I need to integrate an API created with .NET with SAP FI/CO.
Researching online I found out there used to be something called IDES that would provide access to an SAP server free of charge, just for testing purposes, but that's no longer available.
The Consolut solution seems to have been a viable solution while it was active:
https://www.outsystems.com/forums/discussion/6598/sap-server-test-account/
Anyway, my question is: Is there any way for an independent developer to test an SAP integration without spending money to access that server? Are there any options out there that would allow me to access an SAP instance for testing purposes?
Here you can find the official list of developer trials that you might access without having any kind of relationship with SAP:
https://www.sap.com/developer/trials-downloads.html.
If you have an SAP S-user, you might have access to more stuff from the SAP Marketplace. From my knowledge, IDES was / is only accessible through the SAP Marketplace (or external sources which use the marketplace themselves).
FI/CO runs on Netweaver AS ABAP (or an older alternative, e.g. R/3), so you could download it here: https://tools.eu1.hana.ondemand.com/#abap. But it will not have FI/CO in it. Based on the discussion here https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/2039981 I would say that it is not really possible to get FI/CO up and running on your local Netweaver.
This is a general strategy of SAP. They provide the possibility of trying out their technological platforms (HCP, HANA, NW, etc) but they don't really offer access to their business solutions for free.
If you don't find any other way of getting access to a FI/CO system (e.g. from a third party or customer) then maybe the best thing would be to use the local Netweaver and mock the FI/CO specific RFCs that you are using (assuming that you use NCo for the integration). At least this way, you would know that the integration works at a pure technical level (at some point though, you will need a real system).
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I am trying to find a good place to start for a potentially SAP related project.
Suppose I wanted to develop stand-alone software that could connect with an SAP ERP (S4/HANA) system and analyze material management and accounting data. What resources would I need to accomplish that? Where could I get an SDK/the proper training for this? How would I get a system to experiment on? I've tried Googling this question but there doesn't seem to be clear authoritative information on this and what I find also seems to be mostly about SAP Business One, which is a different product.
Insights would be much appreciated!
Thank you in advance,
Joshua
You must use REST/OData to connect to ECC and Hana S/4.
Currently, SAP has around 800+ REST APIs for SD/MM/PP/FICO, and almost every quarter, new APIs are added to Hana S/4.
You can check all the available APIs # https://api.sap.com/package/SAPS4HANACloud/all
You can check out the demo below if you want to view an application that provides similar functionalities.
https://demo.inoerp.com:8090
Select Hana SandBox. This is a single app that provides similar functionalities for Oracle, SAP, Dynamics etc.
If you need an API that is not yet published. You can also create your own APIs using ABAP
Regarding technology - You can use anything Java(Springboot/ADF), C# .net, node.js. You will be fine as long as you stay away from the SAP technology stack (i.e., ABAP and UI5 :-))
Is SAP PI/PO now considered a true ESB? I've read various sources claiming it was not quite there 4-5 years ago.
And what if you have a very SAP-centric environment, would it be very strongly suggested to use PI/PO instead of the more standard integration platforms such as Mule ESB, Jboss Fuse, BizTalk and Oracle ESB?
If you primarily have expertise with the platform agnostic ESB's mentioned, would it still be worth integrating with SAP Pi? What are the advantages of PI?
I see they all have some option to integrate with SAP, but unbiased information seems hard to come by in the SAP-scene.
If your entire landscape consists of SAP modules then probably better to use PI.
If however you want to connect to other systems in the cloud, internally or externally then I would not choose PI.
PI is not an integration platform (better to use this phrase an an ESB). In this case it is better than have something fronting your SAP backend such as Biztalk, Fuse, Mule or other. They are more flexible and have more functionality when it comes to communicating with other systems and protocol. They are probably far easier to use as well.
Most of these integration platforms have commercial adapters that can connect to SAP. IBM's Integration Bus has SAP adapters, so does Fuse and others.
Like I said, it depends on your landscape and your integration requirements.
Today, as SAP NetWeaver 7.5 released, SAP PO is common ESB.
It is based entirely on Java8 and JEE5 standards, with optional old-fashioned ABAP usage.
Someone could implement integration scenarios with many tools (simple mappings, SOJO or EJB, or even your own JCA-adapter). Now SAP PO is really fast and reliable.
I'm working on my first fiware project. I want to make an application consisting on an online store, with some Specific Enablers to provide some functionality. This is all very new to me, and I've been reading a lot these days, but I'm pretty lost and I really wonder if what I'm trying to do is even possible.
Can I use wirecloud to make a mashup application like this? How can I integrate specific enablers with the web application? Is there some kind of enabler to provide online store functionality?
Thanks for your time
WireCloud comes with support for some of the Generic Enablers provided by FIWARE (WStore, Orion, Kurento, ...) and can be used for accessing to your Specific Enablers (although you will need to code). You can learn more about WireCloud on the available course at FIWARE Lab Academy.
One of the Generic Enablers that seems useful for your use case seems to be the Store Generic Enabler. The store is used in FIWARE Lab for distributing/selling services, datasets, and WireCloud components, but can be configured for other purposes.
We are looking at building a GUI application having the following attributes -
* approx 100 screens
* approx 200 users
* interfaces with 8 different legacy applications (protocols tbd but we are assuming web services will be exposed)
* has a separate data store for storing authentication and authorisation info along with few other information.
