cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

ODATA vs API Mangement Difference

Hello Experts,

What is the difference between OData Service and API Management?

even OData can be used for communication between SAP and Non-SAP, Then what are benfits we had on using API Management?

Regards,

Kumar.

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

ElijahM
Advisor
Advisor

Hi Kumar,

I would like to amend the answer from Ankit. If you are referring to the SAP Gateway service which exposes ERP Services as OData then there is quite a bit of difference and overlap between SAP Gateway and SAP API Management. For this reason the SAP API Management Design-time in the Cloud has a build in wizard to consume SAP Gateway Service Catalog and build API Proxies with a few clicks on top of the OData services provided.

SAP Gateway is a service built specifically to open up SAP Backend data in a friendly omni-channel way that non-SAP (non-ABAP) developers can consume. This is great for building integrations and applications on top of SAP Backend services/data.

SAP API Management is a layer which wraps API endpoints such as an SAP Gateway OData endpoint and serves a few additional functions

1) Security - Additional levels of authentication / authorization as well as obscuring the true endpoint URL

2) Traffic Management - Opening up backend service to be consumed by Apps/Partners/Customers can be worrisome as suddenly your critical Backend is an open endpoint to be hit by whomever. By placing an API Management layer in front you can control what traffic gets to the system.

3) Analytics - API Management provides a constant set of tracking information about who is using your data, how when where etc. This can provide business insight into what your business is doing and where it should go next

4) Becoming part of an Ecosystem - Simple Developer Onboarding through API Management Developer Portal allows for for easier access to partners and 3rd party developers to build on top data, to expand the reach of your business, and/or monetize the data being exposed.

So there are definitely a lot of complementary areas where SAP Gateway OData and API Management. I hope this helped to answer your question.

Regards,
Elijah

Answers (1)

Answers (1)

former_member185414
Active Contributor

In my opinion, Netweaver OData and SAP Cloud Platform API Management have different origins and serve different infrastructural setups.

Netweaver OData is based on standard OData protocol used predominantly (outside SAP world as well) for HTTP based web communications. It exposes the backend business data to any authorized client in JSON or XML format.

API Management is targeted for SCP platform and allows enterprises to enable customers/partners/community members to build applications/support features from the functionality which is offered by API either given by enterprises or custom built by customers/partners/community members. It's more of a co-innovation kind of development approach.

These are just my two cents as I have not worked on API management.