A couple of weeks ago I've heard about the Google Knowledge Graph API for the first time. All of you who followed my work in the last years probably know that I'm interested in all kind of public APIs and Graph Databases. Obviously I've started to play around with this API immediatelly.

As described on https://developers.google.com/knowledge-graph/ I've registered my user and got an API key.

My first call: https://kgsearch.googleapis.com/v1/entities:search?query=chuck%20norris&key=my_API_key&limit=1

{
  "@context": {
    "@vocab": "http://schema.org/",
    "goog": "http://schema.googleapis.com/",
    "EntitySearchResult": "goog:EntitySearchResult",
    "detailedDescription": "goog:detailedDescription",
    "resultScore": "goog:resultScore",
    "kg": "http://g.co/kg"
  },
  "@type": "ItemList",
  "itemListElement": [
    {
      "@type": "EntitySearchResult",
      "result": {
        "@id": "kg:/m/015lhm",
        "name": "Chuck Norris",
        "@type": [
          "Person",
          "Thing"
        ],
        "description": "Martial Artist",
        "image": {
          "contentUrl": "http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTOLvRnq7ANkycMmFAT0UoC1kzQXFAzBUkBTOEMMJvLMMXu-QWt",
          "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris"
        },
        "detailedDescription": {
          "articleBody": "Carlos Ray \"Chuck\" Norris is an American martial artist, actor, film producer and screenwriter. After serving in the United States Air Force, he began his rise to fame as a martial artist, and has since founded his own school, Chun Kuk Do.\n",
          "url": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris",
          "license": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License"
        },
        "url": "http://www.chucknorris.com/"
      },
      "resultScore": 729.463074
    }
  ]
}

Not really "Knowledge Graph" style. Where is the linked data like movies etc.?

Back to the homepage. Et voilà, better read before you judge:

"Note: The Knowledge Graph Search API returns only individual matching entities, rather than graphs of interconnected entities. If you need the latter, we recommend using data dumps from Wikidata instead."

But why Google calls it "Knowledge Graph Search" then? Hopefully they'll change their minds in the near future...

Nevertheless, I've created a new ABAP Open Source project to use the Google Knowledge Graph Search: zGKGS

Google Knowledge Graph Search API for ABAP

With just a few lines of code you get nice results:

DATA(google_knowledge_graph_search) =NEW zcl_gkgs_api( i_api_key ='Your_API_Key' ).

google_knowledge_graph_search->search(
  EXPORTING
    i_query     ='sap'
    i_limit     =5
  IMPORTING
    e_results   = DATA(results)
).

LOOPAT results ASSIGNINGFIELD-SYMBOL(<result>).

  cl_demo_output=>begin_section( title =<result>->get_result( )->get_description( ) ).

  IF<result>->get_result( )->get_image( ) ISBOUND.
    cl_demo_output=>write_html( html =|<image src="{<result>->get_result( )->get_image( )->get_content_url( ) }"/>| ).
  ENDIF.

  cl_demo_output=>write_text( <result>->get_result( )->get_detailed_description( )->get_article_body( ) ).
  cl_demo_output=>end_section( ).

ENDLOOP.

cl_demo_output=>display( ).

How does it work? Well, the most interesting part of zGKGS is my next open source project: SchemA

SchemA: The schema.org ABAP framework

What is schema.org?

"Schema.org is a collaborative, community activity with a mission to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet, on web pages, in email messages, and beyond."

It's a project sponsored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex and runs under the hood of W3C. More information you can find on the homepage of schema.org.

Based on the schema.org objects, I've created an OO framework in ABAP. Let's look at an example:

DATA(organization) =NEW zcl_schema_organization( ).

organization->set_legal_name( 'SAP SE' ).
organization->set_founding_date( '19720401' ).
organization->set_address( NEW#( ) ).
organization->get_address( )->set_address_country( 'DE' ).
organization->get_address( )->set_address_locality( 'Walldorf' ).

DATA(founder) = organization->get_founder( ).
INSERTNEW zcl_schema_person( ) INTOTABLE founder ASSIGNINGFIELD-SYMBOL(<founder>).
<founder>->set_name( 'Claus Wellenreuther' ).
INSERTNEW zcl_schema_person( ) INTOTABLE founder ASSIGNING<founder>.
<founder>->set_name( 'Hans-Werner Hector' ).
INSERTNEW zcl_schema_person( ) INTOTABLE founder ASSIGNING<founder>.
<founder>->set_name( 'Klaus Tschira' ).
INSERTNEW zcl_schema_person( ) INTOTABLE founder ASSIGNING<founder>.
<founder>->set_name( 'Dietmar Hopp' ).
INSERTNEW zcl_schema_person( ) INTOTABLE founder ASSIGNING<founder>.
<founder>->set_name( 'Hasso Plattner' ).
organization->set_founder( founder ).

cl_demo_output=>display_json( organization->get_json( ) ).

If (hopefully) everything works fine you'll get a response in JSON-LD (linked data) format:

{
"@context":
{
  "@vocab":"http://schema.org/"
},
"@type":"Organization",
"address":
{
  "@type":"PostalAddress",
  "addressCountry":"DE",
  "addressLocality":"Walldorf"
},
"founder":
[
  {
   "@type":"Person",
   "name":"Claus Wellenreuther"
  },
  {
   "@type":"Person",
   "name":"Hans-Werner Hector"
  },
  {
   "@type":"Person",
   "name":"Klaus Tschira"
  },
  {
   "@type":"Person",
   "name":"Dietmar Hopp"
  },
  {
   "@type":"Person",
   "name":"Hasso Plattner"
  }
],
"foundingDate":"1972-04-01",
"legalName":"SAP SE"
}

To validate the output, you can copy the string and paste it into the JSON-LD playground page on http://json-ld.org/playground/ .

Need help

If you look at the page http://schema.org/docs/full.html you'll see, that there are hundreds of objects to be created in ABAP. If you want to support the SchemA project, please go to the project wiki under https://github.com/se38/SchemA/wiki/How-to-contribute-to-the-project and read the instructions (will be created soon). Thank you!

These projects are created under NW7.50 SP1 and tested under NW740 SP10 but the target version should be NW7.40 SP8, so please let me know if there are some syntax errors.

