SAPPHIRE Orlando is in full swing!

On Day 2, our team began with the executive breakfast held in Hilton Orlando hosted by SAP-Microsoft Unite Parter Connection. During the breakfast session, two awards were handed out to partners - Fujitsu and Capgemini - who developed amazing solutions to address our customers' toughest challenges and demands. Fujitsu is the winner of the Innovation Award (Press release) and Capgemini is the winner of the Customer Impact and Value Award.

Photo: Rustum Broacha of Ecosystem & Channels team of SAP spoke during the executive breakfast

Himanshu (below) engaged in presentation and demo on how SAP NetWeaver Gateway can improve the overall user satisfaction, productivity and experience.

Photo: Himanshu presenting in the demo theatre.

One highlight of our theatre presentation was "Extend Your SAP Applications with Duet Enterprise and Windows 8" - presented by Vivek Malhorta from Microsoft and a representative of our customer, Dr. Pepper. This session showed how the interoperability of Windows 8 apps and Duet Enterprise software for SharePoint and SAP solutions can enable enterprises to extend information and processes to the user community. Vivek presented innovative solutions that consume SAP software data through user-friendly Microsoft interfaces, products, and devices.

Photo: Vivek of Microsoft presented with representative from customer Dr. Pepper

#ICYMI - In Case You Missed It!

SAP Fiori - It's here! During SAPPHIRE NOW, announcement was made on the launch of SAP Fiori. SAP Fiori, leveraging the power of SAP NetWeaver Gateway and SAP UI5,  is a collection of apps that are simple, easy-to-use and provide an intuitive user experience for broadly and frequently used SAP software functions. These apps run across a variety of devices — desktop, tablet, smartphone — to help easily get the job done. Since its launch, SAP Fiori has been generated a lot of buzz on the social media (#Fiori). Experience SAP Fiori now.

Partner Testimonies - During the day, we had 2 partners  - Red Hat and Autodesk - shared how SAP NetWeaver Gateway is vital to their business and improve their development effort of their solutions. Thank you to Syed Rashid of Red Hat and Jim Quanci of Autodesk taking the time to speak to us.

Check out their testimonies - Autodesk | Red Hat

After a long day of activities, Ella, Mustafa and Himanshu had a fun and great dinner time with the customers and partners in the Mircosoft party.

More to come....

One more day to go; and we still have some more ASUG and SAPPHIRE sessions on Thursday:

SAPPHIRE - Microforum

Session ID: 64603
Title: Extend the Reach of Your Applications to More Users
Description: This discussion reveals how you can offer people new ways to work by linking them to SAP applications from various user environments. Learn how Duet Enterprise and SAP NetWeaverGateway tehcnology can benefit your business, IT department, end users, and extended network.

Time: (THU) 11:00 am - 11:45 am
Venue: Database and Technology Microforum 2 / DT629

ASUG - Presentation
Session ID: 2514
Title: Transform complex processes in SAP into simplified workflows on mobile devices using SAP NetWeaver Gateway - Customer success story/ case study with CalPortland
Time: (THU) 4:15 pm - 05:15 pm
Venue: S320H

Come back tomorrow and check out our Thursday activities!

Or you can follow us on the social media for live report:

SAP NetWeaver GatewayTwitter| LinkedIn  |Youtube |

Duet EnterpriseFacebooklTwitter| LinkedIn  |Youtube|

Peter Ng on behalf of the Solution Managment team of SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise

Hi,

Following the release of the SAP NetWeaver Gateway Productivity Accelerator and the blog post by Martin Bachmann, more and more people keep asking me how to configure their Gateway system within the GWPA tool, in HTTPS protocol. So I figured it might be worthwhile to post a short explanation that hopefully clarify what needs to be done in order to add a SAP NW Gateway secured connection.

Follow these 3 steps:
• Export the server certificate (that is the root certificate of the Gateway server)
• Import the server certificate to the list of trusted CAs (Certificate Authorities) in your JRE
• Add the connection in SAP NetWeaver Gateway Productivity Accelerator in Eclipse

Step 1: Exporting the certificate

Easiest way I've found to export the certificate is to go to your browser and just export it from there: enter some URL of a service on the SAP NW Gateway system you would like to configure. Click on the lock icon on the address bar and then on View certificates (if using Chrome, after clicking the lock icon go to the Connections tab and then Certificate information). Select the Certification Path tab and click on the root certificate before clicking on View Certificate. Then, go to the Details tab and click on Copy to File…

Follow the wizard (select the Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER) format, and choose the file system location to export to).

Step 2: Importing the certificate to the CA list

This is a rather simple step, but a bit tricky as you need to make sure you import the certificate into the correct JRE installation in case you have multiple JREs on your machine. To check which JRE installation is used by your Eclipse instance, go to Eclipse Preferences (Java > Installed JREs). I used the Portecle tool which is a user friendly GUI application for creating, managing and examining keystores, keys, certificates, certificate requests, certificate revocation lists and more. You can get it from:http://portecle.sourceforge.net/

Open the Portecle tool and Open the Keystore File of your JRE (cacerts) should be located in <JRE installation path> ..\jre\lib\security.

