SAP NetWeaver Portal 7.4 and the HANA Cloud Portal
Working in the SAP NetWeaver Java and Enterprise Portal areas, it seems to me the differentiation between the Portal offers in the context of the SAP HANA Cloud Framework is not made clear enough for customers.
1) The SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal from version 7.4 is the on-premise solution offer which supports the usage of SAP HANA as database. It can be run with other databases but it is going in the direction of being tightly integrated with SAP Cloud solutions.
More details are available in following SAP NetWeaver Portal 7.4 document: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-49289
Advantages of this solution are developed in Yaviv blog (I invite you to read all the details in his white paper) :
• Full control over deployment (hardware / OS platform)
• Full flexibility for customization and extensions
• Individualized sizing
2) The SAP HANA Cloud Portal is the on-demand solution offer which is running in the SAP HANA Cloud Framework as the name indicates.
Advantages are:
• Lean, flexible Portal Paas (Platform as service)
• Fast time to value with regular updates
• Easy integration with on premise
• Lower TCO via scalable public cloud (Total cost of ownership)
• Standards based, open platform
Then, there is this question of integration of the SAP HANA Cloud Portal on demand with the on premise Portal solution. The FAQ from the SAP HANA Cloud Portal community page gives some hints about how it can be achieved:
” Is SAP HANA Cloud Portal a successor of SAP NetWeaver Portal 7.3x?
No, it is not a successor of Portal on-premise. The Cloud Portal can be an extension to Portal scenarios and can be integrated with your on-premise applications.
Will it be possible to migrate content from the classic SAP NetWeaver Portal to SAP HANA Cloud Portal?
Migration will not be possible since the two products are not directly related. However, cloud portal is designed to reuse content from SAP NetWeaver Portal.
If I run on-premise SAP solutions, how do I integrate with SAP HANA Cloud Portal?
The solution enables a secure and reliable integration with the customer’s on-premise network for leveraging existing on-premise investments.
The Cloud Portal enables various methods of consuming On-Premise content by consuming data services based on SAP Cloud Connector (SCC). “
The Cloud Portal supports consumption of data services based on Rest APIs or Gateway services (OData). The best practice would be to build a UI5-based application that connects to an on premise backend system (such as a NetWeaver Portal) to fetch the business data.
Following resources show different means available to connect applications to the Cloud Portal:
• Communicating with External Services
• Communicating with Non-Cloud Portal Applications Using the Connectivity Service
• Application-to-Application SSO with SAP HANA Cloud Portal
• Using SAP Gateway and the SAP Cloud Connector to Connect to SAP Back-End Systems
• The SAP Gateway carries out RFC services within the SAP world, which are based on TCP/IP. These services enable SAP Systems and external programs to communicate with one another: https://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpdata/en/31/42f34a7cab4cb586177f85a0cf6780/frameset.htm
Finally some use cases and tips to exemplify the utilization of the SAP HANA Cloud Portal:
This would be quite nice. How is this possible? How I could be able to provide access to FPM backend iViews or standard stuff like EP collaboration e.g.? Could you give an example or further links on this topic? Thank you,
cheers
Hi Laurence,
Actually HANA Cloud Portal would not support direct embedding of WDJ/WDA UI/iViews as is the NetWeaver Portal.
The Cloud Portal supports consumption of data services based on Rest APIs or Gateway services (OData). The best practice would be to build a UI5-based application that connects to an on premise backend system (such as a NetWeaver Portal) to fetch the business data.
Following links show different means available to connect applications to the Cloud Portal:
• Communicating with External Services - https://help.hana.ondemand.com/cloud_portal/frameset.htm?b971dd334fe24edc960b358d6cb45400.html
• Communicating with Non-Cloud Portal Applications Using the Connectivity Service - https://help.hana.ondemand.com/cloud_portal/frameset.htm?729dda66cb064915bba4b45f1bc638b5.html
• Application-to-Application SSO with SAP HANA Cloud Portal - https://help.hana.ondemand.com/cloud_portal/frameset.htm?629c6839a94c4250a46500326e9c419a.html
• Using SAP Gateway and the SAP Cloud Connector to Connect to SAP Back-End Systems - https://help.hana.ondemand.com/cloud_portal/frameset.htm?4bc9131fc5954f26a2d4fe98fd8e1267.html
• Gateway The SAP Gateway carries out RFC services within the SAP world, which are based on TCP/IP. These services enable SAP Systems and external programs to communicate with one another.
http://scn.sap.com/community/gateway https://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpdata/en/31/42f34a7cab4cb586177f85a0cf6780/frameset.htm
Kind regards,
Johann
Hi Johann.. Nice blog,
We have a requirement of migrating on premise Enterprise Portal based applications to SAP HANA Cloud Portal.
How are these integration and reuse content from the on premise EP to SAP HANA Cloud Portal done.
Kindly provide some leads.
Rgds
Saket kumar
Saket,
not at all, due dcode in Berlin this year there are also no plans to do it. I was like you a bit too optimistic on Johann's statement. What you can do is to write a UI5 based stuff consuming services in EP with cloud connector as already mentioned. Have done so, works like a charm
cheers
Thank you for the info Johann!
Hi Johann,
Thanks for this valuable information.
Is it possible to migrate SAP Netweaver Portal 7.4 (On-Premise) running on Anydb TO SAP Netweaver Portal 7.4 (On-Premise on HANA). Would appreciate if links to any information regarding Portal sizing and migration to HANA to be provided.
Kind Regards
Mohsin
Hi Moshin,
Thank you. In short, yes you can.
You already have a SAP NetWeaver Portal 7.4 (you need at least SP04 to be compatible with HANA). So what you basically need to look at is a classical database migration.
You can start with SAP Note http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1849151
to verify the first requirements.
Then go to SAP NetWeaver 7.4 – SAP Help Portal Page -> Integration with HANA -> Roadmap for AS Java. It is recommended to follow the classical migration procedures for database.
You have below the steps you need to consider for performing such migration:
Migration of SAP Systems to SAP HANA
Classical Migration to SAP HANA
Kind regards,
Johann