This is in continuation of the first blog on reducing integration effort by using SAP enterprise services ( http://scn.sap.com/community/pi-and-soa-middleware/blog/2013/06/04/reducing-integration-effort-by-le... )
I'll describe the steps in more detail here.
Step1. Identify services required.
Go to http://esworkplace.sap.com/ and identify the service required. There're various ways you can navigate the content. If you're implementing a new scenario, typically a complete process , you can use integration scenarios ( e.g. agency business ) . Using solution map is higher level ( e.g Sales Order Management ) . Business Scenario Description seems hybrid of the above two and I prefer that. Then, in each bundle you can navigate to the service operation and read through the documentation. Make sure the selected operation is not deprecated. SAP has good documentation around features, configuration required in backend system, error handling and any business function required.
Step2. Identify system set up requirements
Identifying all operations will help to come up with a list of requirements for system set up. It's relatively straight-forward in PI as we just need to import the software component. However, for the back end system, there can be couple of scenarios:
- Service requiring business function activation (e.g. SAP APPL 6.04 requires LOG_ESOA_OPS_2 activation) .
- Service requiring add-ons to be installed by BASIS in SAINT transaction (e.g. ESA ECC-SE 604 requires BASIS to install ECC-SE add on).
Get the ECC activities organised (as mentioned in part1, some of the business functions are irreversible) and import corresponding PI SWCVs into ESR - these could be downloaded from SMP and imported as usual.
Step3. Check components are completely installed in the system.
Go to transaction SPROXY. If the ECC system satisfies all the pre-requisites and PI has the components as well, the SWCVs should appear in transaction SPROXY.
In SLD, the ECC technical system should have the additions appearing as a software component version in Installed software of the ECC technical system.
Step4. Create custom software component version. This is strictly not required but in experience, there's always a need to customize messages and hence it should be created with the required service's SWCVs as the underlying SWCV.
Step5. Test: Once the services are in ECC, you can use them to start doing testing.
Use transaction SPROXY for testing - this should help to identify the elements required in the message to be populated and the business documents processed. In experience, this is where you'll spend the maximum time trying to identify what is required, where to populate the information etc.
You can test using SOAMANAGER as well but I prefer to just use SPROXY and then when the PI configuration is complete use SOAPUI.
Step6. There will be cases where the standard doesn't fit the requirement completely. In that case, perform a data type enhancement in SAP PI in the custom namespace.
This should make the data type enhancement show up in ECC SPROXY. Creating the proxy here will update the ECC structures which are used by backend ECC classes for business document processing.
Step7. Some Hints: As usual, testing can be done by configuration in ID and using SOAP UI. Just couple of hints here:
Many of the standard services are sync and ensure that message logging for sync interfaces is on.
The messages appear in SXMB_MONI in ECC only when there's an error (not application error but more like a system error like configuration, input message not conforming to length / type restrictions etc).
For debugging, you can create a comm channel with your username and turn on HTTP debugging if you're trying to investigate the SOAP message (say headers).
Step 8: Special case: Lean Order being too Lean !
For one of the scenarios, while creating sales order we realised that lean order doesn't have the fields we're interested in. However, there's a good document on SMP about "Enhancement Options for the Lean Order Interface" and it was very helpful
Step 9: Generate some positive karma - Do some good for people maintaining it later. As the development on ECC side is going to involve mostly enhancements, two things can really be useful.
- Keep all the enhancements in a composite enhancement.
- Create a checkpoint group so that it's easier to debug messages.
Step 10: Logging in SAP: For synchronous interfaces, SAP does return the proper messages back to the calling application. However, the functional team doesn't have access / interest to access PI to look at the errors. Hence, we had to build logic to update the messages as an application log (which can be checked in SLG1). This in some ways satisfies their requirement to look at the system to figure out what's going on.
This is one area where perhaps either I'm missing something or SAP needs to provide information so that users / functional consultants can monitor the messages. Many functional consultants don't want to even try to look at XML.
A simple class can be created to log the information and call them at appropriate enhancement points. However, we also created a generic method to convert any exception into a BAPI message.
Code can be referenced here.
https://github.com/viksingh/abaputilities/blob/master/exception_to_message_table
Couple of observations where things could potentially by improved by SAP.
- There should be a free tool by SAP to let users/ functional teams monitor messages during testing. I'm aware of AIF but don't have experience as it's not free.
- Lack of out of box support for JSON RESTful web service in SAP PI. The initial requirement was to use them but then the source application had to be modified to use CXF to generate SOAP web service calls on the calling application side. I was almost ashamed to go back to the third party
Some of the books & articles I found useful.
SAP Press Book: "Developing Enterprise Services for SAP": Although I referenced this book only recently, I found an absolute joy to read and did pick up many things. This definitely helped to refine some of the ideas.
http://www.sap-press.com/products/Developing-Enterprise-Services-for-SAP.html
Enterprise Services Enhancement Guide
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-18402
SOA MADE EASY WITH SAP
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-17416
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