ECC Extend Business Process Scenario

Description

The main intent of this scenario is to complement an existing business process in an SAP solution – currently SAP ECC (ERP Central Component) - with additional business process steps. This involves adding major logic and/or additional data and goes beyond simple UI changes.

Detailed steps of the S/4 HANA on premise Extension Scenario can be found here

This application showcases:

Building application on SAP Business Technology platform using SAP Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP)
Consuming Events from SAP ECC using SAP Event Mesh
Consuming REST API's from SAP ECC using SAP BTP Connectivity Service

Business Scenario

A business scenario is used to showcase how to build a SAP ECC extension Application.

As an employee of Business Partner Validation Firm iCredible, which is a third-party vendor of ACME Corporation, John would like to get notifications whenever new Business Partners are added in SAP ECC backend system of ACME Corporation. John would then be able to review the Business Partner details in his extension app. He would proceed to visit the Business Partner’s registered office and do some background verification. John would then proceed to update/validate the verification details into the extension app. Once the details are verified, the Business Partner gets activated in the SAP ECC system of ACME Corporation.

Custom extension application that works independently from SAP ECC
Changes in SAP ECC communicated via events in real time to extension application.
Compute intensive batch processing available on demand (serverless environment)
Vendor personnel needs access to only custom app

Architecture

Solution Diagram

The Business Partner Validation application is developed using SAP Cloud Application programming Model (CAP) and runs on the SAP Business Technology platform, Cloud Foundry Environment. It consumes platform services like Event Mesh, SAP HANA and Connectivity. The events generated in SAP ECC are inserted into the Event Mesh queue. The application running in Cloud Foundry polls the queue for these messages and inserts them into the HANA database. It uses SAP ECC REST API's to read Business Partner Data from SAP ECC system. It also updates the address and removes central block on the Business Partner once verified.

Requirements

SAP ECC on premise system.
SAP Business Technology platform account with Event Mesh service. The 'default' plan for Event Mesh service is required.

For local development you would require the following:

Node js
Cloud Foundry Command Line Interface (CLI)
Visual Studio Code
cds-dk
SQLite
To build the multi target application, we need the Cloud MTA Build tool, download the tool from here
For Windows system, install 'MAKE' from https://sap.github.io/cloud-mta-build-tool/makefile/

Note: Please set the npm registry for @sap libraries using the command :
npm set @sap:registry=https://npm.sap.com

multiapps plugin - cf install-plugin multiapps
mbt - npm install -g mbt

Configuration

Entitlements

The application requires below set of SAP Business Technology platform Entitlements/Quota

Service	Plan	Number of Instances
Event Mesh	default	1
SAP HANA Schemas & HDI Containers	hdi-shared	1
SAP HANA Cloud	hana	1
Application Runtime		3

Project Structure

The project contains below folders and files

File / Folder	Purpose
`app/`	content for UI frontends go here
`db/`	your domain models and data go here
`srv/`	your service models and code go here
`package.json`	project metadata and configuration
`readme.md`	this getting started guide

Steps to deploy locally

Open terminal in VSCode
Run cds watch

Steps to deploy the application on Cloud Foundry

Build the application mbt build -p=cf
Login to Cloud Foundry by typing the below commands on command prompt
```
cf api <api>
cf login -u <username> -p <password>
```
api - URL of the Cloud Foundry landscape that you are trying to connect to.

Select the org and space when prompted to.
Deploy the application

Navigate to mta_archives folder and run the below command from CLI

cf deploy BusinessPartnerValidation_1.0.0.mtar

Demo script

In the command line interface run the command cf apps
Find the URL for the app BusinessPartnerValidation-ui - this is the launch URL for the Business Partner Validation application.
Launch the URL in a browser.
Click on Business Partner Validation tile

The list of Business Partners along with their verification status gets displayed.

Enter transaction code 'bp'

Click on Person

Provide first name, last name for the business partner
Provide the address
Move to the status tab and check mark the 'Central Block' lock. Save the BP. This will create a new Business Partner