Creating a Service Builder Project

To develop a service using SAP Gateway Service Builder, you have to create a project.

Service Builder uses projects to bundle all the artifacts to develop a service in one central place and thereby helps you to organize the service development and data modeling process. You can use projects to organize transport of the objects from one system environment to another, so that all the artifacts remain together at all times.

Choose from three project types while creating a new project:

• Choose Service with SAP Annotations if you want to annotate your data model artifacts using standard and SAP annotations. SAP annotations include Creatable, Updatable, Label, and UnitProperty, for example. Available attributes can differ according to the data model artifact you want to annotate. You can also define the facets, Nullable, Default, MaxLength, FixedLength, Precision, Scale, for example. The ABAP type information available includes ABAP field name and explicit ABAP type assignment.

• Choose Service with Vocabulary-Based Annotations if you want to annotate data model artifacts within the project using terms to provide additional information about the artifact. Standard SAP annotations are not available for this project type. In this project type, terms can be consolidated in a vocabulary and you can upload into the Vocabulary Repository. The Vocabulary Repository includes a set of vocabulary files such as Org.OData.Atom.V1 and Org.OData.Capabilities.V1..

• Choose Annotation Model for Referenced Service if you want to annotate an artifact of an existing service without modifying the service and provide additional information about the artifacts. Unlike in project type Service with Vocabulary-Based Annotations, in this project type you can import another service as a reference in read-only mode and then create annotations.

To create a Service Builder project, proceed as follows:

1. Click Project from the main menu, and select Create, and then enter a name for the new project.

   The project name must be unique and must not contain any spaces or special characters, however, it may contain underscores. Input help is available so that you can check the project names already in use.

2. Enter a description for your new project.

   This is a mandatory field. This description is displayed in the Service Builder along with the project name.

   It can be used to provide additional context information about the project or service you define. Short description must not exceed 60 characters.

3. Under Attributes:

   1. Select the project type you want to create. The project type once selected cannot be changed.

      • Select Service with SAP Annotations if the OData service in your project is to use standard and SAP annotations.

      • Select Service with Vocabulary-Based Annotations if the OData service in your project is to use vocabulary-based annotations.

      • Select Annotation Model for Referenced Service if the OData service has to be annotated externally without modifying the service.

   2. Specify the generation strategy that is to be used.

      The standard generation strategy is used as default, but other generation strategies are feasible. If no customer-specific generation strategies have been defined in the system, Standard is entered as default to indicate that the standard generation strategy will be used.

4. Under Object Directory Entry, enter the name of the package in which you want to create the new project and, implicitly, the service and click Enter.

   Note

   If you do not want to create the project in a package that is transported from one system to another in system landscape, enter $TMP or choose the Local Object. This ensures that the object is created locally.

The Service Builder creates the new project together with an empty folder structure. You can see the newly-created project structure in the tree view in the left-hand screen area.

The project structure comprises the following folders and sub-folders:

• Data Model

  • Entity Types

  • Associations

  • Entity Sets

• Service Implementation

• Runtime Artifacts

• Service Maintenance

After creating the project you can also set schema namespace for the Data Model. Schema Namespace can be explicitly set for the projects of type Service with SAP Annotation and Service with Vocabulary Based Annotation. The name can be modified later. For the projects of type Annotation Model for Referenced Service, schema namespace is same as that of the referenced service. For more information, see Schema Namespace

To save the newly-created project in the Service Builder, click Save. Your project is saved and you can subsequently return to the Service Builder at any time, open this project, and continue the service development and modeling process. If you do not save your project, a warning message appears prompting you to save the project.

If you do not save your newly created project, your data will be lost as soon when you close the Service Builder.

To save time, you can create a new project by copying an existing Service Builder project. For more information, see Copying a Service Builder Project.