SAP NetWeaver Gateway

Day 3 – More engagements with customers and partners before the closing bell

Peter Ng — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:33:35 GMT

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…

SAP NetWeaver GatewayTwitter| LinkedIn |Youtube |

Duet Enterprise Facebook l Twitter | 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

Configuring SSL Connection to SAP Systems in SAP NetWeaver Gateway Productivity Accelerator

Gal Roter — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:02:49 GMT

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.

Day 2 at SAPPHIRE - NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise team in full speed!

Peter Ng — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:46:49 GMT

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 Enterprise Facebook l Twitter | LinkedIn | Youtube |

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

Feedbacks and Further Supports for SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise Partners

Xiaosheng Lu — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:35:38 GMT

In early 2013, we had the honor to host a North America partner focus group event in SAP Palo Alto office for SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise. There are 8 partners from the NA region joining the one-day event. During the event, we shared with our partners product updates and the progress of successful customer adoption of SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise. We also took this opportunity to capture thoughts and feedbacks on how we could further improve support for our partners on both business development and technical enablement. Some of the feedbacks resonated with the result of partner survey we conducted at the end of 2012.

Below are the top 5 feedbacks that we collected from our partners during the event.

Strengthen marketing support for SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise on both partner services and solutions.
Increase transparency of SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise pricing model
Simplify route to market for partner solutions and guide partner navigating SAP sales channel
Continue to educate partner on positioning of SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise especially when compared to other SAP offerings
Provide delta functional and technical enablement sessions with the new release of SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise.

As our answers to those feedbacks, we are now putting together actions to further improve support for our partners in the below areas.

Continue to increase adoption of partner solutions. A Partner-built Solutions Campaign for 2013 was launched in April. Benefits of the campaign include technical enablement, solution certification, and support of partner solutions go-to-market. This year's campaign continues to target existing SAP SIs, VARs as well as independent software vendors (ISVs). If you missed the webinar sessions, you can find them here.
Leverage existing offerings for partners from SAP eco system and channel team. For example Mobile Application Partner Program (MAPP) is a SAP partner program which would help listing partner solutions in SAP store based on SAP NetWeaver Gateway or Duet Enterprise. Enablement sessions for SAP NetWeaver Gateway are provided as part of the MAPP.
Continue to execute social media marketing efforts for SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise products and partner solutions. Follow both the product channels in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, and SCN.
Establish Virtual Fair for SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise Customers. Virtual Fair is a new type of event we are organizing to increase exposure of partner certified solutions and generate more leads for those solutions. The goal of the virtual fair is to create a platform connecting customers and partners by their common interest – SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise solutions, from a seller (partner) and buyer (customer) perspectives. The first Virtual Fair is planned for the end of Q2 2013. Detail of Virtual Fair can be found here.
Establish a Partner Enablement Kit to provide:
- Updated value proposition of SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise based on new releases
- Updated positioning of SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise vs. Other SAP technologies
- Marketing assets for partners – e.g. guidance on how to participate existing SAP marketing events and navigate SAP sales channel such as inside sales
- Guidance for partner on SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise pricing model
- Guidance on partner-built solutions campaign and its included benefits as technical enablement, solution certification, and support of partner solutions go-to-market
Increase awareness and participation of SAP Partner-led RDS program. SAP Partner-led RDS program is now an open program for qualified partners and solutions. Partner 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 solution momentum to drive their sales. Follow the link to find more information on SAP Partner-Led Rapid-Deployment Solutions.

Many of these proposed improvements are now in full steam progressing while I am writing this blog. For example, SAP NetWeaver Gateway pricing is now available in SAP store and will become part of the pricing guidance included in Partner Enablement Kit. To view the SAP NetWeaver Gateway pricing, go to SAP Store and search for SAP NetWeaver Gateway User License. Scheduling of the Virtual Fair is also getting closed to be released. So stay tuned for the coming.

Day 1 at SAPPHIRE - Our NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise Busy Bees!

