Pre-requisites for Selecting an Enterprise Service

1.1    Introduction

Enterprise Services are SAP’s way to eSOA. By using Enterprise Services, SAP solutions can be leveraged to reduce effort required to build interfaces and solutions from scratch.

The entire set of Enterprise Services provided by SAP is available in http://esworkplace.sap.com/ which is known as the Enterprise Service Workplace for SAP.

There are some points that you need to keep in mind before you select an Enterprise Service. And after you have selected the service that you require to implement, you need to ensure that the service is present in:

1. Service structure in SAP PI ‘s Enterprise Service Repository system
2. Service backend implementation in the SAP system

After you ensure that the service definition and backend implementation are present in the PI and SAP system respectively, you implement the interface in its out of the box standard way or enhance it.

After the service is published from Service Registry, any system in the landscape will be able to discover the service and consume it.

For simplicity of understanding, we will take the following service and refer to it throughout the document:

1.1    Pre-requisites of Selecting an ES

The service CustomerERPAddressBasicDataByNameAndAddressQueryResponse_In implements customer search in SAP by name and address values and returns the matching set of customers.

Following are the checkpoints while selecting an Enterprise Service:

1.1.1    Check Software Component:

Sometimes, a single functionality is implemented in different components. So, its important to select the correct software component. ERP, CRM, SCM and SRM  are the available software components. For example, we require Customer search ES for ERP.

1.1.2    Check Request/Response Parameters:

Review each and every field of your requirement with the fields in the Enterprise Service. This includes overall functionality, pre-requisites given in ES Workplace for that Enterprise Service and also field length of each and every required fields. Functional help is a must during such reviews.

1.1.3    Check Enhancement Package:

Does the Enhancement Package given in ES Workplace for your service match the Enhancement Package of your SAP system? If not, then you need to investigate or select a different service and enhance it.

1.1.4    Check Mode of Enterprise Service:

Does the Enterprise Service match the type of interface you require? This means, if your requirement is of synchronous interface then the Enterprise Service you select should also be synchronous.

1.1.5    Test the Selected service:

Before finalizing, a service should always be tested in order to understand that the service really fits the requirements. In most cases, you might not have access to some specific box (ERP, CRM, SCM, etc) in order to test the selected service. For such cases, SAP has provided its own WS Navigator.

1. Login to WS Navigator and click on the button ‘Log on with Demo User’.

Figure 1: SAP WS Navigator Login Screen

1. After successful login, select ‘Service Registry’ radio button.

Enter the name of the service in ‘Find’ text box. This name is the same as the technical name of the service. In this case, it is ‘CustomerERPAddressBasicDataByNameAndAddressQueryResponse_In’.

Click on ‘Go’.

This will select one ES, as shown in Figure 2: Select Enterprise Service in WS Navigator. Provide the userid and password when you are prompted.

Figure 2: Select Enterprise Service in WS Navigator

1. Click on the entry.

Click on ‘Next’ button. Following screen appears (Figure 3: Select Operation Name in Selected Enterprise Service)

Figure 3: Select Operation Name in Selected Enterprise Service

1. Click on ‘Next’ button again.

Following screens shows up.(Figure 4: Enter Search Criteria)

You can enter any search criteria and click on the ‘Next’ button

Figure 4: Enter Search Criteria

1. The following screen (Figure 5: Results from Running the Enterprise Service) shows up with the search results

Figure 5: Results from Running the Enterprise Service

You can test any Enterprise service through this link that SAP has provided.