SAP Global Alliance Technology Team Blog

SAP TechEd in Vienna – Microsoft Session about Office 14 and SharePoint 2010 – Presentation and Sample Code posted

As written in my last blog I was not able to make it to SAP TechEd Vienna but my colleagues Steve Fox and Juergen Grebe delivered a great presentation in front of more than 200 people about Office 14, SharePoint 2010, and SAP. Steve already posted a blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/steve_fox/archive/2009/10/28/sap-teched-2009-office-sharepoint-session.aspx and he also published the presentation and some of the source code used for the demo at his skydrive: http://cid-40a717fc7fcd7e40.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/SAP%5E_TechEd%5E_2009.

- Juergen

SAP TechEd in Vienna – Microsoft Session about Office 14 and SharePoint 2010, other Microsoft related sessions

I planned to be in Vienna for SAP TechEd next week for doing a presentation about Office 14 and SharePoint 2010 but as it looks I have to skip my travel. My colleagues Steve Fox and Juergen Grebe will deliver the session instead, so you still have a chance to get a first picture of Office14, SharePoint 2010, and the integration with SAP. Don’t miss the session on Wednesday, October 28^th, from 9:45 – 10:45 AM in room L3.

Juergen Thomas, the technical lead and architect for SAP on SQL Server at Microsoft, will also give a presentation about “New SQL Server and Windows Releases as Platform for SAP”, if you are interested in the great benefits of running your SAP installation on the Microsoft platform I would recommend you attend this session.

Another great session is “Service-Based Single Sign-On in an SAP and Microsoft Combined Environment” from Martin Raepple who works as Standards Architect at SAP. It’s a hands-on session and he delivered it already twice at SAP TechEd Phoenix with great success and only standing room left so if you are interested in security and identity management show up early.

If you have any questions around Microsoft and SAP feel free to attend the sessions or stop by at the Microsoft booth.

- Juergen

SAP TechEd in Phoenix from October 13. - 16. – Microsoft Session about Standard Based Interoperability

Next week is SAP TechEd in Phoenix, Arizona, and I will present about standard based interoperability between Microsoft .NET and SAP NetWeaver. In the session I will cover Web Services, Enterprise Services, SAML, CMIS, and XML-A. The session is SOA216 at Thursday, October 15^th, from 5:45 – 6:45 in Room L14. If you have any questions around Microsoft and SAP feel free to attend the session or stop by at our booth.

- Juergen

Experiences with SAP in-place upgrades

Many of you probably have already seen messages that in-place upgrades of the Windows O/S with third-party apps require special attention. Upgrading from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 or from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008 R2 will result in a message like the following:

Before continuing with the upgrade, make sure software vendors support your software on Windows Server 2008. Follow their software specific recommendations before and after the upgrade. To verify software compatibility on the Windows Server Catalog and to download tools and documentation, go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=85172.

Important: If software isn’t supported on Windows Server 2008, or if the software vendor does not support software that is installed during the upgrade of the operating system, uninstall that software before you upgrade. If you do not uninstall the software, your system will be unsupported, the software might not work, and software settings or other information might be lost.

Since SAP did not perform testing of the O/S upgrade, there is currently no information or support statement from SAP on this available. As I did recently a couple of tests on upgrading Windows, I wanted to share some best practice with you.

Before starting any upgrade, typical IT Best practice like creating backups – with a virtualized installation, possibly a snapshot – is of course mandatory. Also, the question if the current SAP version installed is supported on my target O/S – today that’s Windows Server 2008 – has to be resolved.  This information is found at the SAP Platform Availability Matrix (PAM) at SAP’s Service Marketplace. Mainstream ERP applications which run on Netweaver 7.0 are supported on W2K8.

One important question for the upgrade is the type of Database used. If SQL Server is installed, it’s supported by Microsoft for in-place upgrades. For any other type of DB, one would need to verify with the DB vendor. In my upgrade tests, I had a Web Application Server 7.0 with SQL Server on Windows Server 2003; therefore I had no problem with the DB.

The support statement above would now ask me to uninstall my SAP Web Application Server instance before the upgrade and re-install this instance after the upgrade has finished. I did however perform the in-place upgrade to see what problems would come up. I did this in two steps, form W2K3 to W2K8 and from W2K8 to W2K8 R2 and for each type ABAP and Java.