Enter the password to the keystore: changeit

Then go to Tools > Import Trusted Certificate, and select the exported certificate from where you have saved it. Save and close the tool.

Step 3: Add the connection in SAP NetWeaver Gateway Productivity Accelerator in Eclipse

After installing the Productivity Accelerator, in Eclipse Preferences, add the system connection using HTTPS and SSL port.

Time flies, SAPPHIRE reaches its final and 3^rd day of the event. Lots of traffic circled around the DT625. Ella, Mustafa and Himanshu made sure they did not miss any customers to explain and pitch on how SAP NetWeaver Gateway can help their businesses.

Photo: Ella  (left) explaining the demo to an attendee in the demo pod

Photo: Mustafa (right) chatting with another attendee

During the final Micro Forum session, we had customer Dr. Pepper to present with Himanshu. The interactive discussion drew a lot of attendees. The session revealed how businesses can offer people new ways to work by linking them to SAP applications from various user environments using Duet Enterprise and SAP NetWeaver Gateway technology which can benefit your business, IT department, end users, and extended network.

Photo: Himanshu speaking in the micro forum session

Photo: Himanshu (left) is co-presenting with Satish (right) from Dr. Pepper in the session

  In the other ASUG session, Ella presented with Mike Bowen from customer CalPortland to share the success story using SAP NetWeaver Gateway.

Photo: Ella is presenting with CalPorland

Photo: Mike Bowen from CalPortland is sharing their success story with SAP NetWeaver Gateway   

Let’s celebrate….

After the 3-day long event, everyone enjoyed the final celebration with a concert event at night. Thanks to Ella for sharing the pictures. This year, we all enjoyed a night of country music with singers – Alan Jackson, Bonnie Raitt and Martina McBride.

Photo: Alan Jackson

Photo: Bonnie Raitt

Thanks…

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our on-site team - Ella, Mustafa and Himanshu from the Solution Management team of SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise - to contribute all the event pictures for our social media coverage in the midst of their main duties to do presentations
and attend meeting with customers and partners throughout the event.

Stay Connected…

Follow us to keep connection with us on the social media. Share with us your thoughts on our channels.

SAP NetWeaver GatewayTwitter| LinkedIn  |Youtube |

Duet EnterpriseFacebooklTwitter| LinkedIn  |Youtube|

Check out our SAPPHIRE photo album on Facebook to see more pictures of our team during the event.

To review our SAPPHIRE activities in the past days, please check out our recap blogs - Day 1 | Day 2

The wait is over. As we are approaching to the sign-up deadline for our 2013 campaign - SAP NetWeaver Gateway Partner-built Solutions Drive, we are happy to announce two virtual training sessions on SAP NetWeaver Gateway that will be delivered in June.

The sessions will cover both provisioning of OData services and consuming them on various platforms. Best of all, the trainings will also cover recently announced SAP NetWeaver Gateway Productivity Accelerators. While you will learn from our experts, you will also have the opportunity to ask them questions.

We suggest that you register for our trainings even if you won't be able to attend them live. Because, shortly after the sessions, we will make them available online and share the links with those who registered.

So don't delay and reserve your seat now! Register for our training sessions.

Best,

Mustafa.

Updates:

- added pro's and con's to the deployment options

In the past I have been frequently asked which deployment option I would recommend for SAP NetWeaver Gateway. The official documentation can be found here in SAP Online Help.

Root cause for this discussion was that basic Gateway functionalities if running on releases prior to 7.40 are contained in different AddOns that have to be
deployed separately.

While in releases prior to 7.40 the Gateway server or hub functionalities require that the software components GW_CORE and IW_FND are deployed on the server system, the Gateway backend enablement functionalities required that software component IW_BEP had to be deployed.

As of SAP NetWeaver 7.40 and higher you don’t have to decide where to put the Gateway core components since SAP has taken the decision for you .

This is because the component SAP_GWFND is installed as part of the 7.40 standard and includes the functional scope of IW_BEP, GW_CORE, IW_FND and in addition IW_HDB.

So instead of discussing where to deploy which AddOn the discussion will be around whether you will go for a hub architecture or whether you will activate the Gateway service on the SAP Business Suite system itself (also called “Embedded Deployment”).

Since the Gateway core components will be part of each system running on top of NetWeaver 7.40 in the future you still have basically three options how to run SAP NetWeaver Gateway services in a system landscape.

In contrast to the description in the online documentation I am differentiating between two types of hub deployment. One where the service deployed in the backend and one where the service is deployed on the hub.

