After describing the enterprise architecture development cycle (SAP enterprise architecture - architecture development cycle) and the repository (SAP EA Framework repository) it is about time to deal with the resource base. The resource base is the most important part of the framework from ASP perspective because it contains the relative advantage of SAP in the Enterprise architecture domain, which is SAP knowledge and experience in 22 industries. In a nutshell the repository is all about a collection of knowledge and experience that was gathered by SAP experts over the years and can accelerate enterprise architecture work. The resource base is composed of leading practices, EA work Accelerators and tools. Leading practices are a collection of best practices, in terms of an enterprise architecture group, for each one of the enterprise domains (Business, Information, Applications and technology). Accelerators are mostly about pre-defining EA styles and patterns. Styles contain most of the enterprise architecture building blocks and views that are needed in order to describe the average “as-is” architecture and suggested “to-be” architecture for each one of the enterprise domains. Styles have business capabilities, business processes, business structure, information used by the enterprise to run the business, enterprise level services needed to support the business, applications needed to support the business and to expose services as well as needed technology that describes both “as-is” and “to-be” architecture. Patterns are the same as styles but they’re cross industry. Styles and patterns let you adjust the style to your work instead starting from a plain page. They can be used as templates. Tools are collections of methodologies that will help enterprise architect to do their work more easily and in less time. One example of tools is the compliance map. A compliance map lets you monitor your enterprise projects and application compliance to enterprise architecture principles, constraints, standards and blueprints. Compliance maps use score cards and excel sheets to enable enterprise architects to do their work. Natty Gur