The upgrade process itself went very smooth, besides the message above everything worked fine. In both cases on the ABAP side, the SAP instance did not start immediately after the upgrade. I found some errors in the traces indicating that the Message server of the SAP instance was unable to determine at which port it should listen. The SAP port definition is usually in the file C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\services. I found that this file was replaced with a new version during the upgrade. After restoring the SAP specific entries into this file, the instance started and worked without any problem. Basically the same happened on the Java side. Here also the port definitions in the services file have been overwritten by a new file. The only difference here was that tracing the effect in the logs was a bit harder. However, after restoring the SAP specific port info’s into the services file, everything worked also here again.

It’s clear that this best practice cannot be considered to be a supported process but knowing the potential problems may help to avoid some pitfalls and save time. I always would suggest to keep a private backup of the services file and restore the SAP service port config after upgrading. In all cases, this has helped to get my systems to work again very fast.

- Josef

SAP GUI Support for Win 7

As Microsoft has announced the availability of Windows 7 at Oct. 22 2009, we have raised the question of early support for Win 7 by SAP GUI with SAP. The official statement of SAP is SAP GUI 7.20 will support Win 7. Information about the schedule and features supported are in SAP note 147519 which basically says:

SAP GUI for Windows 7.20 is scheduled for shipment in March / April 2010. The new SAP GUI release is planned to offer the following new features among others:

• Support for Windows 7 operating system
• Support for Office 14 package

As this schedule would potentially cause some problems with customers who would like to roll-out Win 7 early after RTM, we have gotten the following statement from SAP:

All SAP customers which will go live with Win 7 after SAP GUI 7.20 is publicly available in March 2010 (End of March) are required to install SAP GUI 7.20. All SAP customers however who want to go live with Win 7 before this time will be supported by SAP as pilot customers by installing SAP GUI 7.10 on Win 7. This consequently means there are no changes in the official announcement about support for Win 7 which will start with the availability of SAP GUI 7.20.

All customers who want to get earlier support for Win 7 (based on SAP GUI 7.10) have to contact SAP and will be registered on a list. SAP will support those registered customers in their best possible way - however, there is a time until than those customer will have to upgrade to SAP GUI 7.20. This time is end of June 2010. One of the requirements is the use of all actual patches. Corrections from SAP side will not be documented but will be shipped as part of the normal patch process. SAP will of course provide intense testing of SAP GUI 7.10 on Win 7.

- Josef

SAP GUI 7.10 SP 13 - Support for Office 2007 Formats (*.docx and *.xlsx) and for Internet Explorer 8

Hello,

SAP released SP13 for SAP GUI beginning of May. With this service pack SAP announced two important new features:

·         Support of IE 8 in SAP GUI, see SAP note 66971

“Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is supported by SAP GUI for Windows 7.10 as of patchlevel 13.”

·         Support for Office 2007 files (*.docx and *.xlsx), note 1286768

“With new changes done in SAP Office Integration, both old .DOC & .XLS as well as new *.DOCX & *.XLSX files of MS Office will be supported.
Previously from SAP Office Integration it was only possible to work with compound document formats. As new Microsoft Office 2007 (*.docx, *.xlsx) files are non-compound document, it was not possible for SAP Office Integration to support the same. Now *.DOCX and *.XLSX format are also supported.”

SAP changed this in SP 13 for SAP GUI and DOCX as well as XLSX files are now supported. See also SAP note 1286768.

- Juergen

New White Paper about Hyper-V for SAP Best Practice

As I got often asked about planning for the right infrastructures and operation for SAP in virtualized installations using Hyper-V, I just finished my White Paper which gives answers here. It addresses the aspect of SAP sizing and support, design of network and storage infrastructures, high availability, licensing and management of such infrastructures. The White Paper can be found here:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/9/0/990A0669-8EEA-4B30-BB39-A2CD0F0D761B/BestPracticeforSAPonHyper-VWhitePaperv1.9.docx

or on our Virtualization website:

http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/solutions/business-critical-applications/default.mspx

Have fun working with Hyper-V

Josef

SAP Sapphire and ASUG Annual Conference in Orlando is around the corner – Microsoft presentations at the event

The annual ASUG conference and SAP SAPPHIRE will take place from May 11^th – May 14^th in Orlando, Florida. As every year Microsoft will be attending the exhibition with an own booth so if you have any questions regarding SAP running on Windows Server, SAP and SQL Server, or SAP – Microsoft Interoperability, feel free to stop by and ask the experts.

In addition we will have a few presentations about Microsoft and SAP, three of them presented by me:

·         Microsoft and SAP Interoperability - Monday, May 11, 1:00 p.m.

