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Background documentation Guidelines for Developing Composite Applications  Locate the document in its SAP Library structure

Purpose

SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment provides a design time and runtime infrastructure for developing, running, and efficiently managing composite applications that comply with SAP Enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture (enterprise SOA) technologies.

This guide is aimed at application developers and architects and explains the architecture of composite applications and how to choose the right technologies to implement them. It provides a cut-through view of the layers of a composite application and gives recommendations for implementation approaches for each layer.

It is not the intention of this section to go into technical details about how to implement certain functions or describe features of particular tools. It can help you decide which technology, or tool, would be the best choice for implementing your particular composite application scenario.

Once you have made the decision, you can find all the implementation details in the Developing and Composing Applications section of this guide.

Prerequisites

If you are not familiar with the general concepts and frameworks related to composite applications, you may read the paper Guidelines for Specifying Composite Applications. It describes concepts such as process flow, roles, user interfaces, business objects, and services in a less technical fashion.

The article is available at SAP’s Developer Network Web site at https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/20844e88-0d01-0010-de9a-eb2d302df7b7 (registration may be required).

Definition of a Composite Application

Composite applications use services and data from existing applications and components to:

·        Initiate new business practices

·        Provide a view of processes, data, and information

·        Facilitate user interaction and collaboration

They act as mediators between users and user-centric processes on one side, and data and business processes of an enterprise on the other.

You can build and deploy composites on top of services provided by applications and components, combining these services with new application logic, user interfaces, and business service orchestration. These services can be provided by SAP’s Business Process Platform (BPP) with SAP Business Suite as well as by service-enabled third-party solutions.

Note

A service-enabled solution has self-contained functionality accessible via the Web services standard.

Composite Application Layers

Composite applications can vary from simple ones defining a process on top of existing user interfaces (also known as a composite process) to more complex ones containing their own business logic, local persistency, and possibly remote persistency. The following graphic shows the purpose of each layer and how it contributes to the composite application structure:

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

A composite application consists of the following layers:

·        Portal Layer – provides the user interfaces and processes in a role-based manner

·        Process Layer – defines the execution of steps in the process flow

·        User Interface Layer – presents data to and also requests data from the user

·        Business Logic Layer – defines the main functions of the composite application in addition to the services used

·        Back-End Connectivity Layer - connectivity that enables applications to access existing business logic

More Information

For an overview of the principles that you should follow when creating a composite application, see Guiding Principles for Designing Composite Applications.


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