Overview about the SAP API Business Hub

[Daniel_Enderli]

Introduction

In this blog post I explain what the SAP API Business Hub is and how to use API's to integrate SAP Solutions or communicate with them.

API's will become increasingly important with the topic of Cloud and the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). It is advisable to deal with the topic at an early stage.

I would like to encourage you to immerse yourself in the world of Cloud, API, Integration and be open minded.

SAP API Business Hub

 

What is the SAP API Business Hub

The SAP API Business Hub is a web application hosted by SAP to discover, explore, and test SAP and partner APIs (application programming interfaces). API's enable to build extensions or process integrations.

Access

The SAP API Business Hub is a public website https://api.sap.com that anyone can access. You might however need to login to experience some of our features.

What are APIs?

An API is a programming object that enables developers to use or extend the provided functionality in a service. With API's you can extend solutions, integrate them with other solutions, or build new apps.

Different API types

You will find REST, SOAP, and OData APIs on the SAP API Business Hub.
A description for the different API types you can find here.

In addition to the API's, there is further content to consume such as Events, CDS Views, Adapters etc.

Content on the SAP API Business Hub

 

Big picture for an API Architecture

Generally, you have a SAP Solution and associated API's, which you can use to communicate with the SAP Solution from the outside.

In simplified terms, the API infrastructure looks as follows:

Simplified Architecture for API consumption

 

Working with the API’s

You can eather choose the try out area on the SAP Business API Hub or use a professional tool like Swagger, Postman or Eclipse with some API Editor Add-On.

• SAP API Hub


• Swagger API Editor


• Postman API Editor

I prefer to work with Swagger. Inside it you have a comfortable code editor and access to the API commands which you can parameterize.

Swagger API Editor

Example using API's for SAP Cloud ALM

I will use the Project API which is designed for SAP Cloud ALM to show two concrete examples.

API's for SAP Cloud ALM

 

In the first example I use the "API GET" method to receive a list of all projects in SAP Cloud ALM.

The result is a list of the existing projects in SAP Cloud ALM.

The second example it to use the "API POST" method to create a new project in SAP Cloud ALM

The result is that a new project is created in SAP Cloud ALM.

Conclusion

I hope i was able to show what the SAP API Hub is and how to work with API's. I like the architecture and the way the API's work. It makes it a lot easier to connect SAP and Non-SAP solutions.

I am convinced that in an increasingly digital world, a lot of data will be exchanged via API's in the future. This simplifies the way of working and also reduces complexity.