Event-driven architecture – now available for SAP ECC users

Overview

Wikipedia defines an event as a “significant change in state”. If for example a Material Master is being updated, other processes in other systems need to be informed. This whole journey of generating the event, channeling and processing is called Event-driven architecture (EDA).

According to industry analysts, customers and user group feedback, event-driven architecture is already an important topic and will most likely become even more central in the future. As an example I still remember the last DSAG annual meeting in Mannheim (sitting in the keynote together with 1000nds of people…), listening to the great Keynote from Steffen Pietsch (in German only, from 0:32:00 on).

Event-driven architecture with SAP

In the last couple of years, SAP has put a lot of effort into providing holistic support for EDA, just to mention a few highlights:

• Enabled Backend Systems
  • S/4HANA Enterprise Events
    • On Premise
    • Cloud
  • SAP SuccessFactors
  • SAP Subscription Billing
  • SAP Marketing Cloud
• Central Event Bus
  • SAP Cloud Platform Enterprise Messaging as the central Event-Bus
    • AMQP Adapter for SAP Cloud Platform Integration
  • SAP API Business Hub
• Connected Systems
  • AMQP or Cloud Events Trigger at Cloud Functions inside the SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory, serverless runtime
  • SAP Cloud Application Programming Model

One missing – but important – stakeholder was the group of the SAP ECC customers. To let this group also participate on event-driven architecture we just released the ABAP Add-On SAP NetWeaver, add-on for event enablement. This Add-On works as an SDK, customers will be able to enable objects with just a few clicks, generating their own content (events). Of course the events generated in an SAP ECC System will follow the same standard (https://cloudevents.io/) as events coming from an S/4HANA System.

What is the benefit, especially for SAP ECC customers?

Event-driven architecture in general is offering a lot of advantages like decoupling or the avoiding of polling. With this new Add-On, SAP ECC customers particularly, will be able to leverage SAP Cloud Platform as an extension platform even more – as now the event-centric pattern is also supported in addition to REST / OData via SAP Gateway. In combination with SAP S/4HANA this will open up some great new opportunities:

• In order to serialize activities during the SAP S/4HANA Migration, it is now easier to port existing event-driven extensions from SAP ECC to SAP Cloud Platform. A guide on the general topic of side-by-side extensions is available here
• This will bring back your SAP ECC System closer to the standard – and this will then reduce complexity during the migration to SAP S/4HANA
• As SAP S/4HANA already supports events, the switch to SAP S/4HANA will be easy – if you already designed the cloud extension with the SAP S/4HANA Events and OData services accordingly.

Several missions are available showing in more detail on how to extend an S/4HANA System based on event-driven architecture (e.g https://discovery-center.cloud.sap/#/missiondetail/3156/3192). We are currently working on the same scenario – only using an SAP ECC system instead of an S/4HANA system.

Summary

The Add-On SAP NetWeaver, add-on for event enablement (ASANWEE) is available for NetWeaver 7.31 and higher (Documentation) and is based on an ABAP Add-On from the partner company ASAPIO (https://www.asapio.com/en/index.html), but adapted for the usage with the SAP Cloud Platform.

2020 – Dec 22nd – Update:

• Mission now available:

  • Public Mission Board link: https://discovery-center.cloud.sap/missiondetail/3338/3384

  • Public Github link : https://github.com/SAP-samples/cloud-extension-ecc-business-process/tree/mission/mission

• Mentioned at TechEd Keynote 2020: https://youtu.be/wP0pL_Ps1dM?t=1195

2021 – June 1st – Update

• AddOn is now also available for S/4HANA
  • https://blogs.sap.com/2021/06/01/sap-netweaver-addon-for-event-enablement-now-also-released-for-s-4hana/
  • https://www.sap.com/dmc/exp/2021-06-sapphireinnovation-news/sap-enhances-support-for-event-based-integration/