Ning-Jing Gao — Wed, 15 May 2013 00:05:06 GMT

The busy schedule for our SAPPHIRE onsite team started already last night with the MSFT pre-SAPPHIRE dinner. Thanks to Duet Enterprise - our joint product with MSFT our team was invited to this fun event.

photo: MSFT pre event dinner

This Morning before the show floor even opened up, our demo Pod was already getting visitors. Definately stop by to talk to our experts at the Pod. Believe or not, you can even talk to our new demo app too! (D&T campus Pod DT625 Create Engaging Customer Experiences: Portals, Gateways, and Beyond)

photo: Our demo Pod DT625

Our Solution Manager Himanshu co-presented at the “Duet Enterprise for Operational Impact” Microforum together with MSFT and Cap Gemini. It was such an engaging session.

photo: Engaging Microforum with Cap and MSFT

Our Duet roundtable by invitation only with Dr. Pepper was a full house session. Dr Pepper Snapple Group is a leading producer of flavored beverages in North America and the Caribbean. Over the past 3-5 years Dr Pepper Snapple Group has invested heavily in their SAP transactional business systems. In order to deliver a solution that has a familiar Microsoft style user interface Dr. Pepper Snapple Group implemented a new mobile purchase requisition approval process utilizing Duet Enterprise. With that Dr Pepper Snapple Group has been able to increase adoption, speed in the process, increase accuracy of purchase orders, and increase productivity.

photo: Duet Round Table with Dr. Pepper

One more fun event today for the onsite team was the ASUG TV Studio interview about "SAP, Microsoft and Duet Enterprise". Our GW and Duet solution management colleagues Himanshu and Ella were interviewed together with Bill Newman (ASUG Volunteer of Newport Consulting). Some highlights of the discussion are:

Duet Enterprise is not the old Duet product, do not mix them up
For today’s business users user experience is the key
SAP and MSFT are better together for join product like Duet Enterprise so companies already invested in both technologies and skillset can leverage their existing software and resources

photo: ASUG TV studio

Upcoming Sessions:

We have many more exciting ASUG and SAPPHIRE sessions lined up for Wed and Thu:

ASUG or SAPPHIRE	Category	Speaker	Session ID	Title	Description	Day	Time	Room
ASUG	Presentation	Paul Ashmann	3906	From Start to Finish - Developing an iPad app using SAP Netweaver Gateway	Gateway	WED	12:30 pm - 01:30 pm	S320A
ASUG	Presentation	Coca Cola	1606	SAP Solution Manager Goes Mobile at the Coca-Cola Company	Gateway	WED	12:30 pm - 01:30 pm	S220G
SAPPHIRE	MSFT Theater Presentation	MSFT & Baker Hughes	87124	Extend Your SAP Applications with Duet Enterprise and Windows 8	Duet	WED	12:00 pm -12:40 pm	Forum A Theater
SAPPHIRE	Microforum	Dr. Pepper	64603	Extend the Reach of Your Applications to More Users	Duet & GW	THU	11:00 am - 11:45 am	Database and Technology Microforum 2 / DT629
ASUG	Presentation	SAP & CalPortland	2514	Transform complex processes in SAP into simplified workflows on mobile devices using SAP NetWeaver Gateway – customer success story/ case study with CalPortland	Gateway	THU	4:15 pm - 05:15 pm	S320H

Social Media Program for live report:

If you cannot travel to Orlando, do not get disappointed. You can still get a good amount of updates through our social media program. Be sure to follow us on those channels and we love to see your input there as well.

SAPPHIRE Facebook album has the complete photos from our team at the event.

SAP NetWeaver GatewayTwitter| LinkedIn |Youtube |

Duet Enterprise Facebook l Twitter | LinkedIn | Youtube |

Ning-Jing Gao on behalf of NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise Solution Management team

Introducing Virtual Fair for SAP NetWeaver Gateway Customers

Peter Ng — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:28:00 GMT

Since the introduction of SAP NetWeaver Gateway to the market in October 2011, the product had drawn popularity among our customers as well as partners. So far more than 2500 of our customers used the product to implement innovative solutions to improve their business process. At the same time, our partner ecosystem nurtured a community of partners to develop many SAP NetWeaver Gateway content for different line of businesses and industries.

Virtual Fair for SAP NetWeaver Gateway Customers

In order for our customers to better utilize their investment on SAP NetWeaver Gateway, the Product Management of SAP NetWeaver Gateway will host a Virtual Fair for SAP NetWeaver Gateway Customers to achieve that.

