My diploma thesis Design and Implementation of a Service-oriented Information System Architecture Based on a Case Study (Konzeption und Realisierung einer service-orientierten IS-Architektur anhand eines Fallbeispiels) is now available and can be ordered.

Main chapters:

1. Introduction
2. Basic Principles
3. Service-Oriented Architecture
4. SAP’s Enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture
5. Approach to Design and Implementation of an SOA
6. Design and Implementation of the Case Study Architecture
7. Summary

More Information on the SOA-Thesis page.

Categories: SOA, SAP enterprise SOA
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There is often confusion about what ESA (now called enterprise SOA) actually means. The question of how to define and distinguish it from SOA has also been a topic at the ‘SOA Expertenrat‘ blog of Computerwoche. From my point of view the conceptual things discussed by SAP under the term enterprise SOA/ESA would be discussed by others using the term SOA (or enterprise SOA as well). So on this level there is not much difference. The difference is, that SAP as a solution provider is not only discussing the concepts but also offering elements to use in your own architecture (applications, business process templates and enterprise services), tools for creating new elements in your architecture (developer tools) and a foundation for running your architecture implementation (infrastructure).

So here is my defnition:

Enterprise SOA (in the way the term is used by SAP) is a reference architecture for service-based, enterprise-scale business solutions and SAP’s recommendation for establishing a service-oriented architecture.

The focus is on enterprise services used in prechoreographed, easily adaptable business processes and provided by an application platform, as well as on the technology platform SAP NetWeaver, which is offering the supporting infrastructure, frameworks and tools.

Enterprise Services are robust, coarse-grained Web services designed at SAP using enterprise-wide harmonized business objects and global data types. The creation of such services is surveyed by a governance process to ensure reuse and high business relevance.

This defnition might change over time. I am looking forward to receive comments on whether you like the definition or whether you would change something. Of course you can also provide your own definition.

Categories: SAP enterprise SOA
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The new book Mastering Enterprise SOA with SAP NetWeaver and mySAP ERP is now available.

“Mastering Enterprise SOA With SAP NetWeaver and mySAP ERP provides a thorough introduction and overview for CTOs/CIOs, IT Executives, Systems Architects, and Technical Project leads, who need to understand, assess, evaluate and adopt this new approach to integration. The book explores the fundamentals of Enterprise SOA, identifies the main considerations for successful organizational deployment and reviews the many relevant tools and technologies in SAP NetWeaver” (see Press Release).

The authors Scott Campbell and Vamsi Mohun work for the consulting company MomentumSI. It might be interesting to get an external view on the topic of enterprise SOA / ESA.

Categories: SAP enterprise SOA
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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)

1. Introduction (7)
2. SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer (29)
3. Model-Driven Development (11)
4. Architecture and Concepts (24)
5. Visual Composer Basics (87)
6. Building Applications (100)
7. Analytical Applications (119)
8. Application Lifecycle (28)
9. Business Examples (7)
10. 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.

Categories: SAP enterprise SOA
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A few days ago a wiki was officially launched on SAP Developer Network (SDN). Of course the content has to evolve over time but I am quite sure with already over half a million subscribers on SDN this will become a very valuable SAP resource in the future. The ES Packages part for example is a good start.

Categories: SAP enterprise SOA
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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.

Categories: SAP enterprise SOA
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Jeff Word from SAP writes in his blog about SAP’s GUI project “Muse”. I just posted the link on Ryan Stewarts blog but it’s probably worth having it here as well, because it’s currently the best resource to get informed about the project. Muse requires a service-ready basis (ERP 2005 and NetWeaver 04s), will use Adobe’s Apollo framework and allow to plug in most of other available SAP UI technology. So it seems that it will not replace available UI technologies but rather give uniform access to different UIs. SAP is already using Adobe technology today for Flash UIs in Visual Composer and for Interactive Forms. Muse will not become available before 2007.

