Some embodiments relate to extension projects associated with a business service provider. More specifically, some embodiments use repository based tagging to manage extension projects.
A business service provider may provide a general framework to be used by a number of different customers or clients. For example, the business service provider might create a generic framework to store and maintain Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) information along with a set of user interfaces. In some cases, however, a particular client might want to modify or extend the general framework (e.g., by adding a new field to a particular form). Moreover, a single client might utilize several different extensions (or versions of the generic framework) based on its business needs. For example, the client might add a tax identifier to a generic purchase order form when the form is used within Germany but not when the form is used outside Germany. According to some embodiments, one or more partners may also develop extensions and/or new applications for clients.
It can be difficult, however, for a customer or client to maintain and/or track these various versions of the business service framework. For example, a customer might want to group various extensions or adaptations in a logical way to facilitate the activation, de-activation, and/or movement of those changes. To address this need, an entirely new project management infrastructure could be created. Such an approach, however, might be an expensive undertaking and could be too complex for some customers.
Accordingly, a method and mechanism for flexibly and efficiently managing such extension projects may be provided by some embodiments herein.
An enterprise might store and access business information in a number of different ways. For example, an enterprise might store a substantial amount of information about production, sales, human resources, etc. in one or more database structures created by a business service provider (e.g., commercially available systems from SAP AG®).
The client 120 may be associated with a Web browser that accesses services provided by business service provider 110 via HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP) communication. For example, a user may manipulate a user interface of the client 120 to input an instruction (e.g., “show me a sales report”). The client 120, in response, may transmit a corresponding HTTP service request to the business service provider 110 as illustrated. A service-oriented architecture may conduct any processing required by the request (e.g., generating views and user interfaces) and, after completing the processing, provide a response to client 120. The client 120 might comprise a Personal Computer (PC) or mobile device executing a Web client. Examples of a Web client include, but are not limited to, a Web browser, an execution engine (e.g., JAVA, FLASH, or SILVERLIGHT) that executes associated code in a Web browser, and/or a dedicated standalone application.
Note that
All systems and processes discussed herein may be embodied in program code stored on one or more computer-readable media. Such media may include, for example, a floppy disk, a CD-ROM, a DVD-ROM, a Zip® disk, magnetic tape, magnetic disk, and solid state Random Access Memory (RAM) or Read Only Memory (ROM) storage units. Embodiments are therefore not limited to any specific combination of hardware and software.
The business service provider 110 might store client information into and retrieve client information from one or more database structures, such one or more “business objects.” As used herein, the phrase “business object” may refer to a set of entities with common characteristics and common behavior representing a defined business semantic. Note that business data may be stored within physical tables of a database. The database may comprise a relational database such as SAP MAXDB, ORACLE, MICROSOFT SQL SERVER, IBM DB2, TERADATA and the like. Alternatively, the database could be a multi-dimensional database, an eXtendable Markup Language (XML) document, or any other structured data storage system. The physical tables may be distributed among several relational databases, dimensional databases, and/or other data sources.
The structures of and relationships between the physical database tables may be complex, and business objects may be used to shield developers and end-users from these complexities. A business object may comprise, for example, a software model including nodes to encapsulate related data and methods. Moreover, a business object may be associated with a business entity, such as a customer, partner, sales order, product, store, time, etc., represented in the data of a data source. Each instance of a business object may represent a particular instance of the entity represented by the business object. An instance of a sales order business object may, for example, provide a mapping to the underlying tables storing data associated with a particular sales order.
In general terms, the business object model defines business-related concepts for a number of business transactions. The business object model may reflect the decisions and relationships about real world businesses acting in business transactions and may span across different industries and business areas. The business object model may be, for example, defined by business objects and their relationships to each other. Despite being applicable across different business entities and industries, business object model interfaces may be consistent across the different industries and across different business units because they are generated using a single business object model.
The business service provider 110 may provide a general framework to be used by a number of different clients 120. In some cases, however, a particular client 120 might modify or extend the general framework (e.g., by adding a new field to a particular form or modifying a business object). Moreover, a single client 120 might utilize several different extensions (or versions of the generic framework) based on its business needs. For example, the client 120 might add a tax identifier to a generic purchase order form when the form is used within Germany but not when the form is used outside Germany. According to some embodiments, one or more partners 130 may also develop extensions and/or new applications for clients 120.
For example,
Accordingly, methods and mechanisms to flexibly and efficiently manage such extension projects are provided by some embodiments herein.
In particular,
At S310, information is received about a delta change package associated with a customer extension project to be applied to content from a business service provider. For example, a user associated with the customer might provide one or more adaptations to a user interface or business object. At S320, a description “tag” for the delta change package is received from the user. The description tag might comprise, for example, an alphanumeric string that describes the purpose or function of the delta change package. According to some embodiments, a user might select the descriptive tag from a list of potential or possible tags. At S330, the delta change package is associated with the description tag in a repository of an execution platform of the business service provider. For example, the description tag may be stored in the repository along with a link to the delta change package. The description tags may then be used to logically group delta change packages (e.g., a user might ask to see a list of change packages associated with a particular tag).
Such an approach may provide extensible and flexible capabilities to customers and/or partners. For example, a customer might use tags to organize extensions in extension projects or bundles (e.g., where the project group extension artifacts logically belong together). Moreover, customers may organize their adaptations and extensions in logical groups that they can manage themselves in terms of activation/deactivation/transport of extension bundles.
