As the name suggest SAP PO is an Integration tool to Orchestrate business process. It enables developers to model business processes, enabling means to model, configure and monitor.
SAP PO helps integrate various systems such as API, Web Services, Database, File Share, Message Broker and SAP Backend systems.
History and Evolution of Process Orchestration
It all started with XI (Exchange Infrastructure) as the first end to end integration tool. As the roadmap of SAP streamlined XI evolved into PI (Process Integration) a tool with various mediation capabilities and ABAP, JAVA as its core stacks, later SAP decided to let go off ABAP stack and PO (Process Orchestration) emerged as the face of Integration capabilities combining capabilities of Process Integration and Composition environment with offering of BPM (Business Process Management) and BRM (Business Rules Management).
CPI (Cloud Platform Integration formerly HANA Cloud Integration) is the latest entry in the process integration space.
Components of Process Orchestration
It consist of below components coupled together to cater various integration needs.
1. Advanced Adapter Engine Extended (AEX)
- Controlling the routing of message exchange between applications.
- Handling the transformation and mapping of the data and messages transferred from the source to the target system and vice versa (which implies that the message structures of the business applications on both ends of the exchange do not need to be the same).
- Handling the security and conversion of protocol between the service provider and consumer.
- Monitoring the exchange of messages between the involved systems.
- Managing the various versions of the services provided by the ESB.
- SAP NetWeaver BPM (Business Process Management)
Modelling and Executing Organizations Business Processes
- Enables your organization to support both human-centric and system-centric processes.
- Improves the visibility and control on your organization’s processes.
- Provides flexibility to rapidly adapt your processes to the current needs of your business
- SAP NetWeaver BRM (Business Rules Management)
- Separation of logic and data: data are maintained in the business application, whereas the logic is maintained in the rule engine.
- Central repository of rules and knowledge. Organizations are enabled to automate business decisions.
- Functional and business users are empowered to be involved in the definition, development, modelling, and modification of business rules via a user-friendly interface.
Capabilities of SAP Process Orchestration
- On-Premise to On-Premise integration
- On-Premise to Cloud Apps integration
- Cloud Apps to On-Premise integration
- Hybrid Integration model
Architecture of SAP Process Orchestration (PO)
SAP PO is a Java only offering and its architecture is variedly different from its predecessors such as PI and XI which combined capabilities of ABAP stack.
Sub-Components of Process Orchestration
- Enterprise Services Repository
The Enterprise Services Repository is a one-stop shop for designing and developing integration solutions enabled for service oriented architecture (SOA) and based on SAP Process Orchestration (PO). ES Repository is the central area in which you design, build, and maintain the logical building blocks that are used to create new integration scenarios. Common service details typically stored in the ES Repository include versioning, namespaces, data types, security policies, operations supported, release status, and so on.
Basic components of Enterprise Service Repository for Integration Consultants and Administrators
- Enterprise Service Builder
- Services Registry
- Service Registry (SR) is a registry that centrally stores information about services within an Enterprise SOA landscape.
- The SR contains vital details about the functionality offered by services available in a particular SOA landscape.
- You can query the SR to retrieve the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) of registered services and their operations and endpoints.
- Furthermore, services published into the SR can be classified using specific categories, such as their lifecycle status (released, configured, deprecated, etc.), which makes it possible to label services with this information.
SR helps justify below answers:
- Which services are available and where?
- What does the WSDL of the available services look like?
- Which services have been modeled but not yet implemented?
- Which services have been configured and can be called?
- Which endpoints are available (secure or non-secure) for the services?
- System Landscape
System Landscape Directory or SLD – The System Landscape Directory (SLD) plays a critical role in an SAP system landscape and can be seen as a Central Repository.
- SLD contains or manages information about all installable and installed elements of your system landscape in our organization.
- The information contained in the SLD also includes which products and software component versions are installed in a particular application or system.
- SLD can be accessed via URL – http://<hostname>:<port>/sld
- The SLD is a Java-based component and can be installed on an SAP NetWeaver Application Server Java (AS Java).
- The standard SAP-delivered content contains a catalog of all possible installable SAP products, software components, and details about support packages.
Contents of System Landscape Directory
Landscape
- Technical Systems
To view and define systems and servers.
Technical systems are SAP and non-SAP backend applications in your landscape. Any SAP components (HR, CRM, etc.), SAP NetWeaver applications, third-party applications, or legacy systems in your landscape can be considered technical systems to be maintained in your SLD.
Information needed to create a Technical System:
- System name
- Hostname of the server
- Version number of the system
- Type of system
- When the data was last updated
- Details about the database
- List of existing clients (see the Clients tab)
- Details of the message server of the application
Different Types of Technical System that can be created/registered
- AS ABAP Systems with an Application Server ABAP. Most SAP backend systems will fit into this category.
- AS Java SAP NetWeaver systems with an Application Server Java. Such a system can consist of one or multiple instances.
- Standalone Java applications.
- Third-party Systems containing third-party (non-SAP) applications and products.
- Landscapes
To view and configure group of systems.
- Business Systems
To view and configure business systems for use in Process Integration.
A business system is a logical name given to a particular system or application. There is a direct relationship between a business system and a technical system. Every technical system can have at least one business system. For an SAP ABAP backend system, every client can have its own business system.
Software Catalog
Is a repository of SAP products and software components. This repository contains a catalog of software components and their dependency relationships with each other. In the Software Catalog, we can differentiate products and software components.
Contents of Software Catalog
- Products
A product is an installable unit of software that includes a logical bundling or grouping of multiple software components. Product is associated with a version
- Software components
- A software component is a reusable module of a product.
- A software component is the foundation on top of which we develop interfaces and mappings.
- One software component can be dependent on another software component.
Development
- Name Reservation
This is used for name reservation and also for NetWeaver development.
- CIM Instances
This is used to view and maintain data on CIM (Common information model) level.
- Integration Directory
- Integration Builder
- Cloud Integration Content
- Configuration and Monitoring
- Configuration and Monitoring Home
- SAP NetWeaver Administrator
Tools for Process Orchestration
- Swing based Development tools
- Eclipse (NetWeaver Development Studio)