Half-Day Seminar Monday, May 11, 1:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. $295 ASUG member/$395 non-member Come join us for this pre-conference seminar, and learn about the current state and future direction of interoperability between Microsoft and SAP. Hear directly from SAP’s and Microsoft’s interoperability gurus about interoperability between their respective portal technology platforms: SAP NetWeaver Portal, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). More companies are now embracing dual portal strategies. Discover what portal interoperability solutions and scenarios are available now and what is on the road map. Explore how to leverage the strengths of both portal technology platforms. Additionally, come hear about interoperating directly with SAP backend systems via Web services such as service-oriented architecture (SOA), the Web Dynpro development environment, and .NET. Learn about other non-portal interoperability solutions and scenarios, what methods are available now, and what may be coming for future use. Hear discussions from Microsoft, SAP, and customers on Microsoft and SAP interoperability. Learn more about which interoperability methods are best under different circumstances and how these interoperability methods should best be utilized.

·         Microsoft Office SharePoint and SAP NetWeaver: Interoperability - Tuesday, May 12, 2:00 p.m.

This session covers interoperability between the SAP NetWeaver™ technology platform (including the SAP NetWeaver Portal component and a backend supported by SAP NetWeaver), Duet software, and Microsoft Office business applications. Attendees will learn about the next release of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, interoperability with SAP software, and standards such as WSRP, as well as about advanced Web services for achieving a standards-based integration between Microsoft Office SharePoint and SAP software. In addition, this session explores Microsoft’s internal use of SAP software and Microsoft Office SharePoint and its best practices based on this experience.

·         Interoperability at Microsoft IT: What Is in Production Every Day - Thursday, May 14, 10:30 a.m.

Learn the “in’s and out’s” of interoperability between Microsoft and SAP software as practiced by Microsoft IT for their internal SAP deployments. Look at a range of solutions, from Duet software to embedding the Web Dynpro development environment and SharePoint, OBAs (Office Business Applications), to full service-oriented architecture (SOA) application development in a .net environment. See examples of single sign-on (SSO), connector technologies, and others that are used in production today. Discuss the architectural factors that lead to this landscape. Examples are drawn from recruiting applications (including the deployment of an SAP application on a MS SharePoint platform, SSO, BSP, integration with Web Dynpro, SAP enhancement package considerations, and point of contact work with Duet) and pricing applications (including SOA compositions, OBA integration, WCF connector (replacement for .net connector), as well as any other “tricks” the presenters may have.

 Other presentations about Microsoft – SAP are:

·         Microsoft and SAP - Better Together- Tuesday, May 12, 10:30 a.m.

Microsoft and SAP are longstanding partners. This session focuses on the opportunity that you, as a customer, have in using the best of both IT worlds. Uncover how we interoperate beyond SQL and Duet. Learn how you should think about security, search federation, mobility, infrastructure, user interface strategy, and much more in this informative session.

·         Why Duet Matters for Your IT Organization's Success - Tuesday, May 12, 1:15 p.m.

Duet delivers efficient, out-of-the-box scenarios that provide functionality for information workers and business managers - and enable IT to provide transparent, SAP best practices to new user groups. Hear real-world examples of how one customer is utilizing Duet. Consider lessons learned and recommendations from the organization's IT group. Understand the implementation roadmap and skills that ensure a highly successful Duet deployment.

Hope to talk to you during one of the presentations or at the Microsoft booth!

- Juergen

Connecting Line-of-Business (LOB) Systems like SAP and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

It’s a very common scenario that customers or partners use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server in combination with their different LOB Systems like SAP, PeopleSoft, or Siebel. For connecting from Microsoft Office SharePoint Server the customer has various choices depending on the version of the backend system and the needed functionality. Microsoft shipped the BizTalk Adapter Pack which allows you to connect to LOB Systems like SAP and use the exposed functionality from Visual Studio directly or through Microsoft BizTalk Server. A few colleagues now published a document describing how to use this Adapter Pack in order to connect LOB Systems with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. You will find the document here, more information about the BizTalk Adapter Pack can be found at this Tutorial and at the Microsoft BizTalk Adapter Pack Samples page.  

- Juergen

UI Strategies – OBAs and MOSS for SAP Overview Paper published

We published a new whitepaper about Office Business Applications and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for SAP; you can find the paper here: UI Strategies - OBAs and MOSS for SAP. The paper gives a short overview of what’s possible today when integrating Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with SAP or when building an Office Business Application accessing SAP Line-of-Business Systems.

Currently we are working on two new papers which should be published in the next couple of weeks, one describing how to setup the WSRP Toolkit for Office SharePoint Server 2007 (can be found in the MSDN Code Gallery) and consuming this Web Parts then in SAP NetWeaver Portal, the second one about a Silverlight application hosted in Office SharePoint Server showing information about timesheets and employees from the SAP system.

