Travel: Wilmington, NC
SAP UI5 – A Photoshop template of GUI elements
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For me (and I am sure many others!), UI5 has become a really useful toolkit for easily developing web apps and POC’s with little effort around the SAP Ecosystem. The OData support, rich controls and business inspired examples lend itself well to the mantra of “Don’t reinvent the wheel”. At a recent SAP Inside Track event in NY, I made reference to the fact, that while developing a mobile app, I, or a graphic designer, can spend close to 40% of the total design & development phase/hours on the UI. Building “consumer grade” enterprise apps is a different way of thinking for app developers. I am sure many of you, like me, started out with a redefined canvas of boring, grey .NET controls or a “Enjoy” SAP CXTAB_CONTROL. But times are changing and we should all look to the creative and vibrant consumer world of both web and mobile apps to reconsider our methods and processes for developing great apps.
2013 SAP Inside Track – New York
From Tammy Pawlas:
Paul Aschmann pictured above, made Gateway on mobile sound easy. His slides contain resources and a life cycle of how to do a Gateway mobile project. He showed us an application from a manufacturing side and how he gathers requirements, design, and handles development. A good discussion ensued about native mobile application development.
A peek inside xSync and the HANA XS Engine
On saturday I published a blog about a small app I wrote called xSync – basically a XS Engine app for Mac developers where you can sync a local development folder with your HANA repository. This is for rapid development and to encourage the “bring your own IDE” approach to application development on HANA. Here is a look behind the scenes on how the app works and some of the challenges of the project.
As mentioned in my previous blog – I started using the IDE Lightweight editor after doing the upgrade of my AWS HANA box last weekend. I enjoyed the experience but after working with it for nearly a full day was wanting a little more. Syntax highlighting, easy commenting, easy indentation, CSS autocomplete and hints, etc. etc. so I started doing some peaking around the editor itself and came to find the editor is something called ACE, a pretty nice little open source IDE (written in JS). This got me thinking … maybe I could insert text directly into the Lightweight IDE browser text box, and submit the form as a save …. hmmm …. not a terrible idea …. just need to scrape the page, find the elements and submit the form via some injected JS. Pretty simple … I did some digging and found the HTML objects I needed by using Firebug when a lightbulb went off … instead of populating the form via a HTML page, why not rather check the HTTP methods it is calling when doing the actual save, since there must be some integration with HANA directly … which is when I came across the mother load … a small file called reposervice.xsjs 🙂 It seemed that every time I was saving or modifying my objects through the IDE, it was calling this file. After checking out the parameters it was `, it was very clear that the methods and text were easy to simulate. I fired up REST Client and within a couple minutes the concept was POC’ed. Pass your file contents as your body with a path param and a POST and you were off to the races 🙂
Using Firefox Rest Client to monitor system calls showed each save, create, delete operation was using a small file called reposervice.xsjs, which references the libraries needed for the repository modifications.
xSync – Making HANA XS development easier
Update: March 7th 2014
– Added support for SAP HANA SPS07
– Ability to ignore local deletes, which would leave the files on the server
– Shortcut link opens the Web Editor, and another to open IDE in your browser
– Stability and speed improvements
– Corrected multiple minor bugs
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A couple of weeks ago, I started playing with HANA development after going through a couple of the opensapcourses. One of my biggest surprises was that HANA Studio was windows only. As a Web/Mobile/App developer spending majority of my time on the Mac platform, having to get my Dell out was a walk down memory lane, and caused me to not spend as much time working on the projects as I would have liked. Since Rev 52 of HANA included a XS Engine Lite IDE, a useful web based IDE for your XSJS/SAPUI5 development. I was been looking forward to getting it installed on my AWS machine and giving it a test drive. Last weekend Juergen Schmerderposted a updated really easy to follow and simple guide of going through the process and within a hour, I was up and running on the newest available rev.
