SAP Offers SOA Governance Tools, Best Practices

SAP has a set of new design tools and Best Practices for SOA Governance, noting that without governance, companies run the risk of investing time and money developing SOA services that are either not reusable or not aligned with the business priorities

"The release of the design and development governance offering for enterprise SOA, alongside the ES Repository of SAP NetWeaver, will provide a road map to success and will allow our customers to make rapid strides toward reducing risk and delivering measurable return on investment — all of which align to the goals of the business," said Stephan Fischer, SAP Vice President, Enterprise SOA Delivery Program, in a statement.

A key SAP offering for SOA Governance is the Enterprise Services Repository ES Repository of SAP NetWeaver is a central library where all enterprise service metadata is illustrated and explained. This enables the reuse of enterprise services for modeling and composing new applications.

ES Repository of SAP NetWeaver includes tool based governance automation at design time. This approach helps to ensure that newly built and existing enterprise services adhere to the design and development governance in order to provide business level services for instant reuse.

The Enterprise Services Repository ES Repository supports the governed definition of SOA assets such as services and data types.

Currently the ES repository is shipped with both:

SAP NetWeaver Process Integration 7.1 SAP NetWeaver PI 7.1

With the ES Repository, users can start modeling business processes and designing interfaces, data types and mappings for the message exchange. The Integration Directory and Integration Server that are also available with SAP NetWeaver PI, enable users to configure and to run business process in an individual system landscape.

SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment 7.1 SAP NetWeaver CE 7.1

With CE 7.1, the ES Repository and Registry offers users capabilities for service provisioning and consumption.

Aside from tools, SAP is also expanding SOA Governance training and education to help customers more quickly and efficiently capture ROI from SOA investments, SAP executives added. SAP customers are "requesting the release of SAP tools and best practices for enterprise SOA governance in order to facilitate their architectural shift," Fischer added.