Conclusion

The next time your supplier of choice asks you in which format they can expect your purchase order, just response with: http://schema.org/Order

We are pleased to introduce a new SAP Cost and Revenue Allocation for Financial Products video which showcases how insurers can achieve unmatched, real-time insights into profitability and performance metrics. 

Find out how the SAP Cost and Revenue Allocation solution helps insurers streamline risk and finance processes, connect fragmented data sources, and reduce IT and operational complexity while increasing profitability.

This is an optimized way to quickly (3:21 minutes) and effectively gain an understanding of the value of the SAP Cost and Revenue Allocation solution, which helps Insurance companies Run Simple.

Demo videos are constructed based upon the ‘day-in-the-life’ approach to using SAP solutions. 

Enjoy the video and please share your feedback.

Join us on Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 1:00 PM EST/10:00 AM PST for insight on how Belgium's leading healthcare provider used SAP ASE 16 to benefit the lives of medical professionals and their patients.

UZ Leuven, the largest healthcare provider in Belgium, provides a consolidated workspace for physicians, nurses, doctors and patients using SAP ASE 16. The company utilizes their medical file system with 17 other hospitals to prevent lost medical records when transferring patients to other hospitals. SAP ASE 16 allows UZ Leuven to transparently refer patients between hospitals with the same procedures and the same quality proposal.

During the webcast we’ll show you how UZ Leuven uses SAP ASE 16 to:

• Successfully manage shared databases
• Support expected growth of 50%
• Scale systems to meet demand for increasing number of users

Please join us for a webcast with Reinoud Reynders, IT Manager Infrastructure & Operations at UZ Leuven, and Ashok Swaminathan, Senior Director, Product Management at SAP, to learn how this leading healthcare provider uses SAP ASE 16 to provide superior performance for its electronic patient management application.

Register Here

               There are certain times we know that, if we understand certain things, our work is 22.29% done. This is one such day for you. I tell you why, before that, to point out something, there was a time, around the height of popularity in Microservice, when a lot of people were telling that Microservices are small, independent, communicate through well-defined interfaces (like REST APIs), and provide business value. We know that DevOps teams are gradually transforming their infrastructure into a self-serve platform to avoid relying on tools from any single third party. Yes, yes, I am getting to it in just about a minute. It is wise and beneficial to look at the concepts underlying such a cloud-native design. And hence, 12 factor app came into picture.

12 factor apps concept give an insight on how to build applications that give software as a service.

Advantages

• Use declarative formats; minimize time, cost
• Offer maximum portability between execution environments
• Suitable for deployment on cloud platforms
• Enabling continuous deployment
• Can scale up easily

1. Codebase

One codebase tracked in revision control, many deploys

Code of the app is always tracked using version control systems like Git

Do

There is always a one-to-one correlation between the app and it’s codebase. If there are multiple codebases, it’s not an app – it’s a distributed system. Each component in a distributed system is a 12 factor app

There may be many deploys (running instances) of the app

Don’t

Multiple apps sharing the same code is a violation of twelve-factor

2. Dependencies

Explicitly declare and isolate dependencies

Do

Declare all dependencies, completely and exactly, via a dependency declaration manifest

Use dependency isolation tool to ensure no implicit dependency leak in

Don’t

Never relies on implicit existence of system-wide packages

3. Config

Store config in the environment

Do

Keep everything that is likely to vary between deploys in config

Resource handles to the database, Mem cached, and other backing services    

Credentials to external services such as Amazon S3 or Twitter

Per-deploy values such as the canonical host name for the deploy

Environment variables needn’t be checked into GitHub

Don’t

Storing config as constants in code

4. Backing Service

Treat backing services as attached resources

Backing service is any service the app consumes over the network

For example, DB, messaging/queuing service, cache, SMTP etc

Do

Make no distinction between local and third party services

Both should be accessed via a URL or other locator/credentials stored in the config

Resources can be attached and detached to deploys at will

Don’t

Make changes to app’s code to change resource

5. Build, release, run

Strictly separate build and run stages

Codebase is converted into a deploy-able file through three stages:

Build stage: Transform code to an executable bundle. Fetches dependencies, compiles binaries and assets.

Release stage: Combines the build with the deploy's current config.

Run stage: run the app in execution environment.

6. Process

Execute the app as one or more stateless processes

Do

Execute app as a stateless process that share nothing between each other

Complex apps may have many stateless processes

Data that has to be persisted should be stored in stateful backing service

Don’t

Never assumes that anything cached in memory or on disk will be available on a future request or job

Sticky sessions are a violation of twelve-factor and should never be used or relied upon

7. Port binding

Export services via port binding

A 12-factor app must be self-contained and bind to a port specified as an environment variable

Do

Similar to all the backing services you are consuming, your application must also interfaces using a simple URL

Create a separate URL to your API that your website can use which doesn’t go through the same security (firewall and authentication), so it’s a bit faster for you than for untrusted clients

Don’t

It can’t rely on the injection of a web container such as tomcat or unicorn; instead it must embed a server such as jetty or thin

8. Concurrency

Scale out via the process model

Do

Because a 12-factor exclusively uses stateless processes, it can scale out by adding processes

Ensure that a single instance runs in its own process. This independence will help your app scale out gracefully as real-world usage demands

Don’t

Not desirable to scale out the clock processes, though, as they often generate events that you want to be scheduled singletons within your infrastructure

9. Disposability

Maximize robustness with fast startup and graceful shutdown

Do

Use components that are ready and waiting to serve jobs once your app is ready

Technologies to consider are databases and caches like RabbitMQ, Redis, Memcached, and CenturyLink’s own Orchestrate. These services are optimized for speed and performance, and help accelerate startup times

Don’t

You should never do any mandatory “cleanup” tasks when the app shuts down that might cause problems if they failed to run in a crash scenario

10. Dev/prod parity

Keep development, staging, and production as similar as possible

The twelve-factor app is designed for continuous deployment by keeping the gap between development and production small

Do

Adopt continuous integration and continuous deployment models

Public cloud services make the infrastructure side easy, at least between QA/test, staging and production. This is one of Docker’s primary benefits (CF)

Don’t

Using different backing services (databases, caches, queues, etc) in development as production increases the number of bugs that arise in inconsistencies between technologies or integration

11. Logs

Treat logs as event streams

A twelve-factor app never concerns itself with routing or storage of its output stream. It should not attempt to write to or manage logfiles

Do

View logs in local consoles (developers), and in production, view the automatically captured stream of events which is pushed into real-time consolidated system for long-term archival

Stream the logs to two places: view these logs in real-time on your dev box and store them in tools, like ElasticSearch, LogStash and Kafka. SaaS products like Splunk are also popular for this purpose

Don’t

Don’t rely on these logs as the primary focus

12. Admin processes

Run admin/management tasks as one-off processes

Do

Admin/management tasks mentioned in the final factor should be done in production

Perform these activities from a machine in the production environment that’s running the latest production code

access to production console

Don’t

Updates should not be run directly against a database or from a local terminal window, because we get an incomplete and inaccurate picture of the actual production issues

Conclusion

As long as the application is stable, robust, reliable, and any adjective you give, the architecture of the application will be strong and these 12 factors are adopted by many major platforms and frameworks to improve the quality of the product. No matter where you stand, what language you use, use the right of 12 factors for the job, because, what you make with your code is how you express yourself.

As developers on the HANA Cloud Platform, you know that in order to build, extend, and integrate cloud-first apps, HCP provides different types of services such as integration services, analytics services, security services, IoT services, and UX services. These back-end services can be easily accessed using easy to consume APIs. For example, when you develop any IoT-based mobile application to monitor the room temperature, this application makes API calls to consume HCP IoT services and mobile services which will get/store data in the backend systems and display it on a mobile app. But these APIs alone are not sufficient. All of these APIs need to be managed and controlled. And this is done by API management. SAP API Management is one of the capabilities provided by integration services in HANA Cloud Platform.

SAP API Management is created to address API needs with features such as API provisioning and publishing, API discovery and consumption, security and access control, analytics and reporting, monitoring, operations and a developer portal. It provides a framework to expose SAP or non-SAP backend data and processes as APIs using REST, OData, and standard SOAP services. These APIs can be used to provide backend content to developers and 3rd party applications to drive commercial transactions and subscription growth.

As API Management is running on SAP’s HANA Cloud Platform, it immediately can tap into SAP’s unified cloud portfolio of services, developed apps, and integration capabilities all hosted on SAP’s Cloud infrastructure. In order to maintain the unified experience, SAP API Management integrates with classic SAP On-Premise services that run SAP Gateway via OData. With a built-in discovery feature, SAP API Management can connect to the repository of services already created and expose them as a managed API. It will also capture existing service documentation and include it with the generated API. Rather than app developers consuming services directly, you just access the APIs created using SAP API Management and can create apps without having to know the details about the system you are working on. APIs created using SAP API Management map a publicly available HTTP endpoint to backend services. SAP API Management handles the security and authorizations required to protect, analyze, and monitor your services.

Here is the API-based 4-layer architecture that explains where the API Management layer fits in:

Layer 1: API Runtime is the base layer. Developers create and build APIs from services, which could be anything providing data upon request. E.g. standard SAP on-premise Business Suite Service, a custom database, or some managed cloud service. This is the data which is locked in its own silo, which you are looking to make available in a lightweight, controlled manner.

Layer 2: The next layer, API Implementation, is an optional one. This relates to utilizing SAP Gateway or the reusable component Integration Gateway in order to transform RFCs, BAPIs, or other non-web enabled services into standard OData/REST or SOAP exposed services, which can then be consumed by applications designed to speak OData/REST or SOAP, such as API Management. This layer is optional, and only needed for services which are not natively web-enabled.

Layer 3: SAP API Management is a blanket layer between generation layer and the consumption layer, which is where all the apps live, providing users the powerful front-ends for consuming and utilizing the backend data. The API Management layer’s primary purpose is mediating all communication between these two layers.

Layer 4: This layer provides a single consistent look and feel to all the data it exposes, via REST or OData, so that regardless of what the source actually is, the apps consuming the information need only to know these standard data protocols in order to present them to the users.

SAP API Management consists of 3 high level components:

1. API platform – It provides tools to manage APIs and helps in adding, configuring APIs, and managing developers and apps. It helps to create and consume APIs, be it building API proxies as a service provider or using APIs, SDKs, and other convenient  services  as an app developer
2. API analytics – It provides powerful analytical tools to view short and long term real time usage trends of APIs. IP, URL, user ID for API call information, latency data, error data, and cache performance metrics etc. can be collected.
3. Developer services – It provides tools to manage app developers. To quickly onboard developers, it provides a developer portal for API discovery of publicly available API products. It provides facility to enforce Role Based Access Control (RBAC) to control access to features of the portal.

Finally, here are some of the main features of SAP API Management:

1. Discovery and Consumption – SAP API Management provides API discovery, catalog, subscription etc., making it easy to consume data across all devices and UIs. Complexity is reduced with unified access and governance of APIs across all landscapes. A developer portal provides comprehensive API exploration and documentation.
2. API Provisioning and Publishing – Features include API Registration, security and traffic policy definition, protocol definition and mapping, API Availability and Lifecycle Management.
3. Analytics and Reporting – Analytics powered by SAP HANA provide real-time visibility on how, who and when enterprise information is accessed via APIs. The analytics provide reports on usage metrics, errors, latency, and performance in a simple, intuitive Web experience. It helps to gain better insights on where to invest your resources in the future. The historical and predictive analytics let you inspect and troubleshoot any issues in the system.
4. Security and Access Control – SAP API Management provides policy enforcement, throttling and API Monitoring to aid in scaled and governed access to enterprise information. The security policies provide XML Threat Protection, JSON Threat Protection in addition to Message Validation policy for XML Schemas (XSDs) and WSDL definitions. The mediation policies that can be defined and associated to an API or service enable extraction, filtering and manipulation of messages including headers, URI paths, payloads, and query parameters. SAP API Management supports flexible choice of Authentication schemes such as SAML 2.0, OAuth, Client certificate, API Keys etc. It also provides Role Based Access Control for the Administration of APIs.
5. Traffic Management: SAP API Management provides quota policies to manage traffic to the backend servers in order to avoid overloading those servers. It also provides quota calculation at Application Level and Concurrency Rate-limiting and Spike Arrest for APIs.