Option 1 (hub architecture)

In this case the Gateway server functionalities are only used on one dedicated server, the hub system. The services are deployed on the backend systems and are registered on the server. The Gateway service is thus deployed in the Gateway backend systems where either IW_BEP is deployed systems or that are running on top of 7.40 leveraging the core component SAP_GWFND.

Pro's:

+ Routing and composition of multiple systems is supported

+ Single point of access to backend systems

+ Hub System can be based on a newer release (7.31 or 7.40)  that supports additional authentication options (Kerberos, SAML Browser protocol)

+ Hub System can be based on a newer release (7.31 or 7.40)  that supports SAPUI5

+ Enhanced security because of no direct access to the backend system

+ Direct local access to metadata (DDIC) and business data, meaning easy reuse of data

Con's:

- Additional server needed for Gateway

Option 2 (Hub architecture with development on the server)

In this case the Gateway server functionalities are only used on one dedicated server, the hub system. In contrast to option 1 also the service deployment takes place on the hub system. This option is used if either no development must be performed on the backend system or in case of releases prior to 7.40 if it is not allowed to deploy the AddOn IW_BEP in the backend. In this case the developer is limited to the interfaces that are accessible via RFC in the backend.

Pro's: (in addition to the ones mentioned in option 1):

+ no need to install (and upgrade) Gateway AddOn’s in the backend

+ services developed by partners do not need any deployment on the backend systems

Con's (in addition to the ones mentioned in option 1):

- access is limited to remote enabled interfaces (RFC function modules, BAPI’s, BW Easy Queries, SPI Objects)

- remote enabled interfaces might not be optimal suited (e.g. they might not offer appropriate filter options)

- GENIL objects cannot be accessed remotely

- Additional server needed for Gateway

- NO direct local access to metadata (DDIC) and business data, meaning reuse of data is limited to remote access as mentioned above

Option 3 (Embedded architecture)

In this case the service is deployed on the same system where it is registered.

Pro's:

+ Less runtime overhead as one remote call is reduced

Con's:

- If multiple SAP Business Suite systems are used Gateway would have to be configured multiple times

- Routing and composition cannot be used

- Upgrade of AddOn’s in a backend system in larger companies is usually only possible once or twice a year

Setting the scene

Last week I attended the SAP CodeJam event in Eindhoven that was all about SAP NetWeaver Gateway. Nearly 75% percent of people that had registered also showed up so we had a packed room full of developers as you can see on this picture.

First of all I have to thank Ciber Nederland for hosting this event in their location and Craig Cmehil, who created the SAP CodeJam event concept to make this happen. In our session we were able to leverage a cloud based system landscape that consists out of an ERP with a SAP NetWeaver Gateway server deployed on it and a CRM backend that were accessible via the internet. Here my thank you goes to my colleagues that have been busy to create this system landscape.

I started to provide a short introduction to SAP NetWeaver Gateway to the participants (here I had to use Powerpoint because not everybody knew about SAP NetWeaver Gateway) and showed how to develop a service in 5 minutes (actually it took a little bit longer because I had to talk as well ).

After this introduction it was time to code and to ask questions for the participants and to do networking.

Participating partners were encouraged to sign up for our 2013 campaign - SAP NetWeaver Gateway Partner-built Solutions Drive.

What are the lessions learned ?

It worked !

Since we used a cloud based system landscape that was accessible via the internet all participants were able to use it without a problem.

Some How To Guides need to be updated

It turned out that some How-To-Guides that can be found on SCN are unfortunately out of date. This is no wonder since we have developed lots of new features in the last 2 years. We started to set up a Wiki for SAP NetWeaver Gateway - Self pace learning where you will find the most up to date content.

We will do it again !

The SAP NetWeaver Gateway team will support additional SAP CodeJam events about SAP NetWeaver Gateway with speakers from our team if you want to have them.

So if you are interested that a SAP CodeJam event about SAP NetWeaver Gateway will be hosted near you or at your location, please let me know and we can work on hosting a SAP CodeJam event as described in the following document.

Best Regards,

André

Our SAPPHIRE Orlando onsite team came back pretty exhausted. Between delivering sessions, covering the demo station, meeting customers, attending networking sessions there was nearly no breathing room.

There was a BIG interest for NetWeaver Gateway as well as Duet Enterprise. Our Duet Enterprise round table with Dr. Pepper was simply packed. Our demo pod was a hit too.

A huge interest on Gateway was generated by SAP Fiori which is a collection of apps with a simple and easy to use experience for broadly and frequently used SAP software functions that work seamlessly across devices – desktop, tablet, or smartphone. Those apps are built on NetWeaver Gateway and HTML5.

The first release of SAP Fiori includes 25 apps for the most common business functions, such as workflow approvals, information lookups, and self-service tasks.More details about Fiori are under http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-41598

Our solution managers Himanshu and Ella were on ASUG TV session as panelists. Click here to watch the interesting discussion about SAP and Microsoft's partnership.