Simple Sample: Writing an entry to SAP Netweaver Gateway using JSON
Skill Level: Beginner
Time Needed: 20 minutes
I recently assisted someone on the forums when they were having trouble creating records in their SAP ECC instance while using Gateway. I thought I would share some very simple code showing what it takes to write an entry into a service via JSON from iOS (Objective C). The reason the title of the document is “Simple Sample” – there are no frills. Whenever I develop a new app, I start small, get the basic functionality working, and proof out the process before getting too creative.
*** If you do not have your own gateway server, you might be able to connect this to the SAP Gateway System which can be found here. Create an account and utilize this service *** DISCLAIMER: Untested as the signup form does not work 🙁
2013 Sapphire – Orlando
Quick View for SAP Notes
In my ever growing quest to provide quick and easy access to SAP Notes (which Dagfinn Parnas started a couple of years ago with the Android Note Viewer), I recently finished creating a windows version of a small app to make opening notes just a little easier.
When deciding if I should get this done, it was purely out of personal need. Having spent the last few months building up a couple of Gateway test, stage and Prod systems, the ability to open a SAP note quickly, always seemed to elude me. Open service.sap.com/support -> click on Help & Support -> Type the note and go. Albeit the app developed still has some user interaction (until Google Glass arrives?) … it does make it a little simpler. I also found a small cmd script online which looked helpful.
Practical Big Data Use Cases
Background
Source:
https://www.kaggle.com/wiki/DataScienceUseCases
For each type of analysis think about:
- What problem does it solve and for who?
- How is it being solved today?
- What are the data inputs and where do they come from?
- What are the outputs and how are they consumed- (online algo, static report, etc)
- Is this a revenue leakage (“saves us money”) or a revenue growth (“makes us money”) problem?
Use Cases By Function
Marketing
- Predicting Lifetime Value (LTV)
- what for: if you can predict the characteristics of high LTV customers, this supports customer segmentation, identifies upsell opportunties and supports other marketing initiatives
- usage: can be both an online algorithm and a static report showing the characteristics of high LTV customers
- working out the proportion of a customer’s spend in a category accrues to a company allows that company to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities
- usage: can be both an online algorithm and a static report showing the characteristics of low wallet share customers
- Churn
- working out the characteristics of churners allows a company to product adjustments and an online algorithm allows them to reach out to churners
- usage: can be both an online algorithm and a statistic report showing the characteristics of likely churners
- Customer segmentation
- If you can understand qualitatively different customer groups, then we can give them different treatments (perhaps even by different groups in the company). Answers questions like: what makes people buy, stop buying etc
- usage: static report
- Product mix
- What mix of products offers the lowest churn? eg. Giving a combined policy discount for home + auto = low churn
- usage: online algorithm and static report
- Cross selling/Recommendation algorithms/
- Given a customer’s past browsing history, purchase history and other characteristics, what are they likely to want to purchase in the future?
- usage: online algorithm
- Up selling
- Given a customer’s characteristics, what is the likelihood that they’ll upgrade in the future?
- usage: online algorithm and static report
- Channel optimization
- what is the optimal way to reach a customer with cetain characteristics?
- usage: online algorithm and static report
Discount targeting – What is the probability of inducing the desired behavior with a discount – usage: online algorithm and static report
- Reactivation likelihood
- What is the reactivation likelihood for a given customer
- usage: online algorithm and static report
- calculating the right price for different keywords/ad slots
Sales
- Lead prioritization
- What is a given lead’s likelihood of closing
- revenue impact: supports growth
- usage: online algorithm and static report
Logistics
- Demand forecasting
- How many of what thing do you need and where will we need them? (Enables lean inventory and prevents out of stock situations.)
- revenue impact: supports growth and militates against revenue leakage
- usage: online algorithm and static report
Risk
- Credit risk
- Treasury or currency risk
- How much capital do we need on hand to meet these requirements?