This new initiative offers our partners from our ecosystem to showcase their solutions that harness the power of SAP NetWeaver Gateway.

Discover. Connect. Collaborate

The 3 main goals for this event are:

Discover – Our partners can showcase their solutions to customers who already invested on SAP NetWeaver Gateway.

Connect – Partners connect with our customers to understand their business needs.

Collaborate – Partners can generate leads and customers can understand more about the partner solutions that built on SAP NetWeaver Gateway.

We hope this event can provide a meeting ground not only for the partners to generate leads but also our customers to springboard their investment to business reality.

What’s next?

We are planning to offer the first installment of this Virtual Fair in late Q2 this year. Stay tuned for more information coming up.

SAPPHIRE Orlando Here We Come!

Ning-Jing Gao — Fri, 10 May 2013 22:13:46 GMT

SAPPHIRE Orland is now just around the corner and we want to reveal some plans and highlights there for NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise team in the format of Q&A.

Q: Who will be onsite to represent SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise?

A: I talked to some of the onsite team members and ask each of them to share their missions with you.

Adi Kavaler: representing the chief solution owner aspect for Duet and Gateway. He will meet several customer there 1:1 and might still able to squeeze some last minute request in.
Mustafa (solution manager): has a great blog about his plan at SAPPHIRE
Ella Morgulis(solution manager): she just posted a blog about her plan which includes a ASUG presentation session ID 2514 together with CalPortland.
Himanshu Pande (Evangelist, Platform Integration and Orchestration): you will see him at several Duet presentations, roundtable and customer meetings.

Both Ella and Himanshu will be panelists at this ASUG interview session with Bill Newman (ASUG Volunteer of Newport Consulting)

INTERVIEW: 5/14 2PM

TOPIC: SAP, Microsoft and Duet Enterprise

Q: Where is the best place to find someone from the Gateway/Duet team?

A: Will be the D&T campus at Pod DT625 Create Engaging Customer Experiences: Portals, Gateways, and Beyond, expert table.

Q: What is new and exciting at our demo Pod this year?

A: One really innovative new demo is called “Voice over HANA” with voice enabled user interface and empowered by NetWeaver Gateway and newly released CRM on HANA. Here is a glimpse into the architecture. Definitely stop by and check it out.

figure: Voice over Hana demo architecture

figure: fully voice enabled app UI

Q: What is new and what is the future of NetWeaver Gateway?

A: My colleague Martin Bachman talked about that in his 2 recent blogs:

Blog 1: New Gateway Tool - SAP NetWeaver Gateway productivity accelerator

Blog 2: SAP NetWeaver Gateway - some thoughts on the future

Closing comments:

Starting the SAPPHIRE week you will see a very active online program at the following Duet and Gateway social media channels.

For a more complete session list please check the blog:

Overview of SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise Activities at SAPPHIRE NOW

Wish everyone a successful and fun SAPPHIRE event in Orlando!

Solution Management Team NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise

Simple Sample: Writing an entry to SAP Netweaver Gateway using JSON

Paul Aschmann — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:13:17 GMT

Skill Level: Beginner

Time Needed: 20 minutes

I recently assisted someone on the forums when they were having trouble creating records in their SAP ECC instance while using Gateway. I thought I would share some very simple code showing what it takes to write an entry into a service via JSON from iOS (Objective C). The reason the title of the document is "Simple Sample" - there are no frills. Whenever I develop a new app, I start small, get the basic functionality working, and proof out the process before getting too creative.

*** If you do not have your own gateway server, you might be able to connect this to the SAP Gateway System which can be found here. Create an account and utilize this service *** DISCLAIMER: Untested as the signup form does not work

The small application sample below uses this document as a starting point. It describes setting up CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) operations for the Bank account list in your back-end, based on the Bank BAPI. For our example, we will be using the Read and Create functionality of the service. Our example will use a open source repository called AFNetworking. The download can be found here, is ARC compatible and is very easy to add and reference in your project. I will skip the basics of creating a iOS project and adding the reference to AFNetworking (but for reference I am using a "Single View" app template in XCode).

Read Operation from your iOS App

Reading from a OData service using JSON can be done in as little as 7 lines of code in objective C (When using the AFNetworking classes). Here is my example code which can be used to read from your service. In my case, I am returning a list of Banks. Below is the code and the output.