ASUG TV abstract: Duet Enterprise is the result of SAP and Microsoft's 20-year partnership. Panelists Bill Newman, from Newport Consulting, and SAP's Himanshu Pande and Ella Morgulis look at what is it, how it benefits customers and why customers aren't flocking to it.

We also conducted a series of customer and partner interviews to get their impression working with our Gateway or Duet products. Want to know what they think about the products, definitely check out the videos:

• CalPortland Interview 

• Autodesk Interview

• Redhat Interview

To find out more about what happend at SAPPHIRE in Orlando, we have a great collection of blogs for you:

Collection of blogs of SAP NetWeaver Gateway presence in SAPPHIRE NOW 2013

Until we meet next time at the event please follow us on our social media channels as well as share your product improvement ideas with us.

Have an idea?    https://ideas.sap.com/netweavergateway

SAP NetWeaver GatewayTwitter| LinkedIn  |Youtube |
Duet Enterprise FacebooklTwitter| LinkedIn  |Youtube|

Recently I have been answering queries around the system alias configuration in SAP NetWeaver Gateway, I thought I will share information on the same in this blog.

Prerequisite:

You just have to know the basics of developing OData services using SAP NetWeaver Gateway.

This blog does not cover web service part of the System alias.

System Alias is the wrapper around the RFC_Destination + the information related to routing of requests which is created using transaction code SPRO in Gateway HUB system (IWFND). Here is the navigation path:

SPRO -> SAP Reference IMG -> SAP Netweaver -> Gateway -> OData Channel -> Configuration -> Connection Settings

-> SAP NetWeaver Gateway to SAP System -> Manage SAP System Alias

SAP NetWeaver Gateway System Alias has the following properties:

SAP System Alias: Name

Description: <Enter the description>

Local GW: N/A

Local App: Check box that specifies the deployment of component IWBEP .

RFC Destination: RFC destination you created using the transaction code SM59

Software Version: Default/which ever applicable

SystemID: Not Required

Client: Not Required

WS provider Sytem: Not Required

Deployment Examples and its System alias configurations:

Example 1: Local APP

In this case (Example 1: Local APP), System alias configuration should have Local App flag set as IWFND and IWBEP are together and RFC destination should point to SAP back-end. RFC destination will be used by BEP data provider to call the RFC from SAP Backend.

Now how do you get the RFC destination in your Data provider?

Follow the code below

DATA lo_destination_finder TYPE REF TO /iwbep/if_destin_finder.

DATA lo_dp_facade TYPE REF TO /iwbep/if_mgw_dp_int_facade.

DATA lv_destination TYPE rfcdest.

* Get RFC destination

lo_dp_facade         ?= /iwbep/if_mgw_conv_srv_runtime~get_dp_facade( ).

lo_destination_finder = lo_dp_facade->get_destination_finder( ).

lv_destination        = lo_destination_finder->get_rfc_destination_via_rout( ).

Example 2:Remote APP  

In this case (Example  2: Remote App), System alias configuration should not have Local App flag set, as IWFND and IWBEP are in different SAP systems and RFC destination should point to back-end where IWBEP is present which is used by IWFND to route the calls.

Here IWBEP data provider and metadata provider classes can use the local RFC Function Modules as well.

Example 3: Local App ,all the components in SAP Business Suite/Backend

In this case (Example 3: Local APP), system alias configuration should have Local App flag set as IWFND and IWBEP are together and RFC destination can be empty as all the components are in the SAP back-end.

System Alias in Service Builder:

There is another system alias which is used by Service Builder'sservice maintenance node which is used only in design time for registering and maintaining  the service in the Gateway HUB from IWBEP(Service Builder) system .

System alias in this case should be created/configured in the system where IWBEP is installed i.e using transaction code SPRO. Navigation path below:

SAP Reference IMG -> SAP Netweaver -> Gateway Service Enablement -> Connection Settings to SAP Netweaver Gateway -> SAP NetWeaver Gateway Settings

System Alias here points to the HUB system.

It has the following properties

Destination System: Destination system name

Client

System alias name

RFC Destination

RFC Destination here is used to navigate from IWBEP(Service Builder) system to Gateway HUB System(IWFND) when the Register or Maintain or Error Log Button is clicked in the Service Maintenance node of Service Builder

Once the Maintain button is clicked,control goes to the corresponding IWFND system's /iwfnd/maint_service

screen

And that is all!! Feel free to contact me if you have any queries:)

Thanks and Best Regards,

Goutham

I guess you might be puzzled with the title of my blog. Let me help to clear the puzzle. This blog is all about SAP NetWeaver Gateway!

There will be few questions in your mind about this stuff from SAP.