Thus SAP API Management capabilities enable IT to simplify the way developers go about integrating with their SAP and non-SAP applications, thus reducing cost, fostering co-innovation and increasing participation in the API economy, in a lightweight and cost effective manner.

You can learn more about SAP API Management at

• SAP HANA Cloud Documentation - http://bit.ly/1ZO6mR4
• SCN http://scn.sap.com/community/api-management
• SAP - http://hcp.sap.com/capabilities/api-management.html
• Social media channels:
  • YouTube: http://spr.ly/youtube-sap-api-management
  • Facebook: SAP Cloud: https://www.facebook.com/SAPCloudSolutionshttps://www.facebook.com/sapdevelopers
  • Twitter: SAP Cloud: https://twitter.com/SAPCloud, SAP Developers: https://twitter.com/sapdevs

First of all, I want to open my first blog of the year with a Happy New Year and thank you for reading this blog.

I have been looking at how to get more involved in simplifying HANA development at Hitachi Consulting, especially for apps build on XS engine.

Last fall, I spent a few days at the Tech Ed conference and I was blown away by the Build tool and Splash. As I approach my weekend thinking about what I should grill, btw I enjoy grilling if you didn’t get it by the title of my blog, I was also thinking what to build next.

In this simple blog, I want to showcase a few steps of how to build a responsive application on Build. I am thinking that not too far from now, I may turn this into my own real app which I would like to share with other grilling fanatics who would like to share some recipes for me (and others) to try out so that next time I am grilling I will be thankful for your recipe as well.

These steps assume you already have an account on and that you are logged in to Build/Splash.

1) Click on create new project – (this image was captured after the fact)

2) Give it a name

3)    I added a list control and edited the data itself by clicking on each of the fields and typing on them.

This screenshot has a LOT of valuable information.

) The header of the application contains the name of my project

b) The sub-header contains (display mode to simulate a pc, tablet, phone. A ruler, an app map, icons to hide and show the left and right panels, a button to publish the project, and a preview button so you see it on the browser as a final application)

the Application Map where one can see the flow between the pages, add new pages, etc

c) The left panel has the controls to be used on the application. (table, list, button, label, grid, etc)

d) The right panel contains the properties, actions, and content for the selected control(s), for example, if I select an item in the list, then I can set the action to navigate to (Page 2) in my scenario as shown below

When I select the page 2 on the left panel, I can see what the content of that page will have. In my case I added an icon tab where I will display information about my recipes such as, ingredients, steps to cook, and pictures of the final product

Navigation (back): select page 2, then set Actions to navigate back to Page 1

To review the progress of our responsive application in Preview mode, we can select the preview button on the top right hand corner and we can see it (pc mode, tablet mode, phone mode).

Now, one of the problems developers face when developing an application is data. Well, on the Data tab in the left panel, we can click on the Data Editor button and...

The Build application allows us to use create an object manually, or upload a sample data file from excel as shown below. In my case, I simply used what was provided by default and edited the labels myself by clicking on the screen and entering my own text – ( recipes I have grilled )

Once you are happy with the design – then the next step is to publish it. Once the project is published, the Splash tool provides you with a url which you can use to test your application.

now.. if to take this a step further, what If I were able to import this same application into my HCP account. and be able to bind real data, and extend the application with the SAP Web IDE. Check out the next blog to read on those steps.

Thank you again for reading this blog and this was honestly a fun quick project and blog I was able to accomplish right before the start of my weekend. Please share some thoughts or comments,

happy programming

Hello all... This is my second blog of the year and I wanted to share some steps to show you how to import a Build application into the SAP Web IDE.

This blog assumes you have :

1) an account to the Build/Splash tool

2) you have already created and published a Build application

3) a HCP or trial HCP account

First and foremost, thank you for the time to read this blog. Also, there are some pre-reqs which we need to set up on our HCP account in order to be able to import a Build project into our HCP account.

1) Log in to your HCP account (or trial account)

2) click on the Destinations (left panel)

3) Add 2 destinations as shown below

then

once these 2 Destinations, please log off and wait 5-10 mins so that your account settings are refreshed by the system. Again, after 5-10 mins log back in.

The next steps once you have logged in is to

1) open the SAP Web IDE.

2) Click on create new project from template

3) On the template section, select Build Project ( this option will only appear if the 2 Destinations were entered correctly and your account settings were refreshed by the HCP)

Note: if you do not see the Build project option, verify the destinations and also make sure you have published the build project you want to import.

The two projects that I can import from below are in fact the 2 projects from my Build account. This validates again that the 2 Destinations were set up correctly on my HCP account.

After you have selected finish, then the application will be imported into your HCP SAP Web IDE.

Personally, I verified that I get an index.html file, at least 2 xml views (Page 1 and Page 2 from my build project) and the Component.js file that will contain my router – Actions I set up on the Build project

Before I look into any of the files, I clicked on Run just to see if my Build application is at least visually working. As I am able to see the same application from Build here, then I went ahead and clicked on my list items just to make sure the router was set up correctly.

Then, on this image I am validating, that the views were imported correctly ( in the views folder) and also project.json file contains the application settings.

The view was created with a unique id, which to me this is the main view as I had added a list control.

Then the next view is the Page 2 as I noticed the icon toolbar as one of the controls in the view. Again, this is just for me to verify that the views were created correctly.

SAP Mobile Platform SDK SP10 (herein referred to as “SMP SDK”) has some very interesting features that allows developer to create a fully functional (skeleton) application with just a few clicks.  The reason I use the term ‘skeleton’ is because the business logic (for example, pricing logic, work flow logic etc.) still needs to be included in the application by the developer.  Otherwise, the code for onboarding a device, enabling logging and tracing, opening an Online Store and consuming and even rendering the data in UI controls is all included in the application.  This makes any developer with virtually no knowledge of the SMP product to create an application within a few minutes.  While prior blogs on onboarding, logging and tracing etc. are still valid, it is highly recommended to follow the steps included in this blog when creating a Windows application. 

Highlights of the Windows application created using the application wizard

• Simplifies developer learning curve – Onboarding (device registration), logging, tracing, reading from data source is all taken care of
• Fully functional application with UI to render data using Microsoft recommended approach
• Project files based on best practices
• Support for multiple Windows platforms
• Windows 10 mobile support is preliminary in SP10 (as it was not released by Microsoft when SP10 was released)
• Windows 10 mobile support will be fully available in SP11

Creating a new Windows application workflow – from start to finish

The workflow below describes the ease in which you can create a multi-platform Windows application. The new project is fully functional (skeleton) and includes reading and rendering data from an Online Store.

Note: 

• This application wizard is only available for native Windows development – and not available for native iOS or Android development
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 does not support Windows 10 applications.  You need to install Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 for Windows 10 support

Installing SMP SDK SP10

The SMP SDK SP10 installer does some additional work than its predecessors.  The installer automatically checks to see if Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 + Update 3 or higher is installed.  If it detects that Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 + Update 3 or higher is installed, then it installs the Visual Studio template and the application wizard. 

Nuget Package Manager also has an entry for the location of the SMP related Nuget packages.  This pretty much eliminates any initial setup effort on the part of the developer.  As soon as the SMP SDK SP10 is installed, the developer can immediately create a Windows application. 

Note:

• Nuget packages are installed in the following folder.  <System Drive>\Program Files (x86)\SAP SE\SMP SDK Installer
• The .vsix file can also be found in this location.  In case you uninstall the project template and need to reinstall the project template, you can simply run this file

Visual Studio project template

SMP SDK SP10 installs the SAP Business Application project template in Microsoft Visual Studio automatically as part of the installation process.  This allows a developer to create a fully functional Windows application with virtually no experience of the SMP product. 

To create a Windows application using this new project template, do the following. 

• Open Microsoft Visual Studio and click New Project
• Under templates, select Visual C# and scroll down on the right pane to select SAP Business Application
• Enter the name and location for the project and click OK

Application wizard – Completely functional Windows app in just a few clicks

I will go over the sequence of wizard pages that are displayed to the user to create a Windows application.  At any point during the application wizard, you can click Finish to create a fully functional Windows application with the default settings. 

Select the Windows platforms you want to support.  Note that Windows 10 is supported only on Microsoft Visual Studio 2015. 

Enter all the values required for onboarding.  If no values are entered, then default values are used.  You can also choose to use MobilePlace configuration service and offer demo mode.  Settings page is implemented as a flyover to make changes to Onboarding values. 

Select if you want to enable logging and tracing for this application. 

The Windows application can consume the backend OData Service and render the data in UI controls automatically.  Microsoft recommended UI principles are practiced. 

You can also customize the appearance of the SAP UI controls.  By default, styles.xaml file includes standard SAP colors and settings.

The application wizard is smart enough to only package Nuget packages that are required by the application.

Running the application

The application is fully functional once the application wizard is complete.  To run the application, simply set one of the Windows platforms as your startup project.  For example, set Windows 8.1 as your startup project.  Press F5 (or Ctrl + F5 – without debugger attached) to run the Windows application. 

You are initially presented with the logon screen.  The values are prepopulated from the application wizard.  Simply click Register to onboard the device. 

Once onboarding is complete, you are also presented with data from the backend OData Service. Simply select the EntitySet that you want to view.  All the values are rendered in UI controls automatically.

Even complex types are rendered in the UI controls.

The Settings page allows you to unregister a device, enable logging and tracing etc. 

In the next blog, I will talk about how to customize the Windows application. 

Companies looking to disrupt markets and gain market share need endless ways to connect with consumers. This has created an emerging market of companies looking to deliver "likes", "shares" and "followers" to emerging brands. Below we'll look at 5 companies jumping into the new market.

Follower Sale

FollowerSale has attempted to make social media followers influencers available to a wide variety of clients. While bringing influencers together and providing access is nothing new, the potential followers affordability of scaled approach could create a shake-up in the industry. They are attempting to offer brands of all sizes access to on-demand media buzz. Their reach encompasses nearly every major social media app, with an innovative mobile-first strategy. This means real twitter followers to reaches consumers where they are already consuming large quantities of data: smartphones and tablets.

Traackr

Traackr is an established firm that brings together SEO, social media marketing and influencer marketing into one cohesive approach. They have an established track-record, working with firms like Verizon, Orange and United. For brands looking to expand their reach, Traackr starts first by helping companies identify the influencers that can offer the largest impact on their brand. This minimizes the risk of wasting time with low-quality influencers that are unable to convert in a company's niche market.

Firebelly Marketing

With 9 years of experience and a stable of major clients, Firebelly has a proven track record of delivering social media buzz. Their website offers exciting visuals, with a focus on the major focuses of their business. One of the things I really like about Firebelly is their candidness with prospective clients. The website lays out exactly what they do, along with some unique strategies. One area where this is evident is in their mention of looking at the competition's activity. When they bring on a client, they analyze the activity of their competition to see what's resonating with their target audience. This is a critical step that saves client money and reduces the time spent on unnecessary marketing ploys.

Ignite Social Media

Claiming to be one of the most innovative social media marketing firms in existence, Ignite claims to "turn the world of social media on its head everyday". This is a tall claim, considering that they're competing for market attention with the likes of Kim Kardashian and D'z Nutz. However, it appears what they are doing is working. National brands utilize Ignite's unique skill set for leveraging existing tools into powerful social media strategies.

Fanscape

Fanscape, a local Los Angeles firm, offers clients a proactive approach to social media marketing. They rely on the many talents of local LA artists, marketers and content developers to propel their clients into the social media feeds of consumers around the globe. One of key marketing strategies they implement is the use of blog content that is uniquely shareable. Funneling clients from social media into engaging, hyper-relevant blogs is a proven strategy that almost any SEO firm should be capable of delivering on.

Hi everyone,

My name is Man-Ted Chan and I’m from the SAP HANA Product Support team, today I wanted to discuss is row store data that remains in memory.

First thing we will need to discuss is that row store data is loaded into memory upon SAP HANA start up, it'll look like this:

Reattaching RS shared memory for RowStore segments

....

RS segments loaded from Persistency

Users who experience a slow start up should look into the amount of row store data in your system (You can run the query HANA_RowStore_Overview from SAP Note 1969700)

However, starting with SPS 07 you might have noticed that the start up time of a HANA system might a lot quicker (especially if your environment has a lot of row store data). The reason for this is that with SPS 07 row store data can be stored in shared memory. Shared memory is used to "share" data between process and is not represented in total memory used by resident memory (displayed memory usage in HANA Studio Admin Panel).

If you run the following on the OS level ipcs -m to view the shared memory you will see the shared memory will have segments set to DEST status and do not go away, even after the HANA services are stopped (Soft shutdown). The reason for this is because the row store data is still in shared memory so that when your HANA services are restarted it won't have to reload the data.

SPS07-08 (deprecated in SPS09 and higher)

indexserver.ini -> [row_engine] -> reuse_shared_memory_for_restart

Is set to true or false, if true the row store data will stay in shared memory.

indexserver.ini -> [row_engine] -> reuse_shared_memory_for_restart_timeout

This parameter sets the number of seconds the row store information is stored in shared memory after shutdown

SPS09 and higher

indexserver.ini -> [row_engine] -> keep_shared_memory_over_restart

Is set to true or false, if true the row store data will stay in shared memory.

indexserver.ini -> [row_engine] -> keep_shared_memory_over_restart_timeout

This parameter sets the number of seconds the row store information is stored in shared memory after shutdown

For more information on this please refer to SAP note 2159435

Keeping pace with the customer: easily said, difficult to achieve. And to make things harder, just as fashion brands catch up with consumer requirements, their behaviour patterns evolve, and they demand something new altogether.

So what exactly do fashion shoppers want from brands in 2016?

Of all the demographics, Generation Y is perhaps the most complex group for fashion brands to connect with. Compared to older consumers that have built up a more established pattern of behaviour, these relative babes move at a rapid and unpredictable pace. Even within the defined age bracket of 18-30 years, there’s a huge variation in the way they communicate, and their service expectations.

One theme common to most, though, is digital immersion. 86% have used their smartphone to make a purchase, and the National Retail Federation recently published an article claiming that Millennials ‘have no tolerance for companies that lag behind in technology’. They’re looking for instant gratification, content-rich experiences, and multi-channel convenience.

What they don’t want is to be pigeonholed into boxes; the brand experience must feel personal to them.

Social media is going to play an increasingly important role in fashion brands’ interaction with Gen Y in 2016. Research by Deloitte has revealed that almost half (47%) this age group use social networks as part of their shopper journey, in comparison to 19% of other age groups. 

And their priorities are founded more on ethics than status – sustainability is high on Millennials’ agenda, but their relationship with goods is more transient. PwC notes that younger consumers are far more likely to lease or rent a car than buy it, and this is influencing other aspects of their lives, including fashion retail.

In the year ahead, much attention will be devoted to understanding and extracting value from this group of shoppers, and with good reason: young people today are likely to live longer at home while they establish careers and relationships, and therefore their disposable income is greater.

However, focus on Millennial shoppers shouldn’t come at the expense of other demographics. Speaking at the International Content Marketing Summit late last year, Douglas McCabe of Enders Analysts revealed that 45-65 year-olds show less brand loyalty than other age groups, which may come as a surprise.

In fact, this should set off alarm bells in the fashion industry, as The Baby Boomers (as they’re known) are an equally lucrative segment. Just as the young twentysomething is no longer a hard-up, lie in until the afternoon stereotype, this older segment have worked hard their entire lives, and now want to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

Fashion is fast becoming indicative of their aspirational, jet-setting lifestyle. According to AARP travel, Baby Boomers are planning to take 4-5 trips during the course of 2016. They are broadening their horizons, finding time to enjoy the pursuits put on the backburner whilst raising a family, and – most importantly – want to focus on some long overdue ‘me time’.

Therefore, fashion brands need to indulge their new introspective focus by connecting them in the same, personalised manner as Millennials, through the channels in which more experienced shoppers respond best.

Ultimately, this idea of unique experience is common to fashion fans of all ages, and therefore brands must find a way to create tailored interactions at the same time as making customers feel included in an overarching brand identity.

Achieving this will rest on recognising what each customer wants – and having the back-end solution in place to deliver on individual promise.

Managing items by serial or batch numbers? SAP Business One can calculate for you the actual cost of each serial or batch number. This can help you determine the profitability of each and every batch or serial number.

You can apply the serial/batch valuation method either to the entire company, by selecting the option “Serial/Batch Valuation Method” in Company Details > System Initialization. Alternatively, you can apply it to selected items by choosing the option “Serial/Batch” in Item Master Data:

To view the cost details of given serial number or batch, generate the Batches and Serials Inventory Audit Report (Inventory > Inventory Reports):

The serial/batch valuation method is only applicable to companies where perpetual inventory is managed.

Available since SAP Business One 9.1, version for SAP HANA PL04 and SAP Business One 9.1 PL04.

Being a part of a multinational company sometimes it is hard to keep track of returns. I had written a query that take a list of return numbers and generates results of items not in the system.

declare @myString varchar(100)='123,RTV0267111,RTV0269188,RTV0284929,RTV0284782'  
;WITH
cte AS
( SELECT CAST(N'' +Replace(@myString,',','') + '' as XML) AS vals )
SELECT s.a.value('.', 'NVARCHAR(50)') as num
FROM cte CROSS APPLY vals.nodes('/H/r') S(a) 
EXCEPT
select DISTINCT NumAtCard from ORIN
WHERE FatherCard = 'GTHead' AND DocType = 'I' AND CANCELED = 'N'  ORDER BY NUM;

When I first started with SAP CRM I used to struggle for the latest document on each module of SAP CRM like Sale ,Services Marketing , Interaction canter , mobile clients ,middleware etc  these goes on..,

Unfortunately we have everything here in help.sap for all modules of SAP business suite one can download and kept it for later reference or can go through in one shot.

Expand /Click on customer Relationship mgmt options trust me we are done for the decades to come there are so many document which needs to be taken care.

By selecting the SAP Customer Relationship Management options one can able to follow the documents within based on the latest releases from SAP. Sometimes you may hear more outside but reflecting here takes some time in preparing these docs off course!

Once getting inside the versions vice option in the main page we have below mentioned options available in one stop.

