Exposing And Consuming Web Services by SAP

You can consume Web Services by SAP framework for web services and also expose RFC as Web Services without any need of external integration tools like SAP netweaver xi.
One of the most impotent things in SOA solution is the ability to monitor the traffic.
There is a great logging tool out of the box which is provided as part of SAP WAS, SOA Management. it's provide information on the calls time and also it's can capture the requests/responses.

The process of consuming or exposing Web Services is not difficult at all, it evolves work with:
- Wizards : Creating the BAPI objects or exposing existing RFC.
- BAPI : Developing the Web Service proxy for consuming, working with objects and types created by the Wizard.
- SOA Management : Deploying the WSDLs/Exposing RFC , configure the logs.


There is some interoperability issues that you need to keep in mind when going for this solutions:

- We didn't find a solution for consuming an existing WSDL as an interface and implement it.

- xsi:nil attribute is not supported, opened OSS, waiting for SAP response.

- You can't generate custom Namespace.

There are more...

The throughput was much more faster than thru XI. (10 times faster).

In conclusion it is more than possible to expose SAP structures and types as standard Web Services and to consume them.
So if synchronous solution is suite for you you don't need to use adapters or XI.

If you need help on this fill free to contact me for forward details.

SOA & BPM what is the connection

In the past few years the words SOA and BPM became common thing.

I won't explain about SOA or BPM in this post, I will explain the connection between those aspects.

Why do organization want to enter the SOA world?

Those are some of the reasons:

• Business Agility - react fast to changes with Orchestration solutions.
• Greater visibility of organization assets,services.
• Business empowerment by IT abstration.
• Reduction in integration expense, services reuse.

Why BPM, I already have SOA?
SOA is the enabler of BPM, with SOA you can simplify the BPM solution and gain the next things:

• Transparency of Business processes.
• Business Analyst empowerment.
• With BPMN you can model your business process.
• Business process optimization.
  

For Conclusion

You making SOA for the BPM. Your goal is to be ready for the changes to come and in our word changes happing all the time. If your business will be inflexible than in a short time it won't be relevant.

For BPM to succeed you need a good service infrastructure in your organization.
If not your BPM projects will soon become integration projects.
Your mind will be busy with services issues and not with the process.