Last September I published my blog introducing Gateway Service Builder which simplifies the development and generation of OData services on top of the SAP NetWeaver ABAP stack and SAP Business Suite. At that time we knew already that having strong developer support for SAP NetWeaver Gateway on on-premise ABAP systems is important but not sufficient. We will also need to do more to cater for OData service development on upcoming platforms like SAP HANA Cloud and Gateway as a Service. Customers will run on-premise systems in hybrid landscapes together with on-demand systems, consuming data from both. Thereforewe will need a set of tools that span across different platforms and provide an easy and efficient development experience around OData. This is why we decided to build Gateway Productivity Accelerator as the next major building block for the development of user-centric applications on SAP.

We have now completed and published Gateway Productivity Accelerator 1.0 (GWPA). GWPA is a set of developer tools in Eclipse which greatly improves the productivity of developers around the consumption and the provisioning of OData:

• A graphical modeler to paint the entity relationship model and to declaratively define all elements of an OData model, currently along the OData V3 specification. We spent much effort on usability and intuitive handling. For instance, there are several autolayout modes for newly imported models which come without layout information. A miniature view helps navigating in larger models and speed-buttons support fast editing.
• The modeler offers comprehensive validations for the data model while you are defining or enhancing it.
• You can import existing data models from a file or from an already running OData service.
• Of course you also can export data models (currently V2 and V3) for handover to a service implementation, for instance in Gateway Service Builder on ABAP.
• GWPA 1.0 already supports references to OData vocabularies, a powerful new concept that was introduced with OData V3.
• GWPA integrates the Gateway Consumption Tools for iOS, Android, HTML5, UI5, Java SE and PHP, which were already published on SAP Service Marketplace and which allow the easy generation of service proxies or even full-blown starter applications for the most common client technologies.

We believe, that GWPA is a significant shipment also beyond its functional capabilities. Let me explain why.

First (and only) OData Modeler in Eclipse

So far the only (setting the Gateway Service Builder on SAP NetWeaver ABAP aside) relevant OData Modeler was part of Microsoft Visual Studio. Non-Microsoft developers were restricted to modeling their OData data models in a plain XML editor. Now any Eclipse developer can freely download and use GWPA to define the OData data model that he needs.

GWPA is platform agnostic

At SAP we now have more than one platform and are serving more and more client technologies. When OData is the agreed standard protocol for user-centric consumption, GWPA can become a commonly used developer tool to model and consume OData services on the most common clients on top of any SAP platform. This will simplify the development process and reduce the TCD for SAP based development.

GWPA is designed to be re-used by other Eclipse tools

This is important if you want to generate code for either service implementations or for client-side code. GWPA uses an OData domain model built on Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF). From there, other Eclipse tools can extract information of the data model for a number of purposes like data-binding or code generation.

The GWPA OData Modeler becomes Eclipse Project "Ogee"

To drive the overall adoption of OData and the extension of the tool into other technologies SAP has initiated the contribution of the OData modeler under the Project Eclipse "Ogee". There the Eclipse community can extend the tool in many ways together with the committers from SAP.

GWPA shipped jointly with other key Eclipse tools from SAP

At the same time as GWPA, we published several other SAP development tools for Eclipse for ABAP, HANA Cloud and SAPUI5 on the same public update site. Now anybody can download SAP developer tools for Eclipse from one public location and install them in one instance of the two most recent Eclipse releases. And last, but not least, the NetWeaver 2013 End-2-End Developer Scenarios were published on SCN with both GWPA and Gateway Service Builder taking important roles in there. Both publications are important steps towards a more harmonized developer experience for SAP customers and partners.

So, I hope you are curious by now and will try out our new Gateway Productivity Accelerator. GWPA 1.0 can be downloaded from SAP's public Eclipse update site on SAP HANA Cloud. Let us know, what you think of it.

In my last month's blog, I introduced this new initiative offered by SAP NetWeaver Gateway Product Management team.

I am pleased to inform you about the first ever Virtual Fair for SAP NetWeaver Gateway Customers will be held on June 19. This webinar will allow you to interact with our partners and learn more about their solutions that are leveraging SAP NetWeaver Gateway. You can take this opportunity to consider our certified partners' solutions to springboard your investment of SAP NetWeaver Gateway to business reality.

The details of this online event are as follows:

Date: June 19, 2013 (Wednesday)

Time: 8 AM (PST) / 11 AM (EST) / 5 PM (CET)

Duration: 90 minutes

In this webinar, you can expect to:

• Discover a selection of SAP-certified partner solutions to fit your business needs
• Connect and engage with each selected partner in an interactive session to learn more about of their solutions
• Receive contact information to follow up in a future discussion

In this inaugural session, we are excited to have the following partners presented in this event:

Register early and save your seat for the event! Please note that registration is required to attend this event.

As I mentioned in my other blog - Feedbacks and Further Supports for SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise Partners, we are suggesting our partners to take full advantage of the newly available SAP Partner-led Rapid-Deoployment Solutions (RDS) program.

