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Background documentationProduct Catalog Web Services

 

You use Web services to enable your distribution partner to request and integrate data from your published product catalog (crm~catalog) into their own Web shop or Web application as follows:

  • Your partner can integrate your product catalog into their own product range and sell your products through their Web shops.

  • Your partner retrieves MIMEs, prices, and product details from your published product catalog.

  • Your partner can integrate your product range into their own internal ordering system so that their employees can choose and order products from your product catalog.

  • Your partner can regularly update their information about your product range by retrieving your current product catalog. Changes or additions that you make to your product descriptions, designs, or prices, for example, can be displayed in your partner’s Web shop.

Managing a central product catalog for reuse in your partner’s Web shop reduces your partner’s maintenance effort, increases consistency, and allows you to offer your partner new sales opportunities. Note that your partner can choose to integrate your whole product catalog or selected branches of your product catalog.

The following Web services are available:

Prerequisites

  • You have installed the full CRM Web Channel infrastructure, including at least the following:

    • SAP Customer Relationship Management

    • Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)

    • Search and Classification (TREX)

  • You have customized and defined at least one product catalog for use by the Web shop. You have set up the SAP CRM server to publish the product catalog to Search and Classification (TREX). For more information, see Basic Settings for CRM Web Channel in SAP Solution Manager.

  • You have configured the product catalog Web application to connect to the SAP CRM back-end system using application configuration (XCM). For more information about the configuration of the product catalog Web application, see General Settings for CRM Web Channel in SAP Solution Manager.

  • You have set up at least one Web shop using shop management. For more information about the configuration of the Web shop, see Special Settings for E-Commerce and E-Marketing in SAP Solution Manager.

  • If real-time pricing is required, you have configured Internet Pricing and Configurator (IPC) and switched on IPC pricing in the Web shop definition and product catalog Web application configuration.

  • If a B2B application configuration with customer specific prices is required, you have created a user for the Web Service. For more information about the configuration of a B2B scenario, see SAP Solution Manager. Note that you do not need to specify a user and password for B2C scenarios.

  • You have set up the HTTP port of the J2EE server to grant access to the Web service client.

  • If the retrieval of product recommendations using Web services is required, you have made the settings for product recommendations. For more information, see Special Settings for E-Commerce and E-Marketing in SAP Solution Manager.

Activities

Testing the Web Services

All Web services provided by an SAP NetWeaver Java stack are listed in the Web Service Navigator. This tool includes the following:

  • A test client used to call the Web service with example data and to examine the returned results

  • The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) files (in various formats) used to create clients to the Web service

Proceed as follows:

  1. Call the SAP NetWeaver Java stack that runs the application, for example: http://host:port/index.html.

  2. Start the Web Service Navigator from the home page of SAP NetWeaver.

  3. Select the WebChannelProductCatalog Web service.

  4. Choose Test on the navigation bar.

  5. Select a Web service from the list to test.

Example

Your company produces a wide range of hardware and software products. You have a partner that is specialized in selling only Desktop Publishing (DTP) software. Your partner has built a Web shop to sell your DTP software. However, it is difficult for your partner to keep your product descriptions, images, and prices current in their Web shop. Therefore, you inform your partner about the Web services that you provide. Your partner decides to use Web services to easily retrieve the list of your currently available DTP software products and all the latest information needed from your published product catalog. The partner integrates this information into their Web shop in real-time.

More Information

Web Services