NetWeaver Integration
Up next are Ralf Ehret of SAP, and Taylan Kraus-Wipperman of Heeg, talking about the Smalltalk to NetWeaver connection project.
What does this enable?
- SAP can use Smalltalk for exploratory modeling
- SAP customers can use Smalltalk with SAP
- Provides a standard way of integrating Smalltalk and SAP in a project
This provides a connection to all SAP back end services, and is a first step to being a part of the SAP Enterprise Service Architecture [ed: maybe the enterprisey types will notice :) ].
This is all built on the industry standard WSDL/SOAP model. This allows Smalltalk to invoke RFC-enabled modules. The NetWeaver Connection makes Smalltalk a first class citizen inside the SAP NetWeaver world - it allows anyone to use Smalltalk with or instead of Java and ABAP.
The Smalltalk side is built on top of the WS* stack on VW. With that, it's a demo of the xCarrier project, using the SAP order system and the VW Transportation Zone system (the VW piece of the xCarrier project). The steps:
- Process incoming order
- Find business partner
- Get TPZ for incoming order
- Use TPZ for truck load planning
The demo shows an SAP application talking to VW via the WS* stack - you can see a similar thing in one of the screencasts I did recently. This stuff is going to be available (beta) with VisualWorks 7.5. There's future development going on: deeper access to the SAP BAPI repository, automatic access to RFC function definitions, and access to the Enterprise Service Repository.
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