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Author's profile photo Martin Bachmann

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:

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:

2021 – June 1st – Update

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      27 Comments
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      Author's profile photo J. Jansen
      J. Jansen

      Hi Martin, this is great news for on prem customers who are not ready for the switch to S4 yet, but want to make first steps toward EDA!

      Regards,

      Jeroen

       

      Author's profile photo Sebastian Freilinger-Huber
      Sebastian Freilinger-Huber

      Great news,

      I am really looking forward to the missions including ECC.

      Best regards,

      Sebastian

      Author's profile photo Uwe Fetzer
      Uwe Fetzer

      Interesting news. Two questions:

      • in the documentation ("Maintain Add-On Instance") we can see "Inbound"- and "Outbound"-Objects. Does this mean, that we not only can send events but also receive (register to) events?
      • do we need an additional license? Who will be the license partner, SAP or ASAPIO?
      Author's profile photo Florian Farr
      Florian Farr

      Hello Mr. Fetzer,

      this add-on is now available through SAP (see also https://www.asapio.com/nwee).

      We can also have a call if you like,

      Regards,

      Florian Farr (ASAPIO)

      <personal information removed by moderator>

      Author's profile photo Martin Bachmann
      Martin Bachmann
      Blog Post Author

      And the new AddOn is available directly by SAP without additional license costs: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/products/73554900100900005152

      There is a REST-endpoint available also for bi-directional event-communication. But as this feature is also not (yet) available in S/4HANA (and also outside-in-communication is always tricky from security) we are currently not really promoting this feature. But if you have an urgent need for sending events to the ECC system then we could jointly discuss how to enable it.

      Author's profile photo Gregor Wolf
      Gregor Wolf

      Hi Martin,

      thank you for this great news! Until now I've used the SAP Gateway functionality of Subscription and Notification Flow to push notifications to external systems. But having an SAP supported add on without additional license costs is great. What steps do customers need to take to get the download enabled as it's currently in restricted availability?

      Security shouldn't be an issue when the connection from Enterprise Messaging is done via the Cloud Connector is that possible?

      Best regards
      Gregor

      Author's profile photo Wolfgang Röckelein
      Wolfgang Röckelein

      Hi Gregor Wolf ,

      meanwhile this is "Unrestricted available" but unfortunatly we still don't see a download option...

      Have you found a download option meanwhile?

      Regards,

      Wolfgang

      Author's profile photo Gregor Wolf
      Gregor Wolf

      Hi Wolfgang, Hi Martin Bachmann,

      unfortunately my Download area is empty:

      What does a customer need to do to get the download?

      Best regards
      Gregor

      Author's profile photo Martin Bachmann
      Martin Bachmann
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Gregor, as the AddOn can only be used together with Enterprise Messaging we are checking if an Enterprise Messaging license (SKU 800599, CPEA, CPI EE, ...) is available. If this is the case and still no download then please ping me directly so that we can identify the root-cause.

      Thanks, Martin

      Author's profile photo Wolfgang Röckelein
      Wolfgang Röckelein

      Hi Martin Bachmann ,

      SKU for partner would be 8008807 (which we no yet purchased).

      Originally my intention was to try this on trial, but as I learned today, it seems that the Enterprise Messaging on trial is discontinued...

      Regards,

      Wolfgang

      Author's profile photo Martin Bachmann
      Martin Bachmann
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Wolfgang,

      yes, I forgot the partner test and demo license which is really important as well. Messaging on trial is not really discontinued, but it is a really old service plan and all the development efforts went into the 'Default' Service Plan - not available on trial. I know this is a really bad status (similar as with the 'Serverless Runtime'). This topic is being discussed of course and I really, really hope we will be able to offer a better trial coverage in the future. Only for the time being I fear that you can't rely on trial right now...

      Best regards,

      Martin

       

       

      Author's profile photo Martin Bachmann
      Martin Bachmann
      Blog Post Author

      The SKU 8008807 should be mapped now - allowing access for partners as well. Sorry for the delay.

      Author's profile photo Uwe Fetzer
      Uwe Fetzer

      Hi Martin,

      does this mean, that this Addon is only able to communicate with SAP Cloud Enterprise Messaging and not third party message broker like AWS ActiveMQ?

      Uwe

      Author's profile photo Martin Bachmann
      Martin Bachmann
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Uwe,

      exactly as you said. it can 'only' talk to the SAP Cloud Platform.