SAP Notes with new release and SAP installation and upgrade information:

Configuration and Deployment Information and SAP security info:

System Administration and Maintenance Information /Application Help/SAP Fiori for SAP CRM :

Note : This will be helpful for new beginners in SAP irrespective of SAP module.

Happy Learning / Sharing!!!

You wonder why a field is filled automatically by the system.  How to make it happen?  Here are some general settings:

1. In the screen level

Firstly find which screen the field belongs to.  Take the field 'process order' in t-code COR6 for example.

Click F1 help on the field. Then click button 'Technical details'.  You will find the screen number and field name on the popup.

In t-code SE51, check the field attributes.  There is a field 'parameter ID' and 2 indicators 'SET parameter' and 'GET parameter'.  They control whether the field can store the field content to an internal parameter or get the content from the parameter.

If you go to t-code COR3 and check the same.  On Screen 5110 of program SAPLCOKO, the field 'process order' also refers to the same parameter ID.

Therefore, if the indicators 'SET parameter' and 'GET parameter' are set for field CORUF-AUFNR, after you dispaly a process order in COR3, then navigate to COR6, the process order number will be shown automatically.

2. In program level

Sometimes the system can set or get a parameter id by coding directly.  It usually occurs in a PBO module.  You can set a breakpoint at 'GET parameter'.

3. In customizing

For some transactions you may be able to control it by customizing settings.  As an example you can check the KBA 2031843.

2031843 - Fields 'Material' 'Plant' and 'Group' are proposed automatically from previous input in transaction code CA01/CA02/CA03

SAP BI Platform Support Tool 2.0是由SAP最新推出的一款功能强大的SAP BI系统管理工具。此工具完全免费并且会得到持续地更新和维护。

作为BIPST 1.0的进化版本，BIPST 2.0在原有的主要功能Landscape Analysis Report的基础上又新增了E2E Trace, 录制屏幕，系统更改分析，认证配置向导，Enterprise别名管理以及连接分析等十余项新功能。

无论是BI系统的日常维护，系统配置还是异常问题的原因分析，BIPST 2.0都将会是您最佳助手。

首次使用

1. 安装SAP BI Platform Support Tool 2.0

SAP BI Platform Support Tool 2.0作为SAP 官方标准产品，目前只支持在SAP Store中下载。请点击下载地址下载。下载之前可能会需要您进行简单的注册或者使用SCN账户登陆。登陆之后，在如下界面中点击Trial Version开始下载。另外，BIPST 2.0只支持在64位的客户端运行。

系统会向您注册的邮箱发一封含有下载地址的邮件。请检查您的邮箱并点击链接下载。

下载成功后，您会得到一个文件名为BI_PLATFORM_SUPPORT_TOOL_2.0_RTM.zip的压缩文件。请您解压缩这个文件，之后双击BISupportToolSetup.exe运行安装程序。

您需要在Destination folder中填写安装目标路径。这里我用的是C:\BIPST20。之后点击Install开始安装。

安装成功后，您就可以使用BIPST 2.0的部分功能，如导出BI Servers和Services的基本信息。我们还需要另外两个额外的组件，才能完整体验BIPST 2.0的强大之处。

2. 安装SAP Host Agent

在BIPST 2.0中，有一些功能需要使用SAP Host Agent来搜集必需的信息。SAP Host Agent是一个轻量级的系统服务，可以提供一条BIPST 和BI系统以及Web Application Server节点之间的安全通信通道。

如果您已经在BI平台和Web Application Server的每个节点上都安装了 Solution Manager Diagnostic Agent 7.x, 那么您就不要再额外安装SAP Host Agent了。因为Diagnostic Agent中已经包含了SAP Host Agent。

如果您已经通CMC Monitoring安装了SAP Host Agent，您也不需要在BI服务器的节点上再安装SAP Host Agent了。但是，您还需要在您所有的Web Application Server的节点上安装SAP Host Agent。

如果您从来没有安装过SAP Host Agent，您需要在BI服务器以及Web Application Server的所有节点上安装该服务。

1. 登陆SAP Software Download Center.
   
2. 点击Search for Software 并搜索"SAP Host Agent".
   
   
3. 点击SAP Host Agent 7.20然后根据您BI服务器以及Web Application Server的操作系统类型进行选择。
   
   
4. 点击SAP HOST AGENT 7.20 SP207 (或者最新的SP版本)进行下载得到文件SAPHOSTAGENT207_207-20005735.SAR。
   
   
5. 回到SAP Software Download Center 搜索“SAPCAR”。
6. 点击SAPCAR 7.20并根据您的主机操作系统类型选择并下载得到文件SAPCAR_721-20010453.exe。
   
   
7. 将下载得到的两个文件放到同一个临时文件夹中。
   
8. 在开始菜单中以Administrator运行命令行程序并切换到该文件夹中。
   
9. 执行下面的命令解压SAR文件。
   SAPCAR_721-20010453.exe -xvf SAPHOSTAGENT207_207-20005735.SAR
   
   
10. 解压完成之后，执行下面的命令安装SAP Host Agent。该命令会自动新建一个默认用户sapadm。安装过程中请根据提示为sapadm用户设置密码。
    saphostexec.exe -install
    
    
11. 安装结束之后在控制面板->Services中确认下面的两个service正常运行。
    SAPHostControl
    SAPHostExec
    
12. 打开 <BIPSTInstallPath>\BISupport\bin\operations\Windows (<BIPSTInstallPath>代表BI Platform Support Tool的安装文件夹）
    
13. 将该文件夹下的文件夹operation.d复制到C:\Program Files\SAP\saphostctrl\exe 文件夹中。
    
    
14. 在其余的BI服务器以及Web Application Server的所有节点上重复7-13的操作。

需要注意的是，您不需要在运行BIPST的客户端上安装SAP Host Agent。所有的安装都是在BI 服务器以及Web Application Server上完成的。

3. 配置JMX

BIPST 2.0使用JMX来监控每个Web Application Server实例。因此在使用之前还需要为每个Web Application Server配置JMX。下面的例子是如何在基于Windows 服务器上安装的Tomcat上配置JMX。在例子中，使用了无密码保护的模式。对于生产系统，建议您为JMX设置用户名密码以保证安全性。

1. 在Tomcat 服务器上，打开开始菜单，选择Tomcat->Tomcat Configuration。
   
2. 切换到Java选项卡，并在Java Options中添加如下内容。

   -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote

   -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=8008

   -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false

   -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false
   

3. 点击保存并重启Tomcat。
4. 在其他所有的Tomcat 节点上重复1-3的操作。

4.配置BIPST 2.0

在开始使用BIPST 2.0之前，您还需要完成如下步骤以配置必要的相关信息。

1. 启动BIPST 2.0并点击Landscape Configuration。
   
2. 点击Add创建一个新的BI Landscape。在弹出来的登录界面上登录BI系统。
   
3. 登录成功后，所有的BI节点会显示在Servers List中。
   
4. 点击第一个节点，之后点击HostAgent Settings。在Username中填写sapadm，在Password中填写 2. 安装SAP Host Agent中第11步里设置的密码。点击Validate。验证成功后，该按钮会变成Validated。
   
5. 在其余的所有BI节点上进行同样的操作。
6. 点击Server Lists中的Create按钮。
   
7. 选择Web Application Server并填写Hostname和Port信息。
   
8. 点击OK，一个WAS的节点会出现在Servers List中。
   
9. 点击该WAS节点，重复步骤4的操作。
10. 在Web Application Logging Directories 中填写BI Web Application的日志路径。一般来说，Web Application的日志路径可能存在于如下的位置：
    

    WINDOWS
    
    <INSTALL_DRIVE>:\SBOP*
    <INSTALL_PATH>:\SAP BusinessObjects\tomcat\*.glf
    <INSTALL_PATH>:\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\logging\SBOP*
    C:\windows\system32\configure\<systemprofile>\SBOP*
    C:\users\<appserver_user>\SBOP*
    
    UNIX
    
    $HOME/SBOP*
    <INSTALL_PATH>/sap_bobj/tomcat/bin/SBOP*

    本例中Web Application的路径为C:\SBOPWebapp_<WebApplicationName>_<ip_port>。
    

11. 点击JMX Settings，并输入JMX的监听端口。（在3. 配置JMX中-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=8008指定。本例中为8008）。
    
12. 点击Validate。验证成功后，该按钮会变成Validated。
13. 在其余所有的WAS节点上重复6-11的操作。

至此您已经完成了BIPST 2.0的所有安装以及配置操作。接下来让我们一起来逐步探索BIPST 2.0的便捷与强大吧。

Landscape Analysis Report

Landscape Analysis Report作为BI Platform Support Tool最为经典的功能，在BIPST 2.0的版本中得到了大幅增强。 在新版本的Landscape Analysis Report中，您除了可以查看BI Servers和Services的详细配置，还可以查看硬件配置、WAS配置及运行信息、Patch历史等诸多相关信息。

如果您在使用BI系统的过程遇到一些问题需要创建Incident，那么在Incident中附上一份最新导出的Landscape Analysis Report可以使SAP技术支持人员更全面细致地了解您系统的当前状况并极大地提高该Incident的处理速度。

1. 创建Landscape Analysis Report

您可以参考以下步骤创建一个完整版本的Landscape Analysis Report。

1. 启动BIPST 2.0并点击Create Report。
2. 勾选Select All。
3. 点击Submit。
   
   
4. 完成后，系统会自动跳转到Report Results显示Report结果。
   
5. 如果您需要导出该Landscape Analysis Report，请点击File -> Save -> Save Landscape Analysis 将该Report导出成一份zip文件。
   

================未完待续======================

在之后的更新里将会陆续介绍Landscape Analysis Report的详细信息，如何用BIPST 2.0获取E2E Trace，认证配置助手等功能。敬请期待！

SAP Lumira, Server for BI Platform is now supporting bookmark facility. We can bookmark an instance of the story.

SAP Lumira, Server for BI Platform provides you with an option to make changes to the stories in a Lumira document in the story viewer and to store them as Bookmark. These Bookmark are available in the document once created. When you open a document in Lumira story viewer, you can filter data based on your requirement by applying filters. You can then save this state of the document as Bookmark

For example, you have a document which provides information on the populations of various cities around the world. You want to share this information with your colleagues located in various cities. They are only interested in viewing information related to their particular city however. You can share this document with your colleagues, and they can filter data related to cities that interest them and save them as Bookmark. This helps your colleague to avoid creating multiple copies of the document or stories. It also allows them to switch between different Bookmarks and to explore the data that is of interest to them.

We can create two kinds of Bookmark

• Personal Bookmark: This Bookmark is only visible to the user who created it.
• Global Bookmark: This Bookmark is visible to all users who can access the document.

Steps to create Bookmark:

Creating a Bookmark allows you to save any filter that you have applied to the story, without creating a copy of a document

Log on to SAP Lumira, Server for BI Platform

Open the document and edit it and add input controls ,select values that you want bookmark, can be changed always, Switch to view mode ,Then click on the bookmark(first time) option in the top right

Adding filters using the filter bar in view mode by specifying the values that you want to Bookmark is also possible

If you want save a copy of the existed bookmark click on the Bookmark as option

Enter a name for the Bookmark. If you want to create a Personal Bookmark, select the Personal Bookmark button.  If you want to create a Global Bookmark, select the Global Bookmark button. Choose Done. The bookmarks will be listed in the dropdown and can be selected from the Bookmark dropdown list.

Choose the set As Default option to see that Bookmark every time you open a document

To delete a bookmark hover on the bookmark from the bookmarkdropdownlist and choose the cross mark.

The 'Save' and 'Save As' options are disabled for Bookmark to save the document, To save the document need to switch to document view or edit the doc and save the document

• Install SAP NetWeaver Application Server 7.3 or 7.4 for Java.
  • The recommended minimum SAP NetWeaver Support Package stacks are:
  • SAP NetWeaver Release 7.30 Support Package 08
  • SAP NetWeaver Release 7.31 Support Package 04
  • SAP NetWeaver Release 7.40 Support Package 04

• Install LVM by SUM (Deploy below SCA files by SUM) & Restart SAP.

• After the initial setup, you can access SAP Landscape Virtualization Management using the following URL:

http://<host>:<port>/lvm