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Use

SAP Gateway facilitates easier provisioning and consumption of business logic and content of SAP backend systems for mobile and Web applications. It aims to reduce the complexity and the skill set required to access SAP data, thereby removing deployment barriers. Simple interfaces also help to shorten development times.

SAP Gateway enables people-centric applications to consume SAP Business Suite data through popular platforms and devices (such as smart phones and tablets) 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.

Depending on your development requirements and where you want to develop SAP Gateway content, you can install SAP in either an SAP Business Suite backend system (embedded deployment) or in an SAP Gateway hub system (central hub deployment). For more information about the deployment options and available software components, see Deployment Options.

SAP 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.

Note

While SAP Gateway uses OData, the OData implementation in place is not a full implementation according to the official OData specification at http://www.odata.orgInformation published on non-SAP site. This restriction applies to all OData versions.

Figure 1: OData for SAP
Figure 2: OData for SAP

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

More Information

For more information see OData Channel.