2BM (Denmark) recently participated in SAP’s Partner Built Solution Drive, which was a great opportunity to increase our knowledge and skills with OData consumption and get to know the NW Gateway Certification process. NW Gateway is a powerful tool that is used to publish SAP Backend data as standard web-services that developers can use to create new innovative applications and websites. In our case we wanted to use the capabilities of a smartphone to make qualification verification easy and handy for inspectors and have the application certified by SAP to be able to consume data using Netweaver Gateway.
Development
In NW Gateway Development you can either develop your own web services in ABAP or use SAP’s generator to create a service from an existing SAP interface technology as BOR or Remote Function Calls. In our case finding and modifying existing BAPI’s to serve our needs and then use the generator to expose data as a web services rapidly lowered the backend development time. We were thereby able to focus more resources on the frontend UI and features.
SAP offers a lot of helpful guides that quickly will get you up to speed with gateway development:
SAP NetWeaver Gateway interface documentation
- SAP NetWeaver Gateway Developer Guide
- SAP NetWeaver Gateway How-To Guides on SDN
- OData Channel Quick Guide
- When to Use the OData Channel
- Deployment Options for SAP NetWeaver Gateway
Certification
After completed development of the application we needed to get the app certified. The certification process is concentrated on verifying that the solution Add-on required to be installed on SAP Netweaver Gateway does not violate regulations and requirements for an SAP Add-on. Furthermore that the installed web services and the client application works as intended.
Prior to certification we were required to complete a number of documents and also package the solution specific Gateway service and the custom BAPI in an Add-on. The Add-on is packaged using the Add-on Assembly kit.
The following documents was complete:
- Technical Product Profile
- Test report
- End User documentation
- Functional documentation
- Installation documentation
When we had the described deliveries ready, they were supplied to SAP along with an installation file for the IOS application.
Test of the Add-on and functionality of the application was done as an web session with test representatives from SAP and 2BM.
Test was done on 2BM’s IDES test systems and included installation of the Add-on and the completion of a number of test cases to verify the functionality of the client application.
For more information on all the details of the certification process refer to:
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-25063
Certification Conclusion
2BM have found the certification process fairly simple and the support and guidance from the SAP certification department has been very satisfying. So has the response time from SAP on any inquiries on our behalf on the process or more technical questions on for instance packaging the Add-on.
After a successful certification process 2BM has received the right to brand our “Qualification Check” application as “SAP Netweaver certified”. Certification furthermore gives the right to publish the application on SAPs Appstore “SAPStore”, and hence make it accessible worldwide to SAP customers.
The result of our endeavours can be retrieved from SAP Store (https://store.sap.com/sap/cpa/ui/resources/store/html/SolutionDetails.html?pid=0000007930&pcntry=US&...)
or Apples ITunes Appstore (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/qualification-check/id563471046?mt=8)
The app - Qualification Check
Qualification Check is a simple but powerful application that enables the user to lookup an employee by either identification number or name in order to verify an employee’s' qualifications and certifications in the field, and notify managers if a qualification is absent or outdated.
An employee is authenticated using personal details such as photo, job description, and department. The App marks outdated qualifications in red and enables you to Email the responsible manager with a description of the nature of the violation, a GPS coordinate and the employee's captured signature.
The application supports SAP Netweaver Gateway 2.0 SP3 and SUP 2.1.2.
Screenshots
- SAP Managed Tags:
