Section 11.5. How do ESA and SAP NetWeaver help create analytic composites?

11.5. How do ESA and SAP NetWeaver help create analytic composites?

Although this chapter already touched on many of the mechanisms used to construct SAP xApp Analytics, a more thorough discussion will help illuminate the power of both analytics and ESA.

For example, we pointed out how SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer and the Guided Procedure Design Time xApp are used to create UIs and guided procedures, and we mentioned how these model-driven development tools improve productivity and enable business analysts to participate because development is easier. One of the most important ways that development is accelerated is through use of patterns or templates. Patterns are structures that occur repeatedly. Pulldown menus are a pattern, and tabs on web sites are patterns. Patterns build on the power of modeling to accelerate further development. In order to have a consistent and logical series of applications, SAP supplies commonly used patterns that will support several different composites. One pattern is called Analyze and Take Action. This pattern occurs in applications that consolidate information and then offer a variety of ways to respond. Another pattern is called Request Process Approve Update. In this pattern, a request for information is made, and then the information is processed, the results of the processing are approved, and the systems of record are updated. When a development environment implements a pattern, it means a large portion of the application's development has already taken place when the developer starts to work. The job of development becomes modifying and enhancing the pattern's basic behavior.

Another key ability for SAP xApp Analytics comes from SAP NetWeaver's portal functionality. Because the portal is the primary UI technology for the mySAP Business Suite, it is possible to embed new applications such as analytics at almost any place in the existing UIs. The iView container functionality allows the UI to be customized, reorganized, and substituted as needed. Of course, SAP xApp Analytics can also run as standalone applications just as easily when appropriate. SAP xApp Analytics will also be able to take advantage of all of the other UI mechanisms SAP NetWeaver offers, such as Project Mendocino integration with the Microsoft Office suite and SAP NetWeaver Mobile, which extends solutions to mobile devices.

As mentioned earlier, the workhorse of analytics is enterprise services that provide access to data and functionality from transactional enterprise applications. Most of the services that SAP xApp Analytics use come ready made in the Enterprise Services Inventory, whose interfaces are described in the Enterprise Services Repository. In some applications, however, special requirements arise for enterprise services that would serve a unique purpose in a specific analytic composite application. In such cases, it is possible to use the ABAP Development Workbench or the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio development environment for Java to create your own enterprise services. New services can be based on combinations of existing services, a process known as service composition, or they can be ABAP or Java code that performs a unique task or provides a gateway to external functionality. This ability to extend existing services and create new ones greatly expands the functional range of SAP xApp Analytics and of composite applications in general.

Of course, because they are composite applications, SAP xApp Analytics have all of the functionality from business intelligence, Master Data Management (MDM), knowledge management, and all the other help for composites that we describe in Chapter 13.