Create Operation from your iOS App

Creating a new record adds a small requirement, in that a CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery) Token needs to be added to the POST request header. If you notice above, I have added this "fetch" header to my GET request, thus returning the key we need along with our data. (2 birds, 1 stone). Here is the create request. Pending it is successful, it will return the record which have been added to your back-end system. Below is the code and output.

Here is a link to the GitHub project to avoid you writing all of this out. Once again - download and follow this useful guide from Gateway team to create the Bank service in your Gateway system, download the project from GitHub, update your gateway server name and details and this will be a useful starting point for creating your next enterprise app.

Disclaimer: Keep in mind the code purposely simplifies the code needed. If you feeling more adventurous:

Ensure your gateway server is using HTTPS.
Instead of using a NSString *dataset, use NSDictionary object/Class to the Request using JSONRepresentation
Add your username and password to the header request, Base64 encoding them.
Instead of writing the JSON response out to a UITextView, add some UITextBoxes and parse the values out.

Can anyone spot the field I forgot to post?

New Gateway Tool - SAP NetWeaver Gateway productivity accelerator

Martin Bachmann — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:02:40 GMT

Hello,

following up on my blog from last week (http://scn.sap.com/community/netweaver-gateway/blog/2013/05/02/sap-netweaver-gateway--some-thoughts-on-the-future) I am happy to provide you more details on the SAP NetWeaver Gateway productivity accelerator, which is available from today on. This Eclipse-based tool provides an OData modeler and toolkits for various service consumption technologies.

OData Modeler

Bringing the OData modeler to Eclipse is making it much easier for roles who are not too familiar with the ABAP programming language or the Gateway Service Builder to provide their input for the end-to-end development process.

This modeler allows an easy and convenient way to model an OData Service in Eclipse. Once the service is modeled it can be exported to be used at the development environment, where the content is coming from - for example the Gateway Service Builder from SAP NetWeaver Gateway.

Service Consumption

In order to accelerate and simplify the development process for consuming user-interface technologies we are introducing toolkits for popular environments. The toolkits generate the source-code for proxies based on existing OData Services and also starter user interfaces. This reduces the development effort and the required knowledge to connect to the SAP system via SAP NetWeaver Gateway. Depending on the technology the starter user-interface will have a list/ detail pattern, a workflow pattern or be just the proxies. As we are assuming that every customer / partner will have own requirements towards the user interface we assume that the generated proxies can be used as-is, but the user-interface will be changed by our customers / partners.

The following toolkits are available:

Toolkit for Android
Toolkit for HTML5 (SAPUI5 and JQuery)
Toolkit for iOS
Toolkit for Java Platform, Standard Edition
Toolkit for PHP

The toolkits for Android and iOS are generating apps in a way that allow either direct connectivity to an OData-Server like SAP NetWeaver Gateway or to a SUP server. Typically the switch from one connectivity to another requires only few changes in the source-code of the app.

Download / Test System

The software is available from this site: https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/#gateway

I would also like to mention the new SAP NetWeaver Gateway demo system for OData Services inside the SAP Developer Center. Via these services you can easily test the new tool: http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/netweaver-gateway

NetWeaver Gateway: An OBD port for SAP

Dwayne DeSylvia — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:07:14 GMT

What does an automotive diagnostics port have in common with the SAP NetWeaver Gateway integration platform? More than you might think!

I'm a bit of a car enthusiast, and one aspect of cars that I enjoy is enhancing their capabilities. When upgrading or even working on vehicles, it can involve both external changes such as suspension upgrades, or internal changes such as changing the power characteristics of a diesel engine. Some changes require both external and internal changes - adding a supercharger requires that the engine and powertrain be tuned in order to handle and optimize the new hardware.

I'm fairly adept at making the external changes, but it's a different story when it comes to the internal changes. I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to program transmission shift points or engine fuel/air ratios without the support of tools designed to perform this task.

The good news is that auto manufacturers created a solution to this challenge many years ago - the On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) port. This powerful little connector provides a single and simple interface that enables a wide range to devices to communicate with the vehicle, including diagnostics tools, gas mileage analyzers, safety system reporting, performance tuning, and much more. This port is bi-directional, allowing you to clear an error code that caused your "Check Engine" light to illuminate, or modify a plethora of vehicle settings to accommodate that new high-performance mod.

