Connectivity and Integration in ABAP – Part 3

In my previous blog, I highlighted advantages of automating the configuration of distributed applications running over multiple systems. A prerequisite for automated configuration is a central SOA Manager system with a landscape of managed systems. Such a landscape is advantageous even if you are not yet ready to make the leap to scenario-based configuration. I want to encourage you to take the first small steps in this direction, so here I will explain what you need to do to set up the systems to be central or managed respectively.

The setup is simple using SOA Manager (I am assuming here that your systems are already fit for Web services). You make one client a central system, and in each of the other systems maintain a management connection to the central system.

First you need to define one SOA Manager as the central SOA Manager. You go to the relevant client and start transaction SOAMANAGER. Somewhere under Management Connections you will find a check box called Central System. Select this and choose Save. Enter the user and password for Meta Data Access (so the central system can manage itself) and click OK. Refresh the browser (with F5) to see the changes.

In each of the other systems, you can now maintain a new management connection to the central system. Because the management connection is a two-way connection, you have to specify the connection and authentication information for both ends of the connection.

Once you have done that, click the Start Setup button and everything will be done automatically. You can then check the status on the Existing Connections tab.

That is all you need to do.

Now, for example, you can run health checks from the central system. You can gather log data from the managed systems. Also the registries are automatically set up so that a service configured in a managed system will be published to the central registry, which simplifies single Web service configuration.