- predicting whether or not a transaction should be blocked because it involves some kind of fraud (eg credit card fraud)
- Predicting the probably a liability can be recovered given the characteristics of the borrower and the loan
- Using machine learning and fuzzy matching to detect transactions that contradict AML legislation (such as the OFAC list)
Customer support
- Call centers
- Call routing (ie determining wait times) based on caller id history, time of day, call volumes, products owned, churn risk, LTV, etc.
- Putting the right data on the operator’s screen
- predicting call volume for the purposes of staff rostering
Human Resources
- Resume screening
- scores resumes based on the outcomes of past job interviews and hires
- predicts which employees are most likely to leave
- recommends specific training based of performance review data
- looking at objective measures of employee success
Use Cases By Vertical
Healthcare
- Claims review prioritization
- payers picking which claims should be reviewed by manual auditors
- Tackled at the claims processors, EDS is the biggest & uses proprietary tech
- Hospital operations management
- Optimize/predict operating theatre & bed occupancy based on initial patient visits
- Embedded devices (productized algos)
- Exogenous data from devices to create diagnostic reports for doctors
- Predicting who won’t comply with their prescriptions
- Hospitals want to retain Drs who have admitting privileges in multiple hospitals
- Analyse survival statistics for different patient attributes (age, blood type, gender, etc) and treatments
- Analyse effects of admitting different types and dosage of medication for a disease
- Predict risk of re-admittance based on patient attributes, medical history, diagnose & treatment
Consumer Financial
- Credit card fraud
- Banks need to prevent, and vendors need to prevent
Retail (FMCG – Fast-moving consumer goods)
- Pricing
- Optimize per time period, per item, per store
- Was dominated by Retek, but got purchased by Oracle in 2005. Now Oracle Retail.
- JDA is also a player (supply chain software)
- Pioneerd by Tesco
- Dominated by Buxton
- This is called “plan-o-gramming”
- when to start stocking & discontinuing product lines
- In particular, perishable goods
- Theft analytics/prevention (http://www.internetretailer.com/2004/12/17/retailers-cutting-inventory-shrink-with-spss-predictive-analytic)
- Rates of failure for different components And what are the drivers or parts?
- What types of customers buying what types of products are likely to actually redeem a warranty?
Insurance
- Claims prediction
- Might have telemetry data
Construction
- Contractor performance
- Identifying contractors who are regularly involved in poor performing products
- Predicting that a construction project is likely to have issues as early as possible
Life Sciences
- Identifying biomarkers for boxed warnings on marketed products
- Drug/chemical discovery & analysis
- Crunching study results
- Identifying negative responses (monitor social networks for early problems with drugs)
- Diagnostic test development
- Hardware devices
- Software
Hospitality/Service
- Inventory management/dynamic pricing
- Promos/upgrades/offers
- Table management & reservations
- Workforce management (also applies to lots of verticals)
Electrical grid distribution
- Keep AC frequency as constant as possible
- Seems like a very “online” algorithm
Manufacturing
- Sensor data to look at failures
- Quality management
- Identifying out-of-bounds manufacturing Visual inspection/computer vision
- Optimal run speeds
Travel
- Aircraft scheduling
- Seat mgmt, gate mgmt
- Air crew scheduling
- Dynamic pricing
- Customer complain resolution (give points in exchange)
- Call center stuff
- Maintenance optimization
- Tourism forecasting
Agriculture
SAP Netweaver Gateway T-Code Summary
Here is a list of useful SAP Netweaver Gateway TCodes, please add a comment for any I am missing and I will gladly update. The intent of this post is to summarize the relevant TCodes for posterity and to be used as a quick lookup.
