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Creating a Service Builder ProjectLocate this document in the navigation structure

To develop a service using SAP NetWeaver Gateway Service Builder, you first need to create a project. The Service Builder uses projects to bundle all the artifacts you need to develop a service in one central place and thereby helps you to organize the service development and modeling process. You can use projects to organize the transport of objects from one system environment to another, so that all the artifacts remain together at all times. Choose from three project types in the Service Builder when you create a new project:
  • Choose Service with SAP Annotations if you want to annotate your data model artifacts using standard SAP annotations. SAP annotations include Creatable, Updatable, Label, and UnitProperty, for example. The 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 using additional terms that are not part of the core attributes and provide additional descriptive information about the artifact. In this case, additional terms can be consolidated in a vocabulary and uploaded into the Vocabulary Repository. The Vocabulary Repository includes a selection of vocabulary files for ODate vocabulary-based annotations, such as Org.OData.Atom.V1 and Org.OData.Capabilities.V1.
  • Choose Annotation Model for Referenced Service if you want to annotate an OData Element of an existing service, without modifying the service, and provide additional descriptive 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.
Procedure
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 may not contain any spaces or special characters, however, it may contain underscores. Input help is available so you can check which project names are already in use. Although you cannot reuse an existing project name, you can derive a new project name from an existing project name by adding a prefix or suffix, for example.
  2. Enter a description for your new project. This is a mandatory entry and you are unable to create a new project without defining a description. The description is displayed in the Service Builder together with the project name. The short description can be used to provide additional context information about the project or service you define. The short description must not exceed 60 characters.
  3. Under Attributes select the project type you want to create. The project type you select when creating a project cannot be changed at a later time.
    • Select Service with SAP Annotations if the OData service in your project is to use standard 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. You can create and upload your own customer-specific vocabularies into the Vocabulary Repository. The uploading of vocabulary files is an optional preparatory step for implementation.
  4. Under Attributes, 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.

    For more information about generation strategies, see Generating Runtime Objects.

  5. 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 the project to be created in a package to be transported from one system to another in the system landscape, enter $TMP as the package name or choose the Local Object pushbutton. This ensures that the object is created locally.
Result
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 subfolders:
  • Data Model
    • Entity Types
    • Associations
    • Entity Sets
    The following subfolders are automatically added to the tree only when you define new entity entries for them:
    • Association Sets
    • Complex Types
    • Function Imports
    • Vocabularies: Imports - Lists the vocabulary or vocabularies imported for your project. Implicit References - Lists the vocabulary or vocabularies referenced by the vocabulary file that was explicitly imported.
  • Service Implementation
  • Runtime Artifacts
  • Service Maintenance
Note Service Implementation node will not be created for projects type Annotation Model for Referenced Service.
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 newly-created project, your data will be lost as soon as you close the Service Builder.
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