questions on esa architecture content and web services

[former_member182070]

Good morning,

Herebelow a list of questions to well clarify what is exactly ESA :

• question 1 : Does ESA includes the Web Services ?

• question 2 : What is exactly a Web Service :

• is it only a technical service or could it be

also a fonctional (business) service ?

if it is both, can you give a concrete

exemple of both

• is it only a communication interface based on

protocol xml, soap, http,....?

• is an enterprise service a web service ?

• question 3 : Is ESA only a fonctional architecture or does it include the technical architecture . In that case, it is a technico-fonctional architecture ?

• question 4 : What includes ESA ? :

does it include Netweaver ?

does it include the Portal ? ...

I have studied the documents provided in the sdn internet

site . Nevertheless, without the explanation of the slides it is difficult to understand because i wonder if my interpretation is the good one . Do you have, in addition a "spoked" presentation (format vcm) which ould help ?

Many thanks for your help in clarifying these points .

rgds,

[former_member182070]

Hello again,

And thanks you for these clarifications.

Regarding the web services, in other words how can we have a look on the services catalog available in each release (620,630,...) ? : through a transaction, in a documentation ?

Thnks for your help ?

[Former Member]

Isabelle,

SAP is currently working on a consolidated service repository to answer this exact question. But for now, from a functional point of view, any RFC or BAPI method existing in your back-end R/3 or mySAP system can be service enabled by different components of the NW stack (XI and SAP WAS can create services from these). Technical and infrastructure services (UME, KM, Collab, etc) have their own services, which you will have to research the documentation to find.

Regards, John

[gregory_root]

Isabelle,

Don't forget about http://ifr.sap.com/. This is SAP's giant Interface Repository. It provides content not only for web services documentation, but also Collaborative Business Maps. These maps are templates that describe in detail collaborative intra-enterprise business processes.

Now, when you start looking at it, you may notice that there isn't a lot of focus on Web Application Server itself. This is because most people who want to consume a web service are thinking from a specific business scenario (instead of a technical platform like Web Application Server). So, keep that in mind as you browse.

Hope that helps!

Regards,

Greg

[former_member182070]

Many thanks for this clarification :

In addition can you help to clarify these points :

• Will the SAP enterprise services be usable by non -sap applications ?

• are the technical web services (communication) specific or universal ?

• we used today the Portal EP5 and are studying EP6 : we understand we are using today already web services :which ones ?.

• regarding the web services , we wonder to better apprehend the availability evolution :

which ones were available in WAS 620? (precise list ? exemples ? )

which ones are available in WAS 630 ? (exemple)

which ones will be available in WAS 640 ? (exemple)

Many thanks for your help & rgds

[david_sonnenschein]

Isabelle,

• Will the SAP enterprise services be usable by non-sap applications ?

Answer: Yes. "Enterprise Services" really describes the class of service. Those services that are exposed as Web Services regardless of if they are Infrastructure, Application, or Enterprise Services, can be consumed by SAP and non-SAP environments. You may choose to expose specific web services to only specific domains, but technically any environment should be able to interact with the Enterprise Services.

• are the technical web services (communication) specific or universal ?

Answer: If I understand the question, they are universal. A .NET component could consume an SAP Web Service without any proprietary requirements. The reverse is also true.

• we used today the Portal EP5 and are studying EP6: we understand we are using today already web services :which ones ?.

Answer: I am not sure about EP5, but in EP6 it is very easy to expose a Web Service either directly or as a proxy to a backend Service.

• regarding the web services , we wonder to better apprehend the availability evolution :

which ones were available in WAS 620? (precise list ?exemples ? )

which ones are available in WAS 630 ? (exemple)

which ones will be available in WAS 640 ? (exemple)

Answer: The J2EE engine from 620 forward has supported Web Services. It is less a question of what is available and more what you want to expose.

[Former Member]

Hello Isabelle,

I will try to answer your questions...

> question 1 : Does ESA includes the Web Services ?

Definitely. ESA has a broader scope than web services alone, but web services form the underlying abstraction to accessing functionality at different levels of granularity across the enterprise.

>question 2 : What is exactly a Web Service?

Web Service is an open standard that leverages internet protocols and abstracts many networking and technical aspects related to distributed processing. There is much more to this, but that iis my short answer. When we speak of a particular web service, we normaly mean a service that performs some business function, although it can also perform technical functions as well - example of a functional servive: Purchase Order Creation. Technical service example: Retreive Nr of calls to to the 'Purchase Order Creation Service'.

And yes, an enterprise service is a web service.

>question 3 : Is ESA only a fonctional architecture or does it include the technical architecture?

Good question. I would say that ESA is a 'functio-technical' architecture, as it must consider both points of view. More specifically, being able to call web services is not enough. There are many considerations involved - which services? What level of granularity? Service discovery? Corporate object model? Canonical Data Model? These, and many other questions are involved in creating an ESA. Please see the 'Implementing ESA' document on ESA Today for a discussion of some of these topics.

>question 4 : What includes ESA ?

Netweaver, in conjunction with the business systems used by an enterprise, can fulfill an ESA blueprint. Portals is a centerpiece of NetWeaver (and all future SAP UI) as it provides the User Interaction layer. Just as there is no perfect blueprint for a househouse, achieving ESA is a multi-stage and evolutionary process. It should be based on a vision, leading to a roadmap that considers the current system landscape of a particular company, and shows how to achieve the goal by the deployment of certain components of NetWeaver, and finally, an implementation of a perticular project.

At this point, we do not have any 'spoken' presentations, but please keep an eye on ESA Today as we have plans to release much more content.

Hope my replies have been helpful. John