ABAP_to_the_Future

Prerequisites 13.2
to SAP PI, direct invocation of web servic es, and so on. What’s so special about
SAP Gateway?
According to SAP, the prob lem with all the other integration techniques is that
they are proprietary—that is, SAP-specific. In recent years, SAP has made a 180-
degree turn away from such bespoke solu tions in favor of open-source equivalents,
which are much more widely used and not owned by anybody in particular.
In the case of SAP Gateway, the protoc ol it uses to expose SAP data is called
OData, as in, “Oh, data, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, oh
data.” (Some people say it actually stands for “Open Data Protocol.”)
To go acronym crazy for a second, SAP used to hope that its enterprise system
architecture (ESA) vision would catch on, but that was based on SOAP, and in
recent times no one likes SOAP anymore. People prefer something called REST,
and OData is based on REST. SAP decided that made the ESA thing pretty much
dead in the water. If you can’t beat th em, join them, and so SAP came up with
SAP Gateway to expose SAP data as OData.
You could say that OData is the glue that binds SAP Gateway to SAPUI5. SAPUI5
expects data to be exchanged using such a protocol, and SAP Gateway enables
such an exchange to be performed from within an SAP system.
Later on in the chapter, this will all make much more sense, when you see how
you actually go about exposing a model class using transactions within SAP.
13.2 Prerequisites
Before you can get up and running with SAPUI5, you have to make sure your system
has everything it needs. This section discusses the prerequisites for SAPUI5.
13.2.1 Requirements in SAP
SAP Gateway started life in 2011; it’s a component of the ABAP system, and it can
be used in any SAP system based on SAP NetWeaver 7.0 and above. Before 7.4,
you had to download and install it ex plicitly, but in SAP NetWeaver 7.4 and
beyond it comes as standard.
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