Use OData Provisioning and Web IDE to build Fiori Apps

[Murali_Shanmu]

Towards the end of 2015, SAP had announced the availability of HCI OData Provisioning (HCI-ODP) in the HANA Cloud Platform trial instances. This service was earlier named Gateway as a Service.

Traditionally lot of customers use their SAP Gateway systems on their premise to expose OData services and host Fiori applications. The OData services which are available in the respective Business Suite systems are registered on the SAP Gateway system which acts as a hub. Below is a simple system landscape which is common these days.



With HCI-ODP, you can now consider to remove the Gateway system from your premise and have its role played in the cloud.



HCC is the HANA Cloud Connector which acts as the bridge between the On-premise systems and the HANA Cloud Platform. More info can be found here.

What would be the benefit of this approach?

1. You don’t need an infrastructure on your premise to host the gateway system


2. You don’t need to worry about maintenance/upgrades to the Gateway software and the associated SAPUI5 libraries


3. Easily integrate your backend services with other Cloud based services like Fiori Cloud Edition, API Management etc.

It’s very important to understand that SAP Gateway consists of two parts. (1) Gateway Backend enablement which is required to build OData Services. (2) Gateway Hub which exposes the OData services. HCI ODP takes on the role of the second part. Customers will still need to ensure that their backend systems have the right gateway component to build OData services. As of NW 7.4, all the gateway components are bundled and comes preinstalled. So if you have a NW 7.4 backend system, you can start to use HCI ODP straight away.

I am quickly going to show how to build Fiori like Applications consuming the OData services via HCI-ODP.

1) Register the SAP backend system with the HANA Cloud Connector

I have registered my SAP ABAP backend System called FAN and assigned virtual host/port details. I have also enabled the resources which can be accessed externally.

2) Login to the HANA Cloud Cockpit

Logon to the HANA Cloud Platform cockpit with your trial account and activate the service “HCI OData Provisioning”

3) Configure HCI-ODP Service

Click on the configure HCI OData Provisioning link to launch the configuration section of the HCI-ODP.



In the destination section, add a new Destination for the FAN system by referring to the virtual hostname/port. Ensure that the IWBEP service is active in SICF node.



Click on the Roles in the menu and assign your user (without the word trial) to both the roles (GW_Admin & GW_User) listed in this page.

4) Launch the HCI-ODP Service

We are now ready to register OData services. Click on the HCI OData Provisioning link at the breadcrumb to navigate to the main section of this service. Launch the service by clicking on the link “Go to Service”



Click on the register button and search for all the OData services available in the backend FAN system. I am going to select a sample OData Service “EPM_RETAIL_SCENARIO_SRV” to list out Product details



Click on the “Service Document” link to explore the service. This URL will be used when you are building applications using WebIDE.



When you click on the Service, it will list out the details of the service. At the bottom, you can see that the destination is defaulted to FAN system. However, if you require this service to fetch data from multiple system (MOC) , you can add few more destinations here. For now, just ignore this section.

 



 

5) Create a destination for HCI-ODP in HANA Cloud Cockpit

Create a destination in the HANA Cloud Cockpit for the HCI-ODP. This is a one off activity. Notice the URL points to my HCI-ODP service and the Authentication type is AppToAppSSO.

6) Create a Fiori application

We are now ready to build a Fiori link application using Web IDE. Launch Web IDE from Subscriptions menu.

Create a new project.



Select a Template and in the “Data Connection” tab select the Service URL and provide the service name as below



Provide values for the remaining section of the wizard and run your project in WebIDE. I don’t want to go in to the details of building applications using Web IDE as there are lot of articles available on how to consume OData services to build Fiori like applications. At the end you will have a Fiori Application which talks to the OData service hosted in the backend FAN system via HCI-ODP.



Hope you found this informative.