After the initial launch last year limited for invited partners, SAP Partner-led RDS program is now an open program for qualified partners and solutions. With SAP Partner-led RDS, partners will leverage SAP’s Rapid-Deployment Solution framework, differentiate their solution offerings, and increase customer adoptions of their solutions by making use of the SAP Rapid-Deployment Solutions momentum. For SAP customers, they could now take full advantage of SAP and SAP partner's game-changing innovations, in a low-cost and predictable approach. So this is truely a win-win for the three parties - SAP customers, SAP partners, and SAP. You can find more detail here for SAP Partner-led Rapid-Deployment Solutions.

Just to give some highlights, below are in a nutshell the benefits of SAP Partner-led RDS offerings for our partners.

To further increase awareness of the program, SAP NetWeaver Gateway solution management team and SAP Partner-led RDS team will jointly offer two repeated info sessions for our NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise global partner community in June 25th, 2013. There will be one session for APJ region and one session for EMEA/AME region. Each session will be one hour long to cover topics as program overview, benefits, and steps to participate the program and get qualified. There will also be a Q&A session at the end of each webinar.

Registration of the sessions are now opened. So please don't delay and reserve your seat now by signing up here.

Best regards,

Edward

It was my dream to build at least one android application which will display SAP data on mobile/tablet devices. As I am not very much skilled in developing android application, I was struggling on how to start with this. And then I came across GWPA and started exploring it. I explored it; I liked it and now I'm loving it!

It is very simple to create android application consuming OData with the help of Gateway Productivity Accelerator (GWPA) plug in installed on Eclipse IDE.

Let’s get into the details,

Introduction -

In this technical blog, I will focus on how we can build simple Android application consuming OData service with the help of SAP NetWeaver Gateway Productivity Accelerator (GWPA).

To know more about GWPA, please refer http://scn.sap.com/community/netweaver-gateway/blog/2013/06/03/gateway-productivity-accelerator-10-launched

It can be downloaded from https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/#gateway

Prerequisites –

We need to follow steps as mentioned below [Reference - https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/#gateway ]

Installation Instructions

To start using SAP NetWeaver Gateway Productivity Accelerator (GWPA), proceed as follows:

1. Download and install Java SE6 .
2. Download and install the Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers from Eclipse .
3. Install the SAP NetWeaver Gateway Productivity Accelerator (GWPA) feature(s).

From the Eclipse menu, choose Help> Install New Software...
Add the URL https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/juno.
Select the feature(s) you want to install and follow the steps of the installation wizard.
For information about the individual features, see the documentation.

To Develop Android application using GWPA, we need to install Android SDK tools on Eclipse IDE and then install GWPA features.

• Toolkit for Android (GWPA)
  The Android Toolkit consists of an environment, a pattern and templates, suitable for developing SAP solutions for use in the Android environment.
  Prerequisite for installation of this feature is to install the Android SDK Tools.

Once you install Android SDK tools, it will look as below under Window --> preferences.

After doing all these steps, I faced issue with android application regarding getting error, “R cannot be resolved to a variable” and hence after searching lot on it, I resolved it by installing Android SDK Build-tools and hence your Android SDK Manager image should look as below.

After this step, you can start installing Toolkit for Android (GWPA) as mentioned below. You need to select checkbox for Toolkit for Android (GWPA).

Once installed successfully, you can open Windows --> Preferences and check under SAP NetWeaver Gateway.

Please note: we do not require separate installation for SAP OData Mobile Client SDK.

With all above required steps, you are now ready to develop Android application!

Procedure -

Create new project. Under OData Development, select Starter Application Project.

Give appropriate project name, select Build Target and package name and press Next.

We can create 3 types of application using below templates. Here, we will select List/Details Application.

Now, we need to select service URL from Remote location. Click on Catalog.

Click on Manage Connection if no connection is maintained earlier.

As displayed below, provide required details and click OK.

P.S. - If you do not have access to SAP NetWeaver Gateway system then you can access demo system from SAP at http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-31221?rid=/webcontent/uuid/1051f6d9-e87a-2e10-d188-e2786c7878b1 and accordingly configure connections and access OData services. Please refer my blog http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/front-end/blog/2013/05/31/how-to-create-sapui5-application-consuming-gateway-service-with-the-help-of-sap-nw-gateway-plugin and see section Additional Details for more information.

If the connection is made, you will be able to see services. For this demo, we will select service RMTSAMPLEFLIGHT and click OK.

Provide Activity title, select Activity type and add fields.

Add 2nd Activity of type Details.

We selected Flights as List activity and FlightBooking as Details Activity. Our final project structure will look something like below screen.

As displayed below, SAP Gateway system service details will be found under res/raw folder.

Also the auto-generated code provides commented code to handle Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP) server mode. This is really nice feature as when we have SUP, we need not to modify much logic.

Now we are ready with Android application and want to test it. To test android application, you can use Real device or Android Emulator http://developer.android.com/tools/help/emulator.html

We need to manage device using AVD. Please refer http://developer.android.com/tools/devices/index.html

An Android Virtual Device (AVD) is an emulator configuration that lets you model an actual device by defining hardware and software options to be emulated by the Android Emulator.