Note that a customer may want to perform multiple extensions to a single entity in different projects (e.g., using one extension for scenario one and another extension on the same entity some time later for scenario two). According to some embodiments, entity tagging (properties) provided by a repository are used to assign projects (enabled via tags) to an entity. As a result, a customer may quickly search for entities belonging to a particular extension project by leveraging the tags. Other features for handling extension projects (e.g., consistency checks) may also be supported, according to some embodiments, by selecting the entities via tags and checking consistency on the entity list.
Note that the process 300 of
The client 420 may comprise any suitable device. For example, the device may include any necessary software to support a proprietary interface (e.g., a proprietary client application) or execution engine (e.g., a Web browser). Client 420 is also capable of communication (including sporadic communication—e.g., mobile devices) with business process platform 410.
More specifically, client 420 may use application programming interfaces exposed by enterprise services framework 412 to request read and write access to business object instances stored in data persistency 430. The business object instances are instances of corresponding business object models. A repository 415 may provide data of the business object models to describe the structure and attributes of instances thereof. Enterprise services framework 412 therefore uses data provided by repository 415 to access business object instance data stored in data persistency 430. The repository 415 includes persistency 416, runtime repository engine 417 and runtime buffer 418. During runtime, runtime repository 417 populates runtime buffer 418 based on information stored in persistency 416.
According to some embodiments, the repository 415 may store project maintenance data, including descriptive tag information, associated with one or more extension projects of the client 420.
For example,
Now assume that user A adds a new field “EAN” to delivery note on delivery OIF (e.g., a UI change) and adds a field “EAN” to the delivery note (e.g., a form change). As a result, new entries 810 of project maintenance table 800, associated with the delivery entity 800, are illustrated in
Note that the entries 1010 include a graphical icon (represented as a “+” in
Now assume the user wishes to discard “V02” of the Account OIF.
Note that the information in the project maintenance table can be grouped, arranged, and/or sorted in any of a number of different ways. The table 1500 of
The project maintenance tables and descriptive tags may help users create adaptations of business service provider content. For example,
In this way, a key user might be able to make changes without making them directly available to other users (and let him or her test company-wide settings without interfering with other users). For example,
In this way, changes (e.g., extensions or adaptations) may be flexibly deployed in the system. Adding extension fields, making fields visible or rearranging the UI are some examples of these types of changes that may be made to business service provider “objects.” As used herein, the term “object” might refer to entities for which these changes can be applied (extended objects), including floorplans, form templates, business objects, and reports.
An extension project may refer to a grouping of semantically related changes (e.g., done as part of the on-boarding of a new account) and may let a user find all extended objects and their changes related to the project. The grouping functionality provided by extension projects may realized by tagging the changes and grouping the changes on UI level. Changes done by a key user may be stored in a default project (repository “project” object). To resolve conflicting changes on the same object, all objects (extended entities) which are changed during an adaptation session might be locked as long as the user is in runtime authoring mode for that object.
As used herein, an “extended entity” may refer to any entity that is extended (e.g., a screen, form, or business object), and an “extension” might refer to an entity describing the extension/adaptation of an extended entity as meta data (e.g., a screen layout change, adding a company logo to a form, or an entirely new extension field).
According to some embodiments, changes for an extended object are stored in a change history. The change history might, for example, provide information on tag(s), defined by the user when creating the change (on save), whether the change is published/un-published, a date and time of the change, a user identifier, and/or a human readable description about the change.
Referring again to
For example, assuming a UI where a customer key user first changes something in the context of a scenario with “ONE” (acting as a customer or a supplier for the company). In another step, the same company also has some business with “TWO” where a similar extension is required.
When adding the first extension, the first tag might be added:
When adding the second extension, the next tag is added:
Based on the tags, it may be possible to show all extensions for customers either in a flat list (e.g., ordered by time or user) or to group them by tag (e.g., show all extensions for “ONE”). With such a grouping, note that the same entity can appear in multiple groups (e.g., when multiple tags are attached). Moreover, it may be possible select related repository entities and publish them at the same time (or to release them from test to a productive system). Note that tags 530 might be added to the log message 540 in addition to the repository entities 520. This might help a user identify what changes have been done (and in what context).
According to some embodiments, a consistency check may be performed for an assembly of extension entities. For example, on assembly such a check might evaluate whether or not all required artifacts are together on the assembly list (e.g., a field usage on the UI for an extension field might cross-check that the extension field definition is also on the assembly list). The consistency check might be performed when publishing from a staging area to a company wide layer as well as for other movements of extension entities (e.g., between test and productive environments). When unpacking extension entities after a move between test/productive environments, there may also be a consistency check to determine if the extension entities are consistent. These checks might be, for example, the same ones as were done for a manual creation of the extension entities in the target environment.
When assembling entities via tags (e.g., grouping), note that cross-tag dependencies might exist. For example, if a UI contains two extension fields that are related to different tags, the UI itself may belong to both contexts (tags). In this case, the consistency check for the UI may needs to detect that both extension field definitions are on the assembly list, and whether the selection has been done via the one or the other tag. If one entity is missing, the consistency check might create a message and inhibit publication of the incomplete assembly list.
Referring now to
Although content in the repository is separated in layers, the extensions may be generated into the runtime buffers 1940 and runtime artifacts already upon saving. This generation of runtime entities 1950 may be independent of which customer layer the artifacts are saved to. When moving the entities from the customer staging layer 1934 to the company wide layer 1930, the entities 1950 and its generated artifacts may remain the same (e.g., the only difference from a repository point of view might be that a different set of users access the entities).
The embodiments described herein are solely for the purpose of illustration. Those in the art will recognize other embodiments may be practiced with modifications and alterations limited only by the claims.
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