Section 15.4. What is SAP NetWeaver s role in creating enterprise services?

15.4. What is SAP NetWeaver's role in creating enterprise services?

SAP NetWeaver provides the technological foundation for creating enterprise services. Earlier in this chapter, when describing development from the inside out and the outside in, we highlighted some of the features of SAP NetWeaver. This section explores some of the additional capabilities of SAP NetWeaver with respect to enterprise services.

Enterprise services are often created to work with business partners. A large part of this effort entails implementing industry-specific XML vocabularies. In addition to supporting open standards for web services, as described in Chapter 20, SAP NetWeaver provides comprehensive support for implementing partner interfaces using specialized vocabularies. NetWeaver is composed of many modules that perform different functions, but most web services support is offered in the Web Service Infrastructure of SAP NetWeaver AS and the process integration functionality of SAP NetWeaver XI.