As displayed below, AVD can be added.

That’s it!!!

Now we are absolutely ready to test our application on emulator. We need to test as mentioned below,

Under Console screen, you will be able to see the log of AVD launch etc...

Please note: Android emulator sometime is very slow and hence you need to be patience and can take break for Coffee.

AVD will launch emulator device as displayed below,

Here sometime you need to press F2 or keyboard commands as per your AVD settings. Refer Keyboard commands at http://developer.android.com/tools/help/emulator.html

You may see screen as below. Here you can see all your Android based application. In this case, you can see MyFlightAndroidApp. Double click on app icon.

It will launch login screen. Provide credentials that you used while connecting to your gateway SAP system.

Under LogCat window, you will see the log of application being executed.

After successful launching, you will see the Flights list view.

Selecting any item will open details screen for FlightBooking as below

You can search for different flight id and it will be displayed accordingly.

Note that under LogCat window, all these events will be logged which can be very useful for troubleshooting purpose.

Closing Remarks –

With the help of SAP NetWeaver Gateway Productivity Accelerator (GWPA), we can create Android application with very minimum efforts.

This step-by-step blog is written to explain how we can,

1. Install Android SDK tools, GWPA etc. in Eclipse IDE.
2. Configure SAP NetWeaver Gateway system and search for OData services
3. Create simple Android application
4. Configure and Launch Android application on ADV
5. Use Console and LogCat for troubleshoot purpose

GWPA is extremely helpful tool from SAP to leverage OData capability and it will certainly helpful for all developer community who want to develop simple android application based on SAP business suite data in the form of OData.

It is generating starter application which we can modify as per our business/organizational requirement

In my earlier blog, I explained how we can create Android application consuming OData with GWPA. In this blog, I will explain about creating Android application based on SAP Workflow!

Basically we will use demoformabs (Demo Absence Notification workflow) having workflow ID WS70000704.

We will use steps 000087 Create notification of absence and 000048 Approve notification of absence as highlighted below.

And workflow service WFSERVICE shipped with gateway.

You can follow detailed steps mentioned in How-to guide athttp://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-29199

Now it’s time to develop android application!

Create new project and provide details.

Select Workflow Application.

Assuming you configured the connection for backend SAP NetWeaver Gateway system, you will be able to see all services available. Now search with WF and you will find available workflow services in your system. Select workflow service WFSERVICE.

Click on OK and Finish.

Finally, application structure will look as below.

Now it is time to test our application.

Select Run As --> Android Application. It will launch Android emulator where you will be able to see your application. Provide credentials which you used to configure backend SAP NetWeaver Gateway system.

It will display workflow items available in your work list. Here, I have below 3 tasks in my work list.

Click on any single task which will open details of that task.

On clicking Decision button, it will give 2 options as displayed below.

You can then put comments and process it.

After processing task, it will disappear from your inbox.

You can see workflow items in transaction SBWP (SAP Business Workplace)

If you again process items in Android application, accordingly it will be removed from you inbox. Now I processed one more item and hence my inbox will display single task.

We can verify again by going back to SAP Business Workplace. And as per below screen, it contains single work item.

It is very easy to develop workflow based android application with the help of SAP NetWeaver Gateway Productivity Accelerator (GWPA). we can develop nice android application just within few minutes!

(Written by Peter Gorski of SAP Labs, LLC)

In Sales relationships are the single greatest asset for all organizations. Relationships with customers, relationships with partners. SAP NetWeaver Gateway is a revolutionary engine that enables sales professionals to leverage their organizations existing investment in SAP Business Suite and extend its data and functionality to make it possible. In the enclosed below example powered by SAP NetWeaver Gateway, called SAP Account Intelligence Mobile App, NetWeaver Gateway empowers sales teams with access to real-time customer insights and personalized selling recommendations on the road.

Now, with SAP NetWeaver Gateway the 3rd party developers can leverage our developer tools to code mobile clients to integrate quickly with SAP Business Suite, and build in 10 minutes or less HTTP clients for Apple’s Cocoa, Android or AJAX. Most importantly, the 3rd party developers don’t require any knowledge of ABAP to do so. They can develop in the platform and language of their choice such as JavaScript, JAVA, .NET or Cocoa. 

SAP NetWeaver Gateway not only demonstrates its agility and flexibility in unlocking SAP data stored in your SAP CRM or ERP systems, but also provides a real-life example of how it works with SAP HANA to provide real-time recommendations on the fly. With SAP NW Gateway Sales reps can now find and seize sales opportunities via SAP Account Intelligence app from anywhere, visually classify accounts by value, create target lists and routing directions for sales calls, and more.

Check out this mobile client that unlocks Sales data stored in SAP Business Suite CRM, by using SAP NetWeaver Gateway technology!

This blog shares an experience of creating OData from RDF(Resource Description Framework) data sets.