Interestingly, the challenges solved by this automotive innovation provide insights into the world of enterprise business applications. Today's information workers need instant access to critical business information and processes no matter where they are or what device they are using. Yet we live in a world of rapidly growing and changing user experience options including tablets and phones of every conceivable form factor. Can you capitalize on this opportunity while managing the risk?

For many years, even decades, trying to extract and utilize key data from core business systems for usage in user-centric scenarios has presented a number of challenges as well. Sure, many different approaches were taken along these lines, including using the heavy SOAP protocol and the development of different custom interfaces depending on the application accessed and the data utilized. This resulted in multiple, disparate point-to-point interfaces that were difficult to monitor and maintain.

As the OBD port changed the way the people can easily interface with vehicles, I believe SAP has developed a simplified solution based on open-standards that opens a world of opportunities for using business data quickly and securely across multiple user-centric scenarios. SAP NetWeaver Gateway is that solution, and why I like to call it the OBD port for SAP. SAP NetWeaver Gateway enables you to increase the reach of high-value business information locked inside your SAP systems. Bring the power of SAP into new experiences such as social and collaboration environments, mobile and tablet devices, and rich Internet applications.

NetWeaver Gateway provides a lightweight, RESTful interface to SAP solutions that utilizes the OData protocol. This approach allows developers with no SAP knowledge to develop user-centric applications quickly and easily without having to develop custom security or management infrastructure. Using their development platform, language, tools and methodology of choice, developers are immediately productive and can dramatically reduce the time and effort traditionally required to create solutions.

The enterprise OBD port is now available. Open up the throttle of innovation around your SAP investment with SAP NetWeaver Gateway.

Reach out to me if you'd like to know more about NetWeaver Gateway, or just talk about cars!

OData version 4.0 enters 30-day public review

Andre Fischer — Sat, 04 May 2013 20:16:14 GMT

It is a pleasure for me to share with you the information that the OASIS OData Technical Committee last week voted unanimously to progress the OData Version 4.0 spec to public review.

The committee needs your help and asks for volunteers to review the latest documents and send feedback to the committee as soon as possible but no later than June 2, 2013.

So if you are interested to get involved this is your chance.

For more details see the official announcemnt that was sent out yesterday.

https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/odata/201305/msg00091.html

Best Regards,

André

See you all at SAPPHIRENOW Orlando!

Mustafa Saglam — Fri, 03 May 2013 23:42:49 GMT

It is that time of the year again and we SAPers are very excited to be part of the fun - meeting our customers and partners. Before we know it, those of us who are lucky enough to be part of the live event, will be listening to the opening keynote.

This year, I wanted to do something different and decided to post this open invitation to anyone interested in SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise to meet me and my colleagues at the Database & Technology Campus - DT625 Create Engaging Customer Experiences: Portals, Gateways, and Beyond, expert table.

What can you expect? For once, we can tell you, all you want to know about our solutions - and some more. Then, as always, we can surprise you with some cool demos built by us and our partners. Mentioning of partners, you can also learn all about the SAP NetWeaver Gateway Partner-built Solutions Drive. Furthermore, please refer to my colleague Ning-Jing Gao's recent blog for an overview of all the activities around SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise.

So, just stop by our booth (DT625) at SAPPHIRENOW Orlando or feel free to send me an email to setup a meeting at a specific time. Please also include the topic of your interest.

Looking forward to seeing you at SAPPHIRENOW Orlando.

Best,

Mustafa Saglam,

Director, Product Management, SAP NetWeaver Gateway and Duet Enterprise

SAP NetWeaver Gateway - some thoughts on the future

Martin Bachmann — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:12:43 GMT

Some time has passed since SAP NetWeaver Gateway was released to our customers and partners in late 2011. Many, many things happened in the meantime. At SAP many areas started to use SAP NetWeaver Gateway as the communication layer for user interaction scenarios. Examples are the Productivity Apps, some HANA Solutions like the SAP Customer Engagement Intelligence, SAP Fraud Management or SAP Liquidity Risk Management, many SAP UI5 based applications, Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint integration – and still many more.

