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bjoernw
Participant

When it comes to exposing data in the OData format from your SAP backend systems SAP Gateway is your go-to solution. There are a number of different deployment options how you can set up your system landscape for this scenario.

Since the release of SAP Process Orchestration 7.31 SP13 or SAP Process Orchestration 7.40 SP08 you have the additional option to expose SAP Gateway services from your SAP backend systems as OData services directly from your Process Orchestration server.

This has the benefit that it can replace the need to install a separate Gateway Hub server in many cases, thus lowering the TCO of your IT landscape. Also, it gives you the possibility to consolidate the exposure of your different web services in one location - the SAP Process Orchestration server.

Additionally, there are some technical upsides to this approach: For example, you might create a BPM process with some generated TaskUI screens, running directly on your SAP Process Orchestration server. If you now want to add some some SAP backend data that is not a part of your process context, you can now expose this data as an OData service from the same server, thus avoiding Cross-Origin Requests that would trigger security warnings otherwise.

At the moment, there are some scenarios in which you can't use this feature:

  • A SAP Process Orchestration Java Single Stack installation is a pre-requisite
  • SAP Fiori app deployment is not yet supported
  • Unified Inbox is not yet supported

The OData Provisioning feature is a part of the usage type AEX and therefore comes pre-installed with SAP Process Orchestration. The only thing left for you to do, is to assign the proper authorizations GW_ADMIN and GW_USER to the respective users.

You can find the official documentation for the feature Exposing Back-End Data as OData Service here:

I now want to show you how easy it is to expose a Gateway service on SAP Process Orchestration:

Adding a new destination to your backend system

First you want to add a new destination in your NetWeaver administrator console pointing to the IWBEP service in your SAP backend system. This is the "catalogue" from where all the Gateway services are exposed.

      1. Go to your NetWeaver Administrator interface:
        http://<SAP Process Orchestration server>:<port>/nwa
      2. Go to Configuration --> Destinations
      3. In the Destination List, click on the Create button:
      4. In the Destination Wizard, select your Hosting System, assign a Destination Name and select the Destination Type „HTTP“:
      5. In the Connection and Transport Security Settings step enter the connection information to your SAP Gateway IW_BEP service and enter the Additional Settings for SAP Systems:
      6. If you use a HTTPS connection, select the Trusted Servers Certificates Keystore, where the (root) certificate of the backend server is stored:
      7. In the Logon step enter the logon information to authenticate against the IW_BEP service in the SAP backend:
      8. To test your destination, select the new entry and click on the Ping Destination button; you should receive a success message if everything is configured correctly:

Register Gateway Services in the OData Provisioning Administration interface

      1. Go to Integration Gateway OData Provisioning Administration:
        http://<SAP Process Orchestration Server>:<Port>/igwj/Admin
      2. Click on Register a New Service
      3. Select the backend destination you created in the NetWeaver Administrator
      4. Perform a search for the service you would like to register from SAP Gateway
      5. Select the service and click on Register
      6. Open the Service Document
      7. View and work with your OData Service published on the Process Orchestration Server

This is all you need to do to expose an SAP Gateway service on your SAP Process Orchestration server. Apart from the not supported scenarios mentioned above, you can do everything to this service that you could do to a regular Gateway service.

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