General Overview

SAP NetWeaver Gateway facilitates the easy provisioning and consumption of business logic and content of SAP Business Suite systems for mobile and Web applications. It reduces the complexity and the skill set required to access SAP data, thereby removing deployment barriers. The use of simple interfaces helps to shorten development times.

SAP NetWeaver Gateway enables people-centric applications to consume SAP Business Suite data through popular platforms and devices (such as the iPad and Blackberry) in an easy and standards-based manner. It is a framework that connects business users to SAP systems using consumer technologies, groupware, and mobile devices and is based on open standards (such as the Atom Publishing Protocol and OData) that offer simple services based on the REST principle.

SAP NetWeaver Gateway uses OData protocol. OData is based on industry standards and offers database-like access to business data using REST-based architecture. For its consumption outside of SAP, no knowledge of SAP structures is required and it supports object navigation. Dynamic binding takes place at runtime. OData can be easily consumed by various platforms and it offers flexibility (filtering, query options). OData for SAP comprises OData plus SAP annotations.

For more information about OData, see SAP NetWeaver Gateway and OData.