- Juergen

New whitepaper about Microsoft BI - Unloading fact data from SAP BI 7.0

We have published a new whitepaper in the Interoperability - Business Intelligence area. This time Hermann Daeubler gives an overview of how to unload fact data from a SAP BI 7.0 system using th Queryview Web Service. You will find a sample C# application which connects via Web Services to the SAP BI system and which allow you to unload fact data which then can be used for further steps in a Microsoft based solution. This approach does not require the installation of any additonal adapters or DLLs. The paper can be found at Unloading fact data from SAP BI 7.0 using the Queryview Web Service and C#.

- Juergen

Microsoft .NET and SAP – The Book from MSPRESS will be published beginning of February

Nearly one year ago we I contacted MSPRESS and asked them whether they are interested in publishing a book about Microsoft .NET and SAP. When SAP told me they would be interested in publishing such a book I asked my colleagues Steve Fox, Scott Adams, and Thomas Reimer to take over some topics and we started writing and developing the samples. After one year of moonlighting work we finally finished the book and it will be published at the beginning of February. You can find the information about the book at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Books/12513.aspx, it has 480 pages full of information around Microsoft and SAP, and we covered topics like:

·         Microsoft BI and SAP

·         SharePoint and SAP

o    iView Web Parts

o    Business Server Pages

·         Office Communication Server

·         Microsoft InfoPath

·         Web Services

·         …

For most of the topics we have included detailed walk-through’s so that you can use the samples as a basis for developing your own solutions.

I hope the book will help you in your work in the Microsoft/SAP Interoperability space, if you are more interested in a book which covers SAP running on Windows take a look to the book from my colleague Josef Stelzel (http://www.sappress.com/product.cfm?account=&product=H2902) published at SAP Press.

- Juergen

Whitepaper about Federated Search between Microsoft Search Server and SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search

My colleague Andre Fischer from SAP and two mote SAP employees just published a new whitepaper about the integration of Microsoft Serach Server and SAP's NetWeaver Enterprise Search. They used the OpenSearch interface from NetWeaver Enterprise Search that lets you use results from Enterprise Search within any OpenSearch Client, in this case Microsoft Search Server 2008. SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search can be configured as a federated search location within Microsoft Search Server 2008 based on the Open Search standard. You will find the whitepaper at https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/a0250b6b-44ae-2b10-1c91-b5ce2ebf8f4d. 

- Juergen  

New Whitepaper – iView Web Part Restrictions in MOSS 2007

We just published a new whitepaper about integrating iViews from SAP NetWeaver Portal in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007; you can find the paper at http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/F/2/BF2C3AAD-BC64-496C-B3BC-72ADD9617E2C/iView%20Integration%20with%20Microsoft%20Office%20SharePoint%20Server.pdf.

You will ask why such a whitepaper is necessary since MOSS ships with the iView Web Part Toolkit, a Web Part which allows you to grap an iView from SAP NetWeaver Portal and display this iView in a Web Part in the SharePoint Portal (you can find a description of the iView We Part here). This iView has some problems with iViews based on SAP’s Web Dynpro technology as well as with SAP BI iViews, the Web Part will try to loop the iView and will go into an infinite loop. It’s also necessary to use SharePoint’s Enterprise Single Sign-on which a lot of customers don’t want to do, instead of this they would like to use the SAP SPNego Login Module (for information about Single Sign-on see here). The new whitepaper describes how to build a generic Web Part which allows you to display iViews from the SAP NetWeaver Portal without having the problems with the infinite loop as well as having the possibility to use other Single Sign-on techniques which can be used.

- Juergen

The SharePoint Team announced the WSRP Toolkit for SharePoint

The SharePoint team announced today the Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) Toolkit for Office SharePoint Server 2007 (see http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/12/05/announcing-the-wsrp-toolkit-for-sharepoint.aspx) so you will now be able to expose SharePoint data via WSRP and consume this data in the WSRP consumer which ships with the SAP NetWeaver Portal.

We described in whitepapers already how you can expose iViews in SAP NetWeaver Portal and consume them in Office SharePoint Server 2007 but keep in mind that only a very small set of iViews can be exposed via WSRP in SAP NetWeaver Portal. You will find the papers at http://www.microsoft.com/isv/sap/technology/interop/sharepoint.aspx.  In the next weeks we will take a look to the WSRP Toolkit for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and we will publish a paper of how to use WSRP enabled SharePoint lists and libraries in SAP NetWeaver Portal.

- Juergen