The last two years the majority of our activities and efforts went into the ABAP-based part of the SAP Solutions where we worked hard to provide the best possible developer experience and feature support required to create own OData services as easy, as fast and as sustainable as possible. I can only mention a few topics as examples like the Service Builder, JSON Support, MDX / Easy Query for BW integration, Gateway Client for supportability… and many more minor or major improvements.

As the ABAP-based side is now relatively well covered, we are now evaluating the next level of OData support for SAP-related business scenarios.

Imagine the following scenario – as a customer you need in a project context a solution to include external participants for project confirmation, status updates or updating the project plan. And of course all the typical constraints apply – your IT department is busy with other projects, the requesting department needs a solution tomorrow and of course you cannot compromise on security.

For such a case the Gateway team is considering the following solution approach:

The key-users from the involved departments note down the desired process flow and already sketch down UI mockups – which is then directly the input for the new planned OData Model Editor. In this Eclipse-based tool it is now becoming very easy and comfortable to describe how the data model should look like via a graphical user interface.
The result of the OData modeling is then the starting point to create the required services inside the SAP Business Suite. This results in a mapping of the OData Model from the Eclipse-based modeling tool with e.g. the available RFCs / BAPIs from the SAP Business Suite. The tool to be used is the central Service Builder within the ABAP-based SAP NetWeaver Gateway 2.0, SP6. User Management, authorizations, logging or application logic still remains inside the SAP Business Suite.
Now via the SAP Cloud Connector the modeled services can directly be connected to Gateway as a Service inside the SAP HANA Cloud, where for example a SAP UI5-based User Interface can be used to involve the external participants. The planned productivity accelerator is then helping with the generation of the HTML5-pages based on the SAP UI5 framework.
To make it even easier one could also think of providing an Add-On for Microsoft Excel for the external participants - based on the same OData service. So the external users would then have the choice between various channels to enter the requested data. As the underlying OData Service is the same for various user-interface channels the required effort would decrease with every attached technology.

What you could already see in this simple exemplary scenario is the following:

SAP NetWeaver Gateway consists (simplified) out of two parts: the backend enablement (IW_BEP) and the Gateway Server component. The Gateway Server component is planned to be available also in the SAP HANA Cloud as an alternative deployment option. Still the implementations of the backend
component (IW_BEP) can be connected via the SAP Cloud Connector to Gateway as a Service – no re-writing of the already existing content in the backend is required.
Productivity accelerators will help with the OData modeling and the generation of source code for several frontend technologies like Microsoft Outlook, Android, iOS, PHP, Java or HTML5 (jQuery or SAP UI5). Idea of the generated source code is to provide a solid and reliable connectivity layer that then allows customer-specific innovations focusing on the user-interface. Of course – similar to the already existing outside consumption tools – it will be easy to switch from supporting OData directly or using the capabilities of the SAP Mobile Platform.

Such a solution approach would allow SAP NetWeaver Gateway to grow without disruption – from SAP Business Suite-based OData enablement to an enabler of SAP HANA Cloud-based scenarios to the better support of frontend-development directly in their native SDKs.

So stay tuned for further updates on this topic.

Sign-up to SAP NetWeaver Gateway Partner-built Solutions Drive 2013!

Mustafa Saglam — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:12:11 GMT

As announced in my previous blog, SAP NetWever Gateway Partner-built Solutions Drive was kicked off on April 24th. In this blog I would like to share with you more details on this campaign.

What is SAP NetWeaver Gateway Partner-built Solutions Drive?

It is a global campaign sponsored by SAP NetWeaver Gateway Solution Management with the goal to increase the adoption of SAP NetWeaver Gateway in the SAP Partner Ecosystem. As a result of this campaign, SAP customers will have the benefit of accessing a broader range of solutions in the ecosystem built on SAP NetWeaver Gateway.

Who can participate in SAP NetWeaver Gateway Partner-built Solutions Drive?

The campaign is open to all ISVs (Independent Software Vendors), SIs (System Integrators) and VARs (Value Added Resellers). While we recommend you to consider joining SAP PartnerEdge, it is not required.

As there is a formal agreement to sign, the campaign is only available to companies (i.e. not available for individuals).

