Preparing Communication Profiles

This procedure enables the technical administrator to create communication profiles and provide runtime configuration settings in them. At a later stage, the technical administrator uses the communication profiles to establish a connection to a provider system.

On the other hand, the business administrator assigns these configuration profiles to one or more service definitions, and thus creates a runtime configuration for these service definitions.

More information:

Connection to Provider Systems

Configuring Groups of Web Services.

Prerequisites

If you want to edit, activate or deactivate, or import a profile from the file system, the profile has to be available.

Procedure

Log on to the SAP NetWeaver Administrator.
Choose SOA Management Technical Configuration System Connections
Alternatively, you can use the quick link /systems as follows:

http://<host>:<port>/nwa/systems

The System Connections screen opens.
Choose Communication Profiles.

Creating a Communication Profile

Choose New.
In the General step, enter a name and description of the communication profile, and then choose Next.
In the following steps that appear, apply the necessary configuration options.
The Configuration Options for Communication Profiles section below explains the settings you can apply to the communication profile.

Editing a Communication Profile

Choose a communication profile from the table, and then choose Edit.
On the General step, enter a description for the communication profile, and then choose Next.
On the following steps that appear, apply the necessary configuration options.
The Configuration Options for Communication Profiles section below explains the settings you can apply for the communication profile.
Choose Save.
The system creates a new version of the existing communication profile with status Inactive. You can find more information about the statuses of communication profiles in the Activating and Deactivating Communication Profiles section below.

Configuration Options for Communication Profiles

On the Security step, specify the relevant options.

Choose the allowed authentication methods for Web services communication.

The table below outlines the possible authentication methods, which you set to a profile.

Option	Description	More information
None	This option sets no authentication.	-
User Name/Password (Basic)	Authentication with user ID and password in HTTP header.	HTTP Transport Level Authentication
X.509 Certificate	Authentication with an X.509 certificate using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).	HTTP Transport Level Authentication
SAP Logon Ticket	Authentication with SAP authentication assertion ticket in the HTTP header, which authenticates the identity of the user.	HTTP Transport Level Authentication
User Name/Password Doc.Auth.	Authentication with user ID and password in the message header.	Recommended WS Security Scenarios
SAML Assertion	Authentication with a signed SAML 1.1 assertion in the message header, which authenticates the identity of the user.	-
X.509 Certificate Doc.Auth.	Authentication with an X.509 message certificate in the message header.	Recommended WS Security Scenarios

To enable only secure communication over HTTPS protocol or WS-SecureConversation, choose the Allow Only Secure Communication checkbox.

On the Messaging step, set the Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-RM) settings.

More information: Configuring Web Services Reliable Messaging

The table below lists the available options and explains their meaning.

Option	Description
Lifetime in milliseconds of a sequence	The time for which the WS-RM sequence remains active.
Retransmission interval in milliseconds	The interval at which the Web service client will try to resend each message that has not been acknowledged by the Web service.
Confirmation Interval	The interval (in milliseconds) at which the Web service has to send acknowledgments to the Web service client. Currently, the Web service sends acknowledgments to every call from the Web service client.
Inactivity Timeout in milliseconds	If the Web service receives no messages within this interval, it considers the sequence terminated due to the lack of activity.
ExponentialBackoff	Exponential backoff sets an algorithm used by the client when it resends messages. If you choose this option, the retransmission interval increases exponentially after each unsuccessful transmission.

Configure Transport Settings

On the Transport Settings tab you specify the transport between the provider side and the consumer side.

The table below lists the available options and explains their meaning.

Option	Description
Use ‘Connection: KeepAlive’ http header	Enables multiple requests and responses through a single HTTP connection. The provider system keeps the connection alive so that you can use the same connection for multiple request and response cycles.
Support gzip responses	Enables the provider side to return compressed responses to the consumer and, in this way, improves performance. This option is useful when you expect the provider to return responses whose size is several MB. If you want to set this option, the provider system has to support compressed responses (gzip).
Max wait-time for http response	Denotes how long the consumer waits for a response from the provider. If you expect huge load on the provider system that would delay the responses to consumers, increase the default value.
Issue chunked requests	Optimizes the method in which the client communicates to the provider the size of its own requests. If the option is selected, the client communicates the size of the message directly in the stream, and does not write it in memory.

Activating and Deactivating a Communication Profile

From the list of communication profiles, choose an entry, and then to activate or deactivate a profile choose Activate or Deactivate respectively.

The table below outlines the effect of the possible changes you can make to the status of a profile.

User Action	System Response
You set the status of a communication profile to Active.	The framework allows you to assign the active communication profile to a provider system connection. The framework enables you to activate the connection to a provider system to which this communication profile is assigned. For every service definition in an active business scenario to which the activated profile is assigned, the system creates a service endpoint that has the runtime settings of the profile.
You set the status of a communication profile to Inactive	When you deactivate communication profiles, the system considers them deleted. However, the communication profile and its runtime setting keep existing on the system, and when you activate it, you can use it again. The framework deactivates every connection to a provider system to which the communication profile is assigned. For every service definition to which the deactivated profile is assigned, the system deletes the service endpoint that has the runtime settings of the profile.

User Action

System Response

You set the status of a communication profile to Active.

The framework allows you to assign the active communication profile to a provider system connection.
The framework enables you to activate the connection to a provider system to which this communication profile is assigned.
For every service definition in an active business scenario to which the activated profile is assigned, the system creates a service endpoint that has the runtime settings of the profile.

You set the status of a communication profile to Inactive

When you deactivate communication profiles, the system considers them deleted. However, the communication profile and its runtime setting keep existing on the system, and when you activate it, you can use it again.

The framework deactivates every connection to a provider system to which the communication profile is assigned.
For every service definition to which the deactivated profile is assigned, the system deletes the service endpoint that has the runtime settings of the profile.

Deleting a Communication Profile

To delete a communication profile, proceed as follows:

Choose an entry from the table of communication profiles.
Choose Delete.
To confirm, choose OK.

Exporting and Importing a Communication Profile

The framework allows you to export a communication profile from a physical system and then reuse it on another system.

Export a communication profile
1. Choose an entry from the table of communication profile, and then choose Export.
2. Save the communication profile on the file system.
  The system saves the profile as an XML document. At a later stage, you can distribute and import the XML document to another system, instead of creating a profile with the same settings.
Import a communication profile
1. Choose Import.
  The Import Communication Profile window opens.
2. Choose Browse, and then open the XML document of the communication profile.
3. Choose OK.

Result

The communication profile is created and you can select it from the communication profile's table.

As a next step, you can proceed with the following tasks:

Establish a connection to a provider system using a communication profile from the table.
More information: Creating Connections to Provider Systems
Assign the communication profile to service definitions, and create runtime configuration entities.
More information:

Configuring Web Services Exposed By Applications

Grouping and Configuring Web Services in Business Scenarios