While  walking through the Semantic Web course in https://openhpi.de/ with my colleague Atanu Mallik, we realized that RDF is very much parallel with the OData stack, in terms of using http, REST and XML. In this blog we discuss an  approach towards creating an OData service from a RDF Class.

As the name suggests, Semantic web aka RDF’s goal is to build a semantic web of data, where data sources can communicate with each other, and aggregate and mash up their data; whereas, OData aims to standardize data publishing and accessing mechanism in addition to providing a data model.

Unlike OData, RDF is in the market  for more years and is a W3C specification as well. Also there is a significant amount of Open data that is already available as RDF. Example RDF sources can be found at http://www.w3.org/wiki/SparqlEndpoints.

With this information let us look at a use case.

The Client is a “Music Title reseller” running SAP Suite. I am an ABAP developer, who wants to develop an OData service for subsequent use in creating an Android mobile application. The OData service needs to provide the following information about the music title. Name, Price, Stock Status, Manufacturer, Lyrics By, Music By, Based On, Awards Won, and Home Page.

Most of the information mentioned above are available in the in the SAP Suite, and the rest of the information are available in Wikipedia.org for most of the Musical albums. If I can create an OData service out of the available Wikipedia data, it can be mashed up with the OData service generated from SAP suite. Another option would be to integrate the Wikipedia data’s OData service in the Android application.

Approach for Metadata

Keeping the above option is mind; we derived a model mapping between RDF and OData.

Wikipedia data, which is available as RDF Class instances in http://dbpedia.org, has a SPARQL endpoint. Each RDF Class will be converted into an OData Service, which will contain only one Entity. All the properties of the RDF Class will be converted into the properties of the Entity. In addition to the properties that are created, another property is added to the Entity and this is the key property for the Entity. The name of the key property can be ‘<Class name>ID’ and its value will be the name of the class instance. All the properties are typed as ‘Edm.String’. Representation of the Model Mapping

A SPARQL query to get all properties of an RDF class can be used, and the result can be used to generate code for the Model Provider Class. Refer  the above mapping diagram to fetch various artifacts.

Approach for Runtime

A simple library can be written to convert the SAP NetWeaver Gateway URIs into SPARQL queries. The returned xml/json document can be transformed using simple XML transformations into ABAP internal tables and mapped back as entity data. We were able to do this for query and read functionalities.

It was heartening to see that we could create OData services for any RDF classe and fetch various useful data from dbpedia.

Thanks for reading the blog and let us know your thoughts.

This year's Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference is around the corner.

The event will be held at Houston July 7-11 and it is expected to have 16,000+ people attending the conference.

For those who are not familiar with WPC, WPC is Microsoft's worldwide partners new fiscal year kick-off meeting, as Microsoft's new fiscal year starts in July each year. The event is similar to SAP's PKOM or FKOM. During the conference, Microsoft will outline their new strategies and product direction for the coming fiscal year.

As part of the SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise product management team, I will be meeting many of our partners together with SAP and Microsoft Unite Partner team. If you are attending the event, please drop me a line to see if we can schedule to meet in Houston. We will have the chance to discuss SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise, and how our technologies are helping integration between SAP and Microsoft.

In addition, this year SAP will have a kiosk in the Windows Mobile booth on the show floor. I will spend some time there together with SAP mobility and partner teams. This will be a great chance to meet face to face with SAP team and learn about our exciting new technologies and mobility solutions. Please stop by.

I am looking forward to seeing you there in Houston.

Last month, in Mustafa's blog, he announced the offering of the SAP NetWeaver Gateway Virtual Trainings.

This offering was well-received by our partners who are participating in the Parter-built Solution Drive 2013. The trainings were held last week and now the session recording is made available on our YouTube channel.

You can view the training here (Duration: 3 hr 6 min)

SAP Fiori Lessons Learned 07.

Common mistake for Launch Page setting

Background:

Launch Page is a service in UI Add-on componets. When system admin installs UI Add-on components, he/she forgot to activate the services for launch page.

In the result, you get some errors when you start launch page

https://<hostname>.<domain>:<port>/sap/bc/ui5_ui5/ui2/launchpage/home.html.

Lessons Learned:

Do not skip the service activation section of  Install Guide of UI Add-on.

Service activation:

Activation oData services fir UI2

SAP Notes:

SAP Fiori Lessons Learned 08.

Adding tiles to Launch Page

Background:

Launch Page is a service in UI Add-on componets. You can not find information how to add tiles to Launch Page.

Admin Page URL:

https://<hostname>.<domain>:<port>/sap/bc/ui5_ui5/ui2/launchpage/admin/admin.html.

Lessons Learned:

You should look at documents in UI Add-on Components which is a prerequisite of SAP Fiori.

http://help.sap.com/nw-uiaddon  -> Application Help -> User Interface Add-On 1.0 SPS04 for SAP NetWeaver.

Look at the section 4.