Results of SAP NetWeaver Gateway Partner-built Solutions Drive in 2012

In 2012, we ran a similar campaign with the participation of about 100 partners globally. As a result, 120+ individuals from our partners were trained on SAP NetWeaver Gateway in several 2-day workshops held around the world (Tokyo Japan, Bangalore India, Walldorf Germany, Sao Paolo Brazil and Palo Alto California). At the end of the campaign, 40+ solutions were built by our partners and certified by SAP. Our partners received various marketing and go-to-market benefits, including listing of their solutions on SAP Partner Information Center, SAP EcoHub and SAP Store.

Why use SAP NetWeaver Gateway to build solutions?

Accelerate Your Revenue Growth

Create service bundles to enable end-to-end scenarios that are repeatable at multiple customers
Generate new revenue streams by building new composite solutions faster using the provided tools

Increase Your Profitability

Leverage existing skills, experience, technology investments and business processes
Utilize generators to create OData services from existing RFCs, BAPIs, Web Services and SAP Frameworks such as BOL/GenIL, SPI, MDX, Easy Query and HANA views
Use SDKs in the OData community and/or consumption tools from SAP to develop solutions quickly
Reduce your costs further by eliminating your investments to build proprietary integration frameworks, e.g. SAP connectors or SAP agents

Improve Customer Satisfaction

Lower the TCO for your solution by leveraging Gateway Licensing
Reuse the same OData services for different frontend applications to provide consistent user experience on different UI technologies

Achieve Greater Business Success

Partner with proven technology and market leader
Deliver more innovative solutions on the development platform of your choice using SAP NetWeaver Gateway to access SAP data and functionality
Achieve faster time to market by utilizing generators to create OData services and templates for client applications

Where to find more info?

You can watch the recording of the kickoff webinar delivered by my colleague Sudeesh K below or download the presented slides.

What is the timeline for the campaign?

How to Sign-up?

You can sign-up to our campaign by simply registering your solution (or a solution idea) here. Shortly after the sign-up deadline we will communicate online training schedule.

Looking forward to working with you in 2013.

Best, Mustafa.

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SAP NetWeaver Gateway Webinar Co-Hosted by Bristlecone, Innowera, and Prospance on 4/30

Dwayne DeSylvia — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:07:30 GMT

On Tuesday 4/30/2013 at 10amPT / 1pmET, I will deliver a webinar entitled 'Easily Extend SAP to Any Environment, Device, or Developer with NetWeaver Gateway' providing an overview of SAP NetWeaver Gateway combined with presentations by three of our certified partners discussing how they use NetWeaver Gateway (Bristlecone, Innowera, and Prospace). I've included the webinar overview and registration link below. Hope to see you there!

Easily Extend SAP to Any Environment, Device, or Developer with NetWeaver Gateway

Would you like to quickly expose SAP data to new user interfaces without complex middleware? Do you have users that need access to critical information and workflows in SAP but can’t get it? Are users demanding access to business data via the latest technologies and devices? Do you have non-SAP development projects and teams that could benefit from simple access to back-end SAP systems?

Today's information workers need instant access to critical business information and processes no matter where they are or what device they are using. Yet we live in a world of rapidly growing and changing user experience options including tablets and phones of every conceivable form factor. Can you capitalize on this opportunity while managing the risk? With NetWeaver Gateway, you can.

SAP NetWeaver Gateway enables you to increase the reach of high-value business information locked inside your SAP systems. Bring the power of SAP into new experiences such as social and collaboration environments, mobile and tablet devices, and rich Internet applications.

SAP partners Bristlecone Labs, Innowera, and Prospance will discuss and present innovative solutions and services built using SAP NetWeaver Gateway.

Open up the throttle of innovation around your SAP investment with SAP NetWeaver Gateway.

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To register for this meeting

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1. Go to https://sap.webex.com/sap/j.php?ED=205686272&RG=1&UID=0&RT=MiM2

2. Register for the meeting.

Once the host approves your request, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions for joining the meeting.

Note: If you already registered for this meeting, you do not need to register again.

To view in other time zones or languages, please click the link:

https://sap.webex.com/sap/j.php?ED=205686272&RG=1&UID=0&ORT=MiM2

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For assistance

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1. Go to https://sap.webex.com/sap/mc

2. On the left navigation bar, click "Support".

You can contact me at:

dwayne.desylvia@sap.com