New book: Microsoft .NET and SAP

We’re happy to announce that Microsoft .NET and SAP (Microsoft Press, 2009; ISBN: 9780735625686; 480 pages), authored by Juergen Daiberl, Steve Fox, Scott Adams, and Thomas Reimer, is available now. This book shows .NET developers how to use familiar skills and tools to connect with and customize SAP applications.

   9780735625686f

 

Let’s begin with book’s Foreword, by Microsoft’s Neil Leslie:

Foreword

Like many of you, my experiences working in and around software for the last 19 years have
left me with many lasting impressions. One of those, as the senior engineering leader in
Microsoft’s Internal IT organization, brought me insight and inspired passion for the power
businesses can derive from a well-managed approach to Microsoft and SAP technology in
the enterprise.

As you undoubtedly know, Microsoft and SAP have a long-standing partnership, reaching
back to an agreement between the companies in 1994 to support SAP applications running
on Microsoft’s SQL Server and Windows Server platforms. Since then, Microsoft has become
a significant platform for SAP installations, with the majority of all new SAP Business Suite
systems today running on Microsoft Windows Server.

Beyond the partnership at the operating system and database layer, Microsoft and SAP also
offer a deep integration on the application level. This integration is demonstrated by the
joint commitment to Web Services for interoperability between both application stacks, as
well as with the first joint product named Duet, which bridges Microsoft Office and the SAP
Business Suite.

Although these days I spend my time evangelizing about Microsoft technology to the
external world, my time in IT made real for me the importance of bringing both Microsoft
and SAP stacks together to get the best out of both worlds and enable business to be more
efficient.

It is in that vein I highly recommend this book. It covers application-level interoperability
topics in depth, spanning topics such as:

  • How to build custom .NET applications that access and modify SAP data
  • How to get the information in my SAP systems into the familiar user environments of
    Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, and Microsoft InfoPath
  • How Microsoft Business Intelligence integrates with SAP applications

Developers and architects who work in a Microsoft-SAP environment and who are looking
for best practices and guidance about how to bring both application stacks together in a
productive way should consider this a must-read.

Neil Leslie
Microsoft General Manager
Platform Evangelism

 

The book’s Introduction describes its goals and intended audiences:

Introduction

During the time we spent in the Microsoft–SAP area as Technical Evangelists for Microsoft
and as specialists in the field, we recognized that a lot of people have the same questions:

  • “How can I achieve single sign-on between Microsoft and SAP?”
  • “How can I expose business data from my SAP applications through the Microsoft
    Office SharePoint Server Portal?”
  • “How do Microsoft BI and SAP work together?”
  • “Can I use Web services to integrate SAP into a Microsoft .NET solution?”

We tried to answer some of the questions by publishing white papers at https://www.microsoft
.com/sap, but we also recognized that no book was available that described some basic
scenarios in detail so that a developer could use such a book as a starting point for this
complex topic. Therefore, the scenarios covered in this book try to answer the most frequently
asked questions we’ve heard. As you can imagine, though, the possible integration scenarios
between Microsoft and SAP far exceed the number of scenarios described here.

Another topic that is not discussed in this book is the use of the Microsoft platform (Microsoft
Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server) for SAP. Our colleague Josef Stelzel wrote a book
about SAP on Windows (which you can see details about at https://www.sappress.com/
product.cfm?account=&product=H2902). For SAP on SQL Server, you can find good resources
at https://www.microsoft.com/isv/sap/technology/platform/sql.aspx.

Who This Book Is For

This book is written for developers who want to integrate SAP applications such as mySAP
Business Suite or the SAP NetWeaver Portal into a Microsoft-based solution like Microsoft
Office, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, or a Microsoft .NET–based solution. The samples
you will find in the various chapters should give you a starting point for your own solutions,
and they explain the integration between Microsoft and SAP in detail.

What This Book Is About

This book starts by giving you a short overview of the history between Microsoft and SAP
and then follows with an overview of SAP and Microsoft. The discussion then moves into
integration scenarios, and the samples provided will enable you to start developing your
own solutions. Following is an overview of chapter content.

Chapter 1, “SAP: Company Overview, Development Tools, and Microsoft .NET
Interoperability” Here you’ll find an overview of SAP, the product offering from SAP,
and the development tools available for the SAP environment. We also give a brief
overview of the historical relationship between both companies.

Chapter 2, “Microsoft .NET Development Environment and Tools” The chapter
introduces the development environments offered by Microsoft that are used for the
scenarios described in the book. You will find an overview of Microsoft Visual Studio,
Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office, and the Microsoft BizTalk Server.

Chapter 3, “Connectivity Between Microsoft .NET and SAP” This chapter covers
basic integration scenarios between Microsoft and SAP, such as the SAP Connector
for Microsoft .NET, Web service integration, the .NET Data Provider for NetWeaver
BI, or the integration between Microsoft .NET and SAP Enterprise Services by using
the Enterprise Service Explorer from SAP. Most of the scenarios described in the later
chapters are based on one of these integration techniques, and further integration
scenarios are based on the topics described here.

Chapter 4, “Microsoft Business Intelligence” In this chapter, you will find different
integration scenarios and technologies that can be used to implement a Microsoft BI
solution for SAP.

Chapter 5, “Microsoft Office SharePoint Server: UI Integration” The integration of
the SAP UI into SharePoint Server is covered in this chapter. You will find information
and samples of how to display an iView from the SAP NetWeaver Portal in Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server Portal, as well as information about WSRP (Web Service for
Remote Portlets), a standard that allows you to display iViews in Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server Portal. The chapter also describes how to display BSP (Business
Server Page) applications and Web Dynpro applications in the Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server Portal.

Chapter 6, “SharePoint Business Data Catalog and SAP” With Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server 2007, the Business Data Catalog was introduced. This chapter
describes the use of the Business Data Catalog with SAP for displaying and searching
SAP content.

Chapter 7, “Office Business Applications” Duet, the first joint product from Microsoft
and SAP, was introduced in 2005 and is likely the most well-known Office Business
Application. This chapter provides an overview of Duet as well as samples of how to
develop your own Office business applications.

Chapter 8, “Custom Development” In this chapter, we covered some typical
integration scenarios, such as the use of Microsoft InfoPath, the portal Development
Kit for Microsoft .NET, and the integration of Microsoft Office Communication Server
into the SAP NetWeaver portal.

Chapter 9, “Identity and Security Management” The chapter gives you an overview
of Identity Management in a Microsoft/SAP landscape and introduces various ways of
achieving a single sign-on solution between Microsoft and SAP.

 

And meet the book’s authors:

