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Author's profile photo Elijah Martinez

SAP API Management – Overview & Getting started Updated 2023

Blog Update: This blog continues to be updated in 2023. 

Although written originally in 2016 continues to be updated as a central launchpad in 2023 – please continue to check back here for updates.

If you are new to the SAP Community, or relearning how the updated tagging format works you can search all API Management content by following these tags for API Blogs:

However, this covers a lot of content to sift through (champagne problems). On this page is a curated starting point of available documentation / how-to guides / tutorials / more, to help you hit the ground running with SAP API Management on SAP Cloud Platform.

 

Official Documentation

Official Learning Resources

 


SAP Blog Resources

Introduction / Getting Started

 

 


Integration Suite – API Platform


Enablement Series

 


SAP API Management on Cloud Foundry


 

Creating APIs

Working with Policies

 


Analytics


Consuming APIs

 


Advanced API Techniques

 


Interesting Use Cases

 


 

Customer Use Cases

 

Archived Topics:

There are many great blogs full of interesting questions and answers, but the material inside is becoming somewhat dated. You can still refer to them below, but the guides will not match the current state of API Management:

 

I hope this helps as a starting point, as before please feel free to follow (or contribute) to the Community Tags for APIs and API Management.

Assigned Tags

      15 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Matthias Heiler
      Matthias Heiler

      Hi Holger, Elijah,

      this is a good structured page. In one central page all relevent topic in a consolidated way brought together. So as a wonderful starting point into the new topic API Management.

      Well done!

      BR
      Matthias

      Author's profile photo Matthias Heiler
      Matthias Heiler

      one general remarks on API's:
      Why are API's and therefore its management so important for the business?

      - API are the new revenue generators and apps are the new marketmakers. So API's and apps are part of your digital transformation and API Management is an important enabler.

      For hundred of years traditional markets were influenced by intermediaries - you could also call them middle-man. They brought together request and demand sides. They knew the inner mechanics of their market, knew what the demand and request side wanted, what language they spoke and where those who simplified the complexity of both sides and made business with both possible. Think about a stock broker. He knows how to make it for me as individual simple to buy or sell stocks. I don't need to know where to find a place where I can get the stocks or which other places might exist where I could get a stock with better conditions, or where they are kept and all the details in between. This is handled by a broker. He is the intermediary between buyer and seller of stocks.

      So are the apps the intermediaries of today markets. And how to apps work? They work on API's. Those companies who do not provide for their products and services API's can't be found and can't be used. Here I like the "I"-part in API. The "I" stands for interFACE. So the API is the face you give your products and services to the outsidde world. Without API's no one can build an app which consumes your product/service through API's. All for what the intermediaries in the classical market stood for is now packed into an App.

      Apps are the marketmakers. And the more intermediaries you have for your products and services, the more representatives I have for my offerings to the market. Therefore you should not only provide your own Apps, rather than allow others - your intermediaries- to build their own apps based on your API's. API Management provides an open platform where you can deliver a feeding ground for as much app developers as you like. They themself then can build and market apps in their preferred language and environment and you manage the design and consumption to your API's thru an API Management solution.

      With API management you allow others outside to build apps to your products and services in a way they understand. Be it as a REST or OData call or thru SOAP, RFC in JSON or XML format or ...

      The how all that works is described in this starting point page for SAP API Management

      Author's profile photo Elijah Martinez
      Elijah Martinez
      Blog Post Author

      Thank you Matthias, this is a wonderful write-up, and perspective on APIs and reason for management. I might suggest making this a blog post, so that it can be seen more broadly!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi,

      I have one productivity HCP account but this service is not available. Is it available only on HCP trial?

      Author's profile photo Elijah Martinez
      Elijah Martinez
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Luciano,

      For productive HCP account usage, you will need to purchase SAP API Management. It is provided as an a-la-carte service.

      If you wish to trial SAP API Management, in order to understand the capabilities, then it will only be available on the HCP Trial account.

      Author's profile photo Pandey Anuj
      Pandey Anuj

      Hi ,

      I have a quick question with regards to developer portal . Hope I can find answer on this forum .

      Is it possible to  do the authentication of developer on developer portal from customer's corporate AD?

      And If not then is it part of product road map and would it be available at some point ?

      Thanks

      Anuj

      Author's profile photo Elijah Martinez
      Elijah Martinez
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Anuj,

      Yes, SAP CP API Management follows the Cloud Platform principles, of allowing the capability of calling a 3rd party IdP, assuming it supports the right interface (e.g. SAML 2.0). ADFS for example is a known supported IdP.

      Requires a mapping on SAP CP users / groups to the users desired to have access on the IdP.

       

      Regards,
      Elijah

      Author's profile photo Pandey Anuj
      Pandey Anuj

      Hi Elijah,

       

      Thanks for quick response .

      It was confusing when I read on SAP help portal of SAP CP API management that one need to be scn user in order to access developer portal.

      https://help.sap.com/viewer/66d066d903c2473f81ec33acfe2ccdb4/Cloud/en-US/c85fafe4ff5b4463924e0ccf5b4e0e41.html

      I hope it will be possible in a similar way as we can authenticate on SAP CP Portal service from 3rd part IDP via SAP CP Identity .

      Thanks,

      Anuj

       

       

      Author's profile photo Elijah Martinez
      Elijah Martinez
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Anuj,

      Good timing on this request, as one of my colleagues, Divya Mary, just recently posted a blog on this very item:

      https://blogs.sap.com/2017/08/06/sap-cloud-platform-api-management-authentication-using-sap-cloud-platform-identity-authentication-service/

      I hope that you and others find this useful.

      Regards,
      Elijah

      Author's profile photo Pandey Anuj
      Pandey Anuj

      Hi Elijah,

      Perfect!

      Thanks for informing me.

      Regards,

      Anuj

      Author's profile photo SHADAAN QUAISER
      SHADAAN QUAISER

      Hi Elijah,

      I want to utilise a scenario with two trial account.

      Trail accountA and accountB.

      I have created a api product from trial accountA. now is it possible for accountB to use api product from accountA in his web IDE data connection and what needs to done in accountB to use that api product.

       

      Regards

      Shadan

      Author's profile photo Elijah Martinez
      Elijah Martinez
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Shadaan,

      I'm not sure that I follow your question precisely. Let me rephrase and you can tell me if I have accurately encapsulated your question.

      Trial AccountA has API Management enabled, you create an API Proxy, bundle it into a Product and expose it via the Developer Portal. Then you wish to have WebIDE on Trial Account B connect to the Developer Portal of Trial Account A to consume the APIs exposed there?

      This unfortunately is not possible, as the Trial has specifically limited the number of developers allowed to be onboarded to 1 (the account owner). You would need to either use a productive instance of API Management (which can have unlimited users onboarded to Developer Portal), or use WebIDE from the first instance to discover and start the build, and export the project to the second instance.

      Let me know if I misinterpreted your question or you need further clarity.

      Regards,
      Elijah

      Author's profile photo SHADAAN QUAISER
      SHADAAN QUAISER

      Hi Elijah,

      thanks for reply. I was precisely asking the same question that you answered.

      one more question. in developer account can i deploy the created api product directly to SAP business hub.so that our client can connect to api business hub and use the service with their respective backend. and consume via web ide to create the SAPUI5 application.

       

      Regards

      Shadan.

      Author's profile photo Sunita Sudarshan
      Sunita Sudarshan

      Great Landing page for API Management, Elijah!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Elijah - useful post. I'm new to the SAP API and I'm looking for details on which API to use for integration of SAP ERP with one of our client's eCommerce platform. The information around the site is quite vast and I feel kind of lost. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

      Thanks!