Customer Event May 03 - Report

"Integration with SAP Netweaver & SAP xi"

20 participants from different Swiss companies enjoyed a very interesting presentation & discussion with t2b & SAP's Jan Lemmens.

Please find his presentation slides here - attention: it's a 9.5MB PDF file! xi_Basel_Mai03.pdf

Our conclusion was, that basically all SAP customers will have to install Netweaver&Exchange Infrastructure (xi) in the next 12-36 months in order to use the new SAP xApps and other new business functionality provided by SAP. 

Because of this, the EAI/Integration teams of SAP customers will have to define the position of xi within the companies integration technology framework.

SAP xi functionality overview by P.Toenz

with xi SAP is doing a fullblown market entry into the EAI sector. The current version 2.0 provides useful, though limited functionality, but v.3.0 (GA Dec.03) will provide most of the commonly required functionality for EAI. The marketing brand of "Netweaver" is bundling xi + the WebAppserver + the development environment.

• Web App server, with parallel ABAP and J2EE server engines
• Web-GUI on the fly: SAP-GUI - HTML interpreter (current ITS feature)
• Webservices on the fly: SOAP interpreter for RFC/BAPI/IDOC APIs
• enhance Eclipse Java development environment 
• EAI Master Data: Enhanced System Landscape Directory (extenable infrastructure documentation DB)
• EAI Master Data: Integration Repository with CIM data structure
• EAI Detail Data: Integration Directory to define & configure the flows between the Repository (master) elements.
• Adapters: SAP technology + technology adapters (SOAP+HTTP, native; RDBMS; JMS; File)
• Mapping tool & and dev-time mapping test tool
• Integration server: standard functionality; additionally a "light" version for simple msg handling might be distributed to many servers.
• ProcessManagement & Workflow engine with detailed message logging in xi database
• out-of-the box pre-configured business scenarios

the functionality is lagging behind EAI "front-runners", specifically the single repository approach might be a limiting factor for globally distributed companies.

SAP BusinessConnector will be phased out and might currently be positioned as the "easy" way for simple integration requirements, where the requirements would not justify the setup of the "heavier" xi infrastructure. 

I will develop a technology white paper with more details based on the knowhow shared at the SAP integration conference from Berlin, May 7+8.

Announcement March 03- Customer Event 

"Integration with SAP Netweaver & SAP xi"

Basically all EAI customers are SAP customers as well. Now SAP is doing a market entry into the EAI market with specific solutions within their business application framework, and starts to more openly compete with middleware vendors like IBM, BEA, SeeBeyond, Tibco etc.

This of course raises the questions for SAP & EAI customers:

• what is it about ?

• how is this to be positioned relatively to existing EAI tools ?

• what are the rough timeframes ?

• when&how does a company have to react on SAP xi ?

We are addressing with this event anyone leading projects in the area of SAP and/or EAI, or in charge of departments doing so. 

We will have "technical" discussions around the functionality, as well as "impact" discussion on how this fits into an existing integration landscape & strategy.

Another interesting component of Netweaver is the Master Data Management module, which will enter the market in the 2nd half of this year. Due to this availability constraint, we cannot have technical details at this point in time.

The SAP product announcement

SAP enterprise (SAP 4.7) and its Netweaver is an EAI based application architecture approach. It’s central component is the XI module for data interchange. See http://www.sap.com/solutions/netweaver/keycapabilities for Details. 

Currently, already a few pre-release customers have successfully implemented solutions based on Netweaver.

For those who can spend 2 days on the subject:join Patrick Toenz at the SAP Kongress für Unternehmensportale und Integrationstechnologie in Berlin, 7.+8.May 2003

t²b 's interest in SAP

we are partnering with SAP customers and develop company-wide integration architectures with them. Our day-to-day integration projects include SAP IDOC and BAPI interfaces in many cases. As such we had to become SAP integrations specialists and in several cases also support the business process design / customization within the SAP modules.