Introduction-

WebService is one of the RDA (Realtime Data Access) techniques that can be used as a Push mechanism to transfer from data in the form of XMLs to SAP BW and HANA systems.

Web Services are mostly used to transfer the data in SAP BW/ HANA environments when the data mostly resides on web portals or on some external servers which are non-compatible or can not directly communicate with SAP, then by enabling the SAP’s SOAP services this form of data can be pushed to SAP BW and HANA system’s staging and architected data marts or any other layer which is used for reporting purpose.

Basically the data in SAP BW is received in the form of requests either through Pull or Push mechanisms. Pull mechanism is active when the data is residing in the Delta Queues and BW daemon jobs or ODP extractors or normal InfoPackages bring them through the IDOCs to BW PSA or ADSOs respectively.

Through the Push mechanism also data gets fetched in SAP BW only but External system plays the role of controlling the data transfer either in a scheduled manner or on adhoc basis.

Both form of data can be tracked using the Request IDs in SAP.

Detailed Overview and Steps –

Now that we are clear with the basic understanding of the scenario when to enable the WebServices for pushing data to SAP BW lets find the detailed steps which are mandatory for such type of data extractions.

1. Check for soap services whether it is active or not in tcode SICF. Click execute button.

TCode- SICF

2. Drilldown as per below to find soap –
Default_host -> sap -> bw -> xml -> soap.

If soap is not active, right click on it and activate it.

Soap in SICF

3. Create a Data Source with the file format provided by any non-sap system under Web Services Source System.

Data Source Creation in SAP BW

4. Navigate to SOAMANAGER tcode. Open below highlighted-

SOA Management

5. Click on the required function module for the data source created.

6. Click on Create Service.

7. Enter details with meaningful texts and click Next.

8. Select as per below-

9. Click Next-

10. Click Finish-

11. You will find the Service is activated.

12. Click on below highlighted button.

13. Below URL will get generated.

WSDL URL

14. Click on below highlighted button.

15. You may find below error for incorrect Port and Host Name.

16. Go back to main screen of SOAMANAGER and Open below.

17. Open Web Services Navigator and maintain entries for Hostname and Port name (This information needs to be provided by the external system’s Administrator or SAP Basis.

18. Navigate to the path in SICF shown in automated URL which was generated while creating the Service.

19. If wsdl is inactive, right click , activate and then right click again and Test.

20. The result will show in a web page when you execute the WSDL url in an XML page format showing the data from backend source table.

This way you can configure the WebServices to push the data from the external source tables in to SAP BW system’s staging layers. From the PSA it can either be pulled manually to other data marts or schedule the load via process chains.