      Martin

      Author's profile photo Felix Ortiz
      Felix Ortiz

      The ability to send events into the customers existing ecosystems (AWS, AZURE, KAFKA ) seems more in keeping with the OPEN direction SAP has advertised.  What prevents ALE messages from being directed to another SM59 endpoint?

      Author's profile photo Martin Bachmann
      Martin Bachmann
      Blog Post Author

      Absolutely, SM59, Workflow, ... also works fine. The purpose of the new NW AddOn nevertheless is to support event-driven scenarios on the SAP Cloud Platform in the most efficient way, as shown on the TechEd Keynote by Jürgen (from Minute 20 onwards) or in this brand-new End-to-end Mission: https://discovery-center.cloud.sap/missiondetail/3338/3384

      Author's profile photo SOLANKI Ritesh
      SOLANKI Ritesh

      hello Martin,

      So if I understand the Addon will  be able to Communicate (Outbound + Inbound) using SAP Cloud Platform as Layer only and we cannot have another Middleware/Broker to consume the data ?

      Do SAP has any plan to allow the events to be consumed by other endPoints of a customer (WebMethods Universal Messaging / Solace ) and so on ?

      thanks

      Ritesh Solanki

      Author's profile photo Martin Bachmann
      Martin Bachmann
      Blog Post Author

      Every middleware works a little different, for example with regards to authentication or onboarding, but also with the interpretation of the details of the open standards. We cannot add (and constantly update / maintain) all these specifics into S/4 / ECC. So out-of-the box there is the link to the SAP Cloud Platform - and here the mapping to various other infrastructures can happen via Integration Suite / Enterprise Messaging. Holger's Blog on how to map to Azure Event Grid is one example, Integration Suite offering an AMQP adapter, Enterprise Messaging supporting AMQP, MQTT, REST, Webhooks.

      But - as also stated in my earlier comment today - customers can always develop own integrations based on the well established technologies, also partners are offering these specific integrations.

      Author's profile photo Martin Bachmann
      Martin Bachmann
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Gregor,

      regarding inbound events (from Enterprise Messaging to SAP NW)... Please implement this note: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2952734 as there was a small bug in the release... And then - as you said - it works via the Cloud Connector.

      Thanks, Martin

      Author's profile photo Soni Subhash
      Soni Subhash

      we do have use case let us discuss it 🙂

      Author's profile photo Mikael Gurenius
      Mikael Gurenius

      Martin Bachmann, I'm really interested in the inbound feature. It's mentioned as being part of Feature Pack 1 in the documentation but there is not really any other information to be found. Can you help me out?

      Author's profile photo Uwe Fetzer
      Uwe Fetzer

      Hello Florian,

      we don't have a direct use case (yet), but we are planning to build a message based infrastructure in the near future. So: interesting news for us 🙂

      Uwe

      Author's profile photo Tobias Trapp
      Tobias Trapp

      Is Enterprise Event Enablement is also usable for SAP Partners in release S/4HANA 2020? I am especially interested in the use case where SAP Partners would like to develop their own event types for partner business objects.

      I looked at the solution in S/4HANA 1909 (SAP Unified Eventing OPU-XBE und Business Event Handling (CA-GTF-BEH)  and found out that the transparent table BEH_I_EVENT is a system table and so there is no chance to define own event types.

      Best Regards,
      Tobias

      Author's profile photo Uwe Fetzer
      Uwe Fetzer

      For all not (yet) on #sapbtp I've written a blog post about an open source solution: ABAP are you listening? Apache ActiveMQ is calling

      (Sorry for hijacking this thread 😉)

      Author's profile photo maxx currey
      maxx currey

      Remember correct English is "on premises" and NOT "on premise".

       

      "Inbound" events to ECC systems have been doable for decades via the "SAPEVT" executable (one line CLI command) and since at least 2014 via an ICF Service URL, too.  Much simpler than add-ons if you just want to kick off ECC programs from external systems, SAP or third-party system.

       

      I have used SAPEVT multiple times to trigger processing programs when files arrive from third party platforms and one does not have to bother with polling and the waiting time/overhead involved.

      Author's profile photo Wolfgang Röckelein
      Wolfgang Röckelein

      In the SAP context uniformly "On Premise" is used to denote the opposite of "Cloud"

      Author's profile photo maxx currey
      maxx currey

      Sure, that is obvious,however, there is no such thing as "on-premise" in real English so it sounds like we are stupid.

      "https://collectivecontent.agency/2018/04/19/should-i-say-on-premise-or-on-premises-it/"