Gateway Java (GWJ) [Integration Gateway] - A Bird's eye view

[Shabarish_Nair]

In this previous blog, I had mentioned about a new component called Gateway Java that we will see coming with the SMP 3.0 Platform. In this blog, I will make an attempt to summarize my learning around Gateway Java.

[Update: 09-Dec-2013] Note: Gateway Java is rebranded as Integration Gateway. So please use that term for future references.

1. What is Gateway Java?

We could call this the sibling of Netweaver Gateway. While, Netweaver Gateway is an ABAP component and is used to expose SAP functionality as OData services, GWJ is a java based component that will be used to expose non SAP back-end data as OData services.

PS: GWJ has been built by the Process Integration team at SAP. So you would find a lot of its functionality, GUI etc similar to PI.

2. When is this available?

GWJ will be available with the SMP 3.0 platform. In other TechEd sessions, I saw references of future plans to have GWJ, part of HANA Cloud Integration (HCI) and SAP Process Orchestration.

3. What does this mean for Netweaver Gateway (NWG)?

Doesn't mean anything really. NWG will continue to be used for SAP application OData enablement.

Note: I think it would be fair to assume that once NWG comes ported onto SAP PO, then ABAP functionality of NWG could be also added to GWJ to have a single integration platform for OData needs.

4. Gateway and Avatar

While Gateway itself will be used to provide the service definition and configuration, Avatar (how cool is that!) will be the component that would provide the messaging transport protocol to the interfaces in the backend.

5. What kind of data sources can the Avatar connect to?

As of SMP 3.0, JDBC, JPA, SOAP is planned to be supported.

6. How robust is the mapping tool?

Since this is akin to PI, most of the PI mapping functionality is made available for message transformation.

7. What was that Avatar thing again?

Avatar is a flavor of Apache Camel, which uses;

a. Blueprint XML to define beans and specify routes

b. Runs in the Lean Java Server OSGI container

c. Contains custom SAP components which marshal and transport OData requests and responses to and from SMP 3

More on Apache Camel here.

Hope this info helps. Will update this blog with more info as days progress.

Additional Info:

SAP Help Around Integration Gateway - Click here