Configuration of Groups of Web Services

Technical Administrator

The Technical Administrator knows what technical configuration settings or policies need to be applied to the service definitions that are part of a business scenario. He or she prepares the relevant runtime configuration settings in one or more communication profiles in advance.

A communication profile is a set of policies that need to be applied to a set of service definitions to meet the needs of a business scenario. You can think of communication profiles as a placeholder for the runtime settings that need to be applied to service definitions.

The Technical Administrator does not apply the configuration settings directly to the service definitions.

Business Administrator

The Business Administrator decides which service definitions in a business scenario to configure and expose for consumption with which runtime settings. The Business Administrator:

Groups service definitions in one or more logical units called business scenarios .

A business scenario is a logical group of service definitions. You can think of a business scenario as a worklist containing the service definitions necessary to complete part of or the whole business process.
Assigns the communication profiles prepared by the Technical Administrator to one or more service definitions grouped in a business scenario.

By assigning a communication profile to service definitions, the Business Administrator triggers the configuration of the respective service definitions. This means that the Business Administrator triggers the creation of a service endpoint for every service definition to which he or she assigns a communication profile.

Profiles - service definition assignments

When a communication profile is assigned to a service definition, the system creates a service endpoint for this service definition. The system can create different endpoints for the same assignment. Each endpoint represents an alternative policy in the communication profile. For example, the system can create an endpoint for HTTP communication and another endpoint for HTTPS communication. The Business Administrator does not explicitly create the service endpoints of service definitions. The actual creation of service endpoints is performed by a background process which runs when the business scenario is created or every time the business scenario is changed.

More information: Modifying SOA Configuration Background Process Settings

Example

You have three service definitions which are necessary to complete a leave request process flow in an HR scenario: HR_LeaveRequest_Service_1 , HR_LeaveRequest_Service_2 , and HR_LeaveRequest_Service_3 . The scenario has the following requirements:

Basic HTTP authentication level must be configured for all service definitions.
Web service reliable messaging must be configured only for HR_LeaveRequest_Service_2 , and HR_LeaveRequest_Service_3 . As a prerequisite, Web service reliable messaging (WSRM) was enabled for these two service definitions at design time in the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio.

To meet these needs for the configuration of the service definitions:

The Technical Administrator creates a communication profile HR_LeaveRequest_Profile in which he or she configures the actual settings for the authentication level and WSRM as required.
The Business Administrator groups all three service definitions in a business scenario, called HR_LeaveRequest_Scenario .
The Business Administrator assigns HR_LeaveRequest_Profile to all three service definitions in HR_LeaveRequest_Scenario . In this way he or she triggers the actual configuration of the service definitions.
The next time the background job is executed, the system creates one service endpoint for each of the three service definitions. The service endpoints contain the relevant settings of the communication profile.

As a result, all three service definitions are configured with the required authentication level, and WSRM is configured only for two of them: HR_LeaveRequest_Service_2 and HR_LeaveRequest_Service_3 .

Editing Communication Profiles

Each communication profile has a version which is automatically assigned to the profile when it is created. You can edit communication profiles and thus create more than one version of a communication profile and each version can hold different settings. When you create a profile, the system records it as version 1 of that profile. The version number of every subsequent profile version that you create increases by 1.

You can assign different profiles to the same service definition. When you assign several profiles to a service definition, the system creates service endpoints that contain the configuration settings of each individual profile that was assigned to the service definition. For example, you assign two different profiles, PF_ABC and PF_XYZ to the same service definition SDef_A , the system will create two service endpoints for this service definition: one for each profile that was assigned to the service definition.

By assigning a profile to a service definition, you assign all the different profile versions to that service definition. Then, the system creates a service endpoint for every active profile version available for the profile (more information about active and inactive profiles and versions is available below).

Statuses of Profiles and Scenarios

Both profiles and scenarios have a status which can be active or inactive. When you create a profile or a scenario, it is active by default. When you create a version of an existing profile, this version is not active by default.

When you assign a profile to the service definitions in a scenario, the system creates service endpoints only if both the profile and the scenario which contains the service definition are active.

The table below lists the possible changes you can make the status of an active profile or of an active scenario and explains the response of the system:

User Action	System Response
An active profile version has been assigned to a service definition belonging to an active scenario. You deactivate the profile version.	The system deletes the service endpoint of the service definition which was created based on the profile which is now deactivated.
An active profile version has been assigned to a service definition belonging to an active scenario. You deactivate the scenario.	The system deletes the service endpoints of the service definition in the deactivated scenario.