Naming convention for defining Web services and their virtual interfaces

[Former Member]

Folks,

In our application, we use standard BAPIs heavility. So far we used SAP .NET connector to generate the proxy code. However, as SAP is moving towards web services, we are changing our code to consume web services.

We now need to define guidelines for our customers to expose the BAPIs that we use as web services.

The web services wizard requires two names to be defined for each BAPI/RFC - 1) a virtual interface name and 2) a web service name

As part of our guidelines, we are proposing that the customer simply add VI and WS in front of the BAPI name. For example, BAPI_MATERIAL_SAVEDATA would have VIBAPI_MATERIAL_SAVEDATA as the virtual interface and WSBAPI_MATERIAL_SAVEDATA as the web service name.

Before we put that in the guidelines, I just wanted to check if there is any standard that is already in place. I would appreciate it if you could share your thoughts with me.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Regards,

Peter

[Dorian]

Peter:

You may want to register your own namespace so that you can use that to prevent conflicts with another application.

My convention is to use the WS prefix also - but I also have a registered namespace so as to avoid naming conflicts.

For example, my Material web service is names /SOACONN/WSBAPI_MATERIAL_SAVEDATA and will not conflict with your web service.

In reality, this should never be an issue with generating web services for existing Bapi's; more likely to cause a problem if you create a new Bapi with a Z prefix, which can then open you up to naming issues with someone else. The namespace allows you to segregate your own functions and also forego the need for the Z prefix.

Regards,

D.

[Former Member]

Thank you for your help, Dorian.

One more question. We call about 35 different BAPIs within our application. It would be very painful for our customers to follow our steps to generate VI and WS for 35 BAPIs.

Is there a way to automate this process such that the customer simply clicks on a button and all the VIs and WSes are generated automatically?

I understand that all our VIs and WSes are getting added to a package called Z_MYCOMPANYPRODUCT. Is it possible to somehow put this package as a file that customers can download and install?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Regards,

Peter

[Dorian]

I don't know of a way to automate generation of the Web Services & endpoints in batch mode; I did each one of mine manually as & when I needed it.

For customer installation, I transport all of my objects into the target system.

I have my development system set up with a virtual Production target. As I generate my development objects (Bapis / web services / endpoints), they go into my package and Transport Requests as normal. Once the transport is released, I can take the Transport cofiles & data contents and have the customer Basis folks import them using "tp".

Regards,

D.