and-drop" the models from the ESR into the MDM environment to be used the MDM solution.

When it come to SAP Business By design and the new underlaying "Application Plattform" (AP, which will be part of the "side-by-side model") I agree with you that that's where SAP have used your first approach, "real" SOA approach.

It would be very interesting to have SAP's view and comments on this (e.g. from the responsible of architecture around the service enabling of the business suite) :-).

Please share your comments and thoughts.

Regards,

Markus

[Former Member]

Hi Markus,

Just one small doubt in your thoughts.

Are you taking BO and BO Models in a different way ?Is it same or what is the difference between them?

This should be the prerequisite to start reading your views

Piyush

[Former Member]

Hello Piyush,

Sorry, this should be the same, no difference. Should be BO model I guess everywhere :-).

Regards,

Markus

[Former Member]

Hi Markus,

>

> What I do not understand or agree on is why the SAP BO models could not be documented/described using some kind of entity relationship/object diagrams (delivered from SAP or that SAP delivers functionality to "generate" the documentation from the system), either from a metadata capability point of view or that the actual implemented/configured BO model (as SAP models to different degrees are configurable). You can do this work by your self through more or less reverse engineering (as customer receives the source code). If you discuss with an SAP application consultant around how the models looks like or the capabilities of the models from a metadata perspective, most of them can not draw any standard diagram that discribes this, they alway want to have a look at the SAP GUI screens. It many cases the mapping of more technical table field names to understandable names is done in at the GUI level.

Still I doubt whether SAP will expose the BO details and relationship.No body knows core of SAP. that is why so many SAP partners are existing for implementation and SAP consultants are highly paid than other Java/Microsoft guys. It is just my thought Would really want to hear from you

> If you want to work top-down and start with enterprise architecture it would be very valuable to have the models well documented (in a standard and "readable" format) so that you can understand the capabilities you have in you landscape and what information drives your processes. E.g. you can use IDS Scheer ARIS (or any other modelling/BPM/EA tool) to model you processes and look at the SAP reference models. Do you have any experience of also doing the information modelling in ARIS (or similiar tools) to see/document (from a metadata perspective) which information is needed to drive the processes from a general point of view?

Adding to your questions-- Can ARIS use the BO defined in ESR or ERP to define/design a process?

> I see SAP Enterprise Services Repository as a potetial candidate to store this information and I guess SAP alread have the models for the ES BO. Do you have any experioence or comments on using the ESR to more or less model all your landscape/BO from a metadata/documentation perspective?

ESR contains the BOs with the defined Enterprise Services. SAP doesn't provide a cover to complete enterprise requirement. What about the BO's which are required but not provided by SAP .Can they be defined in ESR? Does SAP want to make ESR proprietary for its usage or it is open to define/ the entire enterprise models?

> If you decide to go for the physical implementation in SAP (ABAP/Java) you can to some degree get things gererated.It should also be possible to exted this to generate MS .NET code from the metadata descriptions in the ESR (if you decide to do the implementation in .NET). Have you heard anything or have any thoughts on this?

.NET is not included yet. Yes, it should be there but it is not mature enough to provide enterprise level scope ( may be due to technology constraint)

> Related to this I also think that the SAP MDM will be able (or at least should be to just "drag-and-drop" the models from the ESR into the MDM environment to be used the MDM solution. When it come to SAP Business By design and the new underlaying "Application Plattform" (AP, which will be part of the "side-by-side model") I agree with you that that's where SAP have used your first approach, "real" SOA approach.

Agree with you .If SAP is moving toward ES , it should harmonize all its products including ERP and netweaver ( MDM, BW)

Want some conclusion out of this long discussion started back

Piyush

[Former Member]

hi,

Today, the business logic of complex business applications is typically documented by separate data and process models. This documentation is adequate for users to understand the functionality of the system. However, these models do not reflect the business objects which constitute a flexible architecture for continuous adaption to changes in the business processes. Business objects structure the business domain model into independent units encapsulating business data and behaviour. In this paper we describe a modeling technique for business objects and a procedure to derive the business object model from conventional data and process models. In particular, we show how to translate structured entity relationship models and event-driven process chains into UML class and activity diagrams. We then show how to enrich these diagrams with business object information.

Conceptual models play an increasingly important role in all phases of the information systems life cycle. For instance, they are used for business process engineering, information systems development, and customizing of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Despite conceptual modeling being a vital instrument for developing information systems, the modeling process often is resource-consuming and faulty. As a way to overcome these failures and to improve the development of enterprise-specific models, the concept of reference modeling has been introduced. A reference model is a conceptual framework and may be used as a blueprint for information systems development. In this paper, we describe how to use reference models for business engineering. Our discussion is based on a well-known framework for research on reference modeling that consists of four elements: reference modeling languages, reference modeling methods, reference models, and reference modeling context. Each element of the framework is discussed with respect to prior research and future research opportunities

regards

karthik

if any query reply me

reward me points if the above info helps you.

[Former Member]

Hello KARTIKEYA,

Thanks for the information, it is valuable but I am still looking for answers to the more SAP specifik questions. I could also not find the document you related to, do you know where I could find that?

Regards,

Markus Johansson

[Former Member]

hi john,

can you please a bit clear what exactly you want .so that i can provide you the complete information.

regards

karthik