Categories: SAP enterprise SOA
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There is a new ZDNet video interview with Shai Agassi, member of the management board and president of PTG (Product and Technology Group) at SAP. Although the written introduction mentions the competition with Oracle the video is not only about this competition. Topics they touch are:

• What’s the current mySAP customer base in comparison to R/3
• What is the good thing about Duet (the integration of SAP backend into Microsoft Office)
• Business Process Platform (BPP) - two parts: the technology platform NetWeaver and the semantic understanding and interfaces
• SAP Developer Network (SDN)
• Web Services
• Industry Value Networks and ES Community
• Differences between the offer to large, medium and small businesses (NetWeaver as a basis stays but the semantics of enterprise services change, i.e. less complex but not completly different processes for small companies - only a special “dialect” so that integration between large and small businesses along the value chain is still possible)
• The competition with Oracle (the growth rates were better for Oracle in the last quater but long term comparison is said to be more important)
• Importance of SOA (decision regarded as important as the decision e-mail or no e-mail)

Categories: SAP enterprise SOA
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In the last SAP-related post I presented SDN, Service Marketplace and SAP Help Portal as valuable ressources for information about SAP products, especially development based on NetWeaver. How-to guides and tutorials, for example the CAF Tutorial Center, are a further way of getting insight based on concrete examples. However, while reading all those guides, help pages and so forth, I often thought that they don’t provide me with the insight I wished to get from them. Especially the how-to guides and tutorials normally guide you on a narrow path, without looking left or right, not discussing any alternatives and not explaining why a certain route is taken. This is very helpful in case the topic of the guide exactely matches your needs but as soon as you depart one step from the path or don’t like to stupidly follow without knowing why, the help provided is very limited.

In addition to more wholistic How-To guides which explain the different possibilities of interaction between architecture layers, what I probably would need are Why-To or When-To-Use guides:

• When-To-Use CAF core instead of Integration Builder for service definition
• Why-To design workflows and processes with Guided Procedures instead of Business Workflow or ccBPM
• When-To-Use Visual Composer Web Dynpro iViews instead of Flash iViews
• Why-To access services through Visual Composer and not directly in Guided Procedures
• Why-To select this option not the other one

Categories: SAP enterprise SOA
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Concerning SAP enterprise SOA / ESA, NetWeaver and other SAP products, you can find a lot of information on the internet. One important resource is the SAP Developer Network (SDN), where you can find a lot of articles, forums and blogs to various topics. Another one is the NetWeaver area of the Service Marketplace (customer or partner login required), where there is information on the products, release information and so on.

Also very important is the SAP Help Portal. There you find extensive documentation for the whole product range (sections: mySAP ERP, SAP NetWeaver, mySAP Business Suite, SAP R/3 and R/3 Enterprise, SAP for Industries, SAP xApps, SAP Solution Manager). I was looking a lot at the NetWeaver section, but I got confused by the structure every time. First of all you have different main topics: IT Scenarios at a Glance, Power User’s Guide, Technology Consultant’s Guide, Administrator’s Guide – Technical Operations Manual, Administrator’s Guide – Security Guide, Developer’s Guide and SAP NetWeaver by Key Capability. But when you choose one it does not mean that the topic name is always visible when you dive further in. Example: You choose Developer’s Guide, then Fundamentals, then Creating Composite Applications - what happens? At least I get lost as Creating Composite Applications becomes the top of the tree and I don’t see that I’m in the area of the Developer’s Guide. Furthermore there is no way to get one layer up again. The thing get’s really confusing when subsections of the guides link between each other as you sometimes don’t realize that you are in another area. As all the guides are touching the topics from a different (but sometimes overlapping) view and the navigation structure often is very deep, it’s hard to gather all the possibly important information for one topic together and even after weeks I found new sections I haven’t seen before. So if anyone has recommendations on how to better deal with those help pages I will really appreciate it.

To get a better overview and to have the possibility to jump up a layer after I got lost in a subsection, I created a document with the navigation structure of the SAP NetWeaver 2004s SPS09 guides/documentation. Of course there is not the complete structure in there but at least part of it. In areas related to the Composite Application Framework, Visual Composer etc. you can dive deeper than in others. But at least you get an overview of the whole documentation. I don’t know whether it helps you, at least it helped me a bit (although it did not solve the problem completely).

So if you like, here is my excel sheet:
SAP NetWeaver 2004s SPS09 Navigation Structure.

At the left side of the rows you find + / -, so you can open or close specific rows of the excel sheet.

After clicking on the link in the excel, the SAP Library opens. There you have to click on the icon at the right of the headline to locate the document in the navigation structure.

Categories: SAP enterprise SOA
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