We are trying to avoid spending any money on procurement of physical servers, application servers etc.So we thought instead of building a web application , we could develop a standalone GUI based application that could be deployed on users' desktops considering that the users are less and the access to this application is confined to our organisation.
We were thinking of Java Swing as one of the options to consider. Is it a good choice? Please advice on the other options that we need to think about. We thought MS products would involving licensing costs to buy the product hence we are looking at developing the application using some free software tools.
Thanks a lot!
Regards,
V
I really like Swing and have written many applications with it, but I'm not sure the argument that you will get a cheaper solution because you have to procure less physical servers is a good reason for it.
There are other ways to use computational capacity on the client side. For example you could use SmartGWT. With a browser based solution you get easy deployment and have no problems with client-server communications (i.e. no proxy hell). It's possible to get all of this solved with a standalone GUI, but it requires experience and time (== money).
I think a standalone GUI is a good idea if you need a "rich" user experience and tight integration with the native environment. Web apps are generally less snappy and not so well integrated. If it's just about editing data on a server, the standalone GUI does not really have any advantages.
I won't rehash what we talked about in the comments. It seems you are focused on java gui solutions. With that said there are alternatives for developing gui applications with free tools. Just to name a couple, you could develop your client with Adobe Flex or Adobe Air, use python, php or ruby and GTK, or develop a windows GUI app using c# if your target os is windows. Similar to Air, Microsoft Silverlight is an option. Java is not the only solution.
Many Java gui apps are written using swing. The major competitor to Swing has long been SWT which is used for eclipse and by IBM. Javafx is a newer/alternative platform Sun/Oracle is behind, you should also look at. To be complete, you should also take a look at qt jambi that lets you develop in java against the Qt framework.
Where can I find a list of BMC Remedy 3rd party integrations? I have found nothing on their website, and their sales department put me in touch with the customer services which wouldn't take my call because I didn't have a customer number.
My company is looking into using BMC Remedy as a customer incident system, and it would be nice if I could integrate it with some software. For example, we could have an internal development tracking system such as Jira, Redmine, MantisBT, Trak, etc. which would integrate with Remedy. Or, have Rememdy itself integrate with something like Hudson or CruiseControl.
So far, I've found nothing that seems to integrate with Remedy -- even with software packages that have a ton of integrations like Hudson and Jira. I don't really care if there are third party proprietary integrations, but I'd like to make sure they already exist and not All you have to do is hire someone at $400 to program everything for you. I want to make sure that there is something now and not be promised it can be done, then find out you really can't do it.
I may be a bit late to the party here, but I wanted to make this info available for anybody who happened to be searching for this answer in the future. BMC Remedy has an API in Java, which uses a native library in C, as well as bindings for Perl and other languages capable of calling native code. If you can integrate with any of those languages, you can write a custom integration program and integrate with that. As 'Gary L' mentioned, Remedy can also expose any form as a web service, which, in my experience, have simple interfaces.
Since the original question was asked, BMC have created a doc with a wealth of information on their Wiki. A Swedish company, RRR, has also collected every version of the Remedy Java API and required native libraries on a single page. It appear that you no longer need a support ID to access these pages and download the API files.
Hopefully somebody finds this helpful!
Your definition of "integrate" is different from their version. Their version of integration means that if a source system exposes its data, then you can configure ARS to retrieve that information and map it to classes (forms) within their system. They have a "generic" integration system that you have to customize. It has three broad areas:
If you can connect directly to a 3rd party database and see its schema, then you can perform
retrievals of that information. We use Oracle today.
They have a java API that allows you access the ARS system for custom code (I do a lot of this).
Flat CSV file importation of data from a source system into ARS (after export).
I looked at their online support for the systems you mention (Jira, Redmine, MantisBT, Trak) and do not see anything that would accomplish any of the three above without your own customizations. With the work that I've done on this system it doesn't surprise me.
I work on a project today that writes custom code doing the items above. It is a system that is configuration/development heavy for us. Your comment: "All you have to do is hire someone at $400 to program everything for you." is not too far off from what we have to do with the system.
There is another option for Remedy integration: Web Services.
BMC Remedy makes it easy to create web services (WSDL). It creates the SOAP and XML for you. When you buy Remedy Incident Management module, it includes out-of-the-box web services that will allow it to consume and/or publish web services which make it easy to integrate with other systems on the intranet or externally. There are BMC publications which provide details on ITSM integration --- but again you will need a customer/support ID to get it from BMC's website.
Yes and no to the Web Services integration. The Version 8 system I was working on had some web services available, and they were incomplete. So I was able to do a number of functions (mostly read-only), specifically for custom display and Change Request checking, and submission of a Change Request and a Work Order. But many functions had no web service, and I ended up brute-forcing through the web user interface (with a customized browser control) to change dates on tasks, or make tasks. Ugly, but effective. There are mid-tier JavaScript calls that can be used, if you know the secret function name and can deal with the dynamic naming convention in play. For Remedy users who are desperate for some integration, there are ways it can be done.
few OOTB integrations are possible with BMC Products but if you want to do it with other you have to write webservices(REST or SOAP)
Companies like IBM or cisco has made connectors for integration with Remedy.
Just adding more detail here:
I also do a ton of direct SQL for remedy integration.
If you're careful and know what you're doing, you can have a stored proc create legal/valid records in a remedy table. (If you do it wrong, the records won't load in the client and in older versions of the windows client can actually crash the client software.)