Gateway Runtime
| Title | T Code | Description | SP Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gateway Client | /IWFND/GW_CLIENT | SAP NetWeaver Gateway is a powerful tool that enhances the existing Error Log. Also allows you to simulate service execution. (Similar to tools like RESTClient for Firefox) | SP04 + |
| Error Log | /IWFND/ERROR_LOG | The Error Log for SAP NetWeaver Gateway hub systems is a helpful addition to the existing Application Log Viewerand provides detailed context information about errors that have occurred at runtime. | |
| Application Log | /IWFND/APPS_LOG (Gateway Hub System) | Log and Trace Filesa specific viewer for application log entries created by SAP NetWeaver Gateway processes. | |
| Application Log | /IWBEP/VIEW_LOG (Business Suite Backend) | Log and Trace Filesa specific viewer for application log entries created by SAP NetWeaver Gateway processes. | |
| Application Log Cleanup | Over time the application log amasses a lot of entries, which periodically need to be cleared. As default the application log should only store one entry per request. In addition, there is no need to store these entries for more than a day or a few days. Application log cleanup is a standard requirement in productive systems and helps to improve the performance of the systems in your system landscape. | ||
| Clear Cache | /IWFND/CACHE_CLEANUP | Cleanup Gateway Metadata Cache | |
| Disable Cache | /IWFND/MED_ACTIVATE | Disable Gateway Metadata Cache | |
| Gateway Node Activation | SICF | Includes various functions for monitoring, analysis, and troubleshooting in the ICF environment. You can also make use of the central Application Server analysis functions to identify issues such as performance problems in ICF applications. | |
| Alert Monitoring | RZ20 | SAP NetWeaver Gateway is monitored automatically within the Computing Center Management System (CCMS) in SAP CCMS Monitors for Optional Componentsfor Information Worker.In the monitoring process, information is collected about SAP NetWeaver Gateway. Here you can see which applications are in use, and how often they are called up. The information is updated hourly and relates to today’s date, since on the first collection after midnight all values are initialized once they have been read out. | |
| Performance Trace | /IWFND/TRACES | The Support Utilities offering for SAP NetWeaver Gateway has been extended to include a Performance Trace tool. This tool enables developers, administrators, support consultants, and end users to monitor system performance at service call level. You can trace the performance of both the SAP Business Suite backend system and the SAP NetWeaver Gateway hub system. |
Gateway Design
| Title | T Code | Description | SP Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gateway Service Builder | SEGW | A completely new design-time transaction, which provides developers with an easy-to-use set of tools for creating services. It has been conceived for the code-based OData Channel and supports developers throughout the entire development life cycle of a service. | SP04+ |
| Model Composition for Integration | Model composition is provided for complex scenarios for the integration topics, such as SAP Business Warehouse, GenIL and SPI. It allows mashing up multiple services within IW-BEP. | ||
| Service Validation | /IWFND/SRV_VALIDATE | SAP NetWeaver Gateway Service Validation Tool validates the runtime for all the SAP NetWeaver Gateway services to ensure that all the services work fine. Service Validation tool runs without user intervention and performs the runtime validation on a single service document. | |
| Register/Test Backend System | SM59 | Your backend system has to be registered as an SAP system alias in the SAP NetWeaver Gateway Implementation Guide (IMG) on your SAP NetWeaver Gateway system. In addition, an RFC destination has to be defined in transaction SM59. | |
| Create a Service | SE80 | Design time ABAP Workbench | |
| Register a Service | /IWFND/REG_SERVICE | Replaced with SEGW | |
| Maintain a Service | /IWFND/MAINT_SERVICE | Replaced with SEGW | |
| Activate a Service | /IWFND/IWF_ACTIVATE | Activate or Deactivate a service | |
| MOC | /IWFND/MOC_PARALLEL | Parallelize Multi-Origin Composition | |
| WebGUI Workflow | /IWFND/WF_WEBGUI | WebGUI For Executing Workflow Item | |
| Configure Message based Authentication | /IWFND/WSS_SETUP | Configure Web Service Message-Based Authentication | |
| GenIL Generator | /IWGIL/GENIL_SRV_GEN | Gateway Service Generator for GenIL |
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