Section 11.3. What are the different parts of an analytic composite application?

11.3. What are the different parts of an analytic composite application?

SAP xApp Analytics combine business know-how, process know-how, and software know-how into a form that amplifies the power of existing data and functionality. In practice, this means this work is accomplished by knitting a composite application out of five parts: the user interface (UI), process logic, and services from transactional enterprise applications and those for analytics and collaboration.

Everything starts with the needs of the enterprise, department, team, and organization. What are the critical metrics or success indicators? Where does this data reside, and would enterprise services, web services, APIs, or periodic data "dumps" be the appropriate way to go?

The business logic comes next. What information needs to be presented to the actual user at what time, what action options are appropriate, and would these interactions be with backend SAP processes, third-party applications, or homegrown tools? Will this process span intradepartmental efforts or cross over partner, supplier, and customer boundaries? This business logic, available options, and analytic guidance are developed, customized, simulated, and deployed using SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer, a model-driven development environment that enables and accelerates development. The powerful, simple, model-driven nature of SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer means that the population of people who can create or modify an analytic composite application can grow beyond developers and can include business analysts who are experts in the business processes that need further automation. ESA makes the SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer design tool possible.

The key part of SAP xApp Analytics is the process logic. For some applications, so little process logic is required that everything may be handled through UI navigation. The only process is moving from page to page. More advanced analytic applications may use mechanisms such as guided procedures that can coordinate functionality and UIs from many different sources. For example, a guided procedure that you can create with the Guided Procedure Design Time plug-in for SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio could begin by asking the user to fill out an Adobe Interactive form. Then it could take that information and partially populate an interface in ERP that the user could complete. Next, it could invoke an enterprise service from SAP or a third-party web service, and so on. Guided procedures enable flexible and configurable process automation. In fact, that is one of the key differentiators of a composite application: these applications include their own business logic, and sometimes they include data representations, not just a common UI.

Enterprise services from transactional enterprise applications enable SAP xApp Analytics to use their data and functionality. These services provide access to functionality for changing data or kicking off processes. In this way, analytic applications can perform actions within the process context of enterprise applications without requiring a context switch from one solution to another. Analysis and action can occur within one environment.

Analytic enterprise services provide access to analytical functions from SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (SAP NetWeaver BI) to perform data analysis through OLAP and other advanced techniques. SAP NetWeaver BI offers services based on standards, such as XML for Analysis (XMLA) for performing OLAP queries. Later in 2006, the Enterprise Services Inventory will contain services that support SAP xApp Analytics, and an increasing number of analytic services will be offered in the future. Analytic services provide a means for users to ask and answer all the questions they need within the context of the business process being supported. The information being analyzed may reside in a data warehouse or in the enterprise applications. The analytical functionality in SAP xApp Analytics focuses on the business process being served.

Collaborative enterprise services allow access to parts of SAP NetWeaver in order to put workflow items on the work lists of others, send email or instant messages, and provide access to shared spaces such as collaboration rooms and other collaboration tools.

Finally, in SAP xApp Analytics, UIs are constructed using SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer. The multifaceted nature of SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer is one of the reasons the initial deployments of SAP xApp Analytics went so fast. Business analysts could do the work for themselves. Developers were not a bottleneck. During internal SAP experiments using business analysts to create composites, SAP found that productivity increased dramatically when business analysts had an initial application from which to start.

The power of SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer suggests a new relationship between IT and the business side. For SAP xApp Analytics, perhaps the paradigm will become one in which highly skilled IT developers create sample applications, interfaces, and enterprise services that are the starting points for business analysts who apply those frameworks to many different problems. Who knows; SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer might be the tool that will allow CIOs to become CPIOs, or chief process innovation officers.

All of these elements work together, to make analytic composites a powerful force for delivering ESA's promised value.