SOA-Thesis Published
April 6, 2007
Definition of enterprise SOA / ESA
November 4, 2006
Mastering Enterprise SOA With SAP NetWeaver and mySAP ERP
October 29, 2006
Bönnen, C.; Herger, M.: SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer. First Edition, Bonn: Galileo Press, 2007. - German Edition fi rst published October 2006
Today I received my pre-ordered copy of the newly published Visual Composer book from SAP PRESS. At Amazon it still has pre-ordering status but this will change for sure during the next days.
The authors:
The book is written by Carsten Bönnen who is Product Manager for Visual Composer as well as Mario Herger who works on the structuring of the new Business Process Expert community and who might already be known from his previous book SAP xApps and the Composite Application Framework.
Overview:
The book starts with a short introduction about Visual Composer (VC) as a model-driven tool, an explanation of model-driven development and where it is especially used at SAP (SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (BI), Web Dynpro, Composite Application Framework, Visual Composer). Afterwards the architecture of Visual Composer is presented, which consists of the three main components VC Storyboard, VC Server and NetWeaver Portal.
The next chapter introduces all elements available in Visual Composer. Although much of this chapter is also similarly available in the VC Modeler’s Guide and the VC Reference Guide, it provides a good overview with compact explanations and thus is a very useful starting reference for modeling own VC applications.
The focus of the book is on chapter 6 (100 pages) and chapter 7 (119 pages). Chapter 6 provides a hands-on example for creating VC applications. It presents the elements introduced in chapter 5 in action using easy understandable scenarios like the sales order scenario or the well-know flight scenario. Chapter 7 explaines the BI Kit and shows how to use the relevant tools available in Visual Composer. It also offers a few examples on how to integrate Visual Composer applications with BI UI elements and knowledge management document storages.
A more wholistic few on the creation of VC applications is taken in the application lifecycle chapter. Here aspects like transporting, down porting, upgrading, versioning, personalization, localization, testing and monitoring are examined.
The last two chapters finally shortly present three business examples from SAP xApp Analytics (Chapter 9) and the link between Visual Composer and Enterprise SOA (Chapter 10).
Chapters of the book:
(As the chapters differ very much in size, I wrote the number of pages in brackets for better orientation)
- Introduction (7)
- SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer (29)
- Model-Driven Development (11)
- Architecture and Concepts (24)
- Visual Composer Basics (87)
- Building Applications (100)
- Analytical Applications (119)
- Application Lifecycle (28)
- Business Examples (7)
- Visual Composer and Enterprise SOA (4)
Final Assessment:
The book has a practical focus which is supported by a lot of screenshots. All in all I recommend it to anyone who thinks about acitvely working with Visual Composer.
Woods, D.; Mattern, T.: Enterprise SOA : Designing IT for Business Innovation. First Edition, Sebastopol: O’Reilly, 2006
Although not published through SAP Press and not visible otherwise from the front cover, one clearly has to state that this is a book which is discussing the SAP view on enterprise SOA / ESA. Dan Woods was already author of the first book about Enterprise Services Architecture published in 2003 (German version 2004: Enterprise Services Architecture). For this new book now he gets support from Thomas Mattern, which is the Solution Marketing Manager for ESA at SAP. This might be a little hint.
Short assessment: If you are already using SAP technology or if you are thinking about using it in the future, this book will give an overview and serve as a good entry point to get informed about new visions, concepts and products at SAP. If you just want to get informed about SOA and already know that you won’t implement your SOA using SAP technology, better keep on searching as large parts of the book are product focused.
Chapters of the book:
- ESA in the World of Information Technology
- The Business Case for ESA
- Evolving Toward ESA
- ESA Fundamentals: Learning to Think ESA
- The Structure of ESA
- The Enterprise Services Community
- Creating a Roadmap with the ESA Adoption Program
- The Enterprise Services Repository and the Enterprise Services Inventory
- Project Mendocino: A Product Based on Consuming Enterprise Services
- ESA at Work: Examples from the Field
- SAP xApps Composite Applications for Analytics
- The Architecture and Development Tools of Composite Applications
- Supporting Composite Applications
- Web Services Basics
- Creating Enterprise Services in ABAP
- Creating and Consuming Services in Java
- ESA and IT Governance
- ESA Life Cycle Management and Operations
- ESA Security
- Standards and ESA
Do expect:
- answers to questions you might have
- practical guidance supported by screenshots and images
- a business-oriented introduction why enterprise SOA is important
- to get an overview of SAP visions, applications, tools, consulting services and community initiatives in the context of SOA
Don’t expect:
- good structuring
- precise definitions of terms, concepts and technologies
- academical examination of SOA
- vendor-neutrality
SAP Visual Composer
October 18, 2006
As a fellow student at my university is starting his diploma thesis on Visual Composer in connection with Enterprise Portal (EP), Business Intelligence (BI) and R/3, here a really short summary as well as the most important links.
“SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer allows you to compose model-based business applications in a flexible way — without manual coding.” (Source: sap.com)
As my graphic from the previous post shows, Visual Composer (VC) is in the context of enterprise SOA used for development of user interfaces. Model-based here really means that you create visual model items on the Visual Composer storyboard and link them by a line to create mappings between items. The model is saved in an XML format. When you deploy it to the server the respective code is generated. This has the big advantage that you are independent of UI technologies. You can define in the deployment options which output should be generated. Currently there exist options for Web Dynpro and Flash/Flex but of course more options might be added over time.
I really like the way the VC works. Compared to other SAP tools it is very handy and concise. For example you can just drag&drop your layout items (like forms and tables) from the sidebar onto the storyboard. Or in case you drop out from a data service a context menu opens which lets you choose an item by which the result should be displayed. The big disadvantage of VC is that as the code is generated automatically you have no chance to add own coding in case Visual Composer does not offer a certain functionality. Of course, VC is thought to be for business analysts or business process experts but in case they would need more functionality or different layout items programmers can’t help out. So if the functionality of Visual Composer is not enough for a certain project, all you can do is to switch to Web Dynpro freestyle development with NetWeaver Developer Studio.
I already mentioned data services. Visual Composer is not just about user interface design. In fact you can model whole applications. Visual Composer offers different connectors to data services. So there is a BI connector, JDBC connector, Web Service connector and so forth.
So once you have defined the connection parameters for your data service, you can drag&drop a specific service operation/query on your storyboard just like normal UI elements. In case the service needs input you place for example a form in front of it where the user can type in the required data, after the service you place for example a table where the output is diplayed. Especially for the use with BI there exist a lot of different graphical elements such as pie charts, gauge etc.
You can also define different layers in your model and the transition between layers. So for example you type in your data in the form, click the submit button, the form disappears and instead the result shows up in the table. For this transition there exist different possibilities which can easily configured, for example a wizard style (which shows the steps involved), tab style (so when you click on the second tab you see the table) and many more.
The output you generate with Visual Composer is an iView or page which is deployed to the portal environment. There you can use it like every other element created directly in the portal. But like my graphic from the previous post shows you can also use the VC element as one step in a bigger process and add it as a callable object to Guided Procedures where you define roles for the process step.
To bring output from SAP Business Warehouse (BW) into the portal, the BI connector is needed. I just worked with web services so far but I assume it is the same with BI querys. To access the R/3 you probably have to connect via BAPIs, iDocs or RFCs. Maybe the xAPP Analytics might be of interest as well. I don’t know it in detail but as it is a product I assume that a lot of scenarios are already modeled ready for use and can be adapted if needed.
The best resource for Visual Composer is the Visual Composer section at SDN. There are a lot of documents, including links to how-to guides, to the VC forum and VC Blogs. The Visual Composer Modeler’s Guide might be a good start.
And of course, there is the first Visual Composer book coming out in a few days.
Enterprise SOA with SAP NetWeaver 2004s
October 18, 2006
Enterprise SOA currently is a very important topic at SAP and most SAP presentations you get to see (for example at SAPTeched which was starting today in Amsterdam) will probably include information and graphics about enterprise SOA, NetWeaver and the Business Process Platform. However, I made the experience that those graphics are either very simple (don’t provide information about included components, tool names etc.) or they focus on a specific application like Application Server, Exchange Infrastructure or Composite Application Framework. Thus for me it was very hard at the beginning to understand the coherences and differences between NetWeaver applications and to get an overall understanding what enterprise SOA means in terms of SAP tools and applications. Therefore I created my own picture which I extended over time. Of course it does not include all details but the chosen granualirity was a good basis for the discussions I had in the area of enterprise SOA. So here it is, maybe it’s of some help for you as well:
Enterprise SOA with SAP NetWeaver 2004s
The graphic might be a bit complex when you first see it but this is how the application reality in the context of enterprise SOA is. For the most important applications you find the respective development tools at the side in a box with striped background. The graphic also gives an orientation which applications are on the same layer. You see for example that web services can be created with XI or CAF Core, processes with ccBPM or Guided Procedures. So it might be interesting to explore the differences.
In case the graphic is helpful or you have an idea how to improve it, you can of course leave me a comment.
McGovern, J.; Sims, O.; Jain, A.; Little, M.: Enterprise Service Oriented Architectures : Concepts, Challenges, Recommendations. First Edition, Dordrecht: Springer, 2006
According to McGovern et al. three major concepts are the basis of enterprise service-oriented architecture (ESOA):
- Services using XML-based standards both for specification of the service interfaces and for communication with the services (that’s what they say many refer to as just service-oriented architecture).
- Service implementation using component-based software engineering (CBSE) architecture for structuring new applications as well as for legacy wrapping, workflow and business-to-business specifications.
- A service-oriented architectural, procedural and organizational mindset, which can merge web service technology and the CBSE approach into a hughely productive whole.
The use of CBSE for service implementation is intensively discussed especially in chapter 3. Following the authers there has been a shift in the evolution of mature CBSE “from reuse of components as pluggable modules of software technology to business-oriented reuse and business collaboration of business services - the components themselves being the service implementations.” They differentiate levels of utility components, entity components and process components. Entity components are business entities such as invoice or customer, They make use of general low-level utility components and are used by process components. The authors refer to that as “federation”, which basically means the same as that higher-level components choreograph those at lower level.
They identify three reasons why, although many commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products exist, implementing an ESOA is difficult:
- COTS products are point solutions, not ESOA solutions, that is there exists no single integrated product.
- They are general-purpose suitable for many architectural styles, so they are not so high-level as a platform focusing on one architectural style could be.
- IT development is (typically) project-based, that means there is little funding outside of the project and there is limited reuse of common artifacts across projects.
As the lack of an end-to-end cohesive product is seen as the major inhibitor limiting productivity they ask for an “enterprise productivity platform” (EPP).
In chapter 3 a procedure for designing service components following CBSE principles is proposed.
They start with a definition of business elements derived from resource and process models. There exist Resource Business Elements (RBE), Service Business Elements (SBE) and Delivery Business Elements (DBE). RBEs consist of a set of resources grouped around focus resources which are real and independent. SBEs are a “collection of immediate steps” grouped by RBEs - they will normally map to organizational units. DBEs are a “group of Service and Resource Business Elements that together deliver a business solution to a business problem, and which provides services to requestors”. They can represent a major responsibilty of a department or a larger organizational unit. So whereas RBEs are useless themselves because there is no process, SBEs need RBEs to have resources. The DBE “is the set of assets that delivers value”.
A Service Business Element is later mapped to a Process Business Component, a Resource Business Element to a Entity Business Component and a Delivery Business Element to an Applicaion Component. Using Model Driven Architecture (MDA) terminology this would mean the business elements are part of the computation-independent model (CIM). They are mapped to components which are later refined and describe the platform-independent model (PIM).
The books consists of further chapters, which I won’t introduce in detail, namely “Orchestration”, “Working with registry and UDDI”, “Understanding Enterprise Security”, “SOA Management”, “Transactions” and “Event-Driven Architecture”. It references other books, documents and magazines in case ideas have already discussed somewhere else (which is not self-evident considering many other SOA books), so it can be said to have a rather academic writing style. Graphics, screenshots and code snippets are used to visualize the statements.
Interview with Shai Agassi about SAP
September 11, 2006
Why-To Improve SAP Guides
September 11, 2006
