difference between connectivity and destination service in cloud foundry environment

[kimkeunho]

Hi. I am working on a project to connect s/4hana and java application deployed on BTP CF environment.

While reading the BTP connectivity document, I found an explanation about connectivity service. It says...

SAP BTP Connectivity provides two services for the Cloud Foundry environment, the Connectivity service and the Destination service. The Destination service and the Connectivity service together provide virtually the same functionality that is included in the Connectivity service of the Neo environment. In the Cloud Foundry environment however, this functionality is split into two separate services:

● The Connectivity service provides a connectivity proxy that you can use to access on-premise resources.

● Using the Destination service, you can retrieve and store the technical information about the target resource (destination) that you need to connect your application to a remote service or system.

It sounds a little bit confusing and I can't see clear difference between connectivity and destination service.

I can see that those are the services that are required to use cloud connector... but why are they separated into two different namings? If I can get the resource I need from s/4hana by using connectivity service, then what's the use of using destination service?

[gregorw · Accepted solution]

Hi kimkeunho,

the destination service provides your app an API that it can use to read the destination information that is maintained in the subaccount or on the app level. If that destination is of type "Internet" the app doesn't need to involve any HTTP proxy and can directly connect to the destination.

The connectivity service on the other hand is basically a set of proxies (HTTP and SOCKS5) that are used to connect via them to your on premise Cloud Connector. Binding your application to the connectivity service provides the connection information to this proxies to your app.

Best Regards
Gregor

[kimkeunho · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the answer.

In short, connectivity service is about creating and providing proxies and destination service is about accessing designated destinations of the on-premise system via proxies. Am I understanding correctly? 🙂

[gregorw · Accepted solution]

The destination service is basically the telephone directory. Maybe you get a better understanding when you directly try it's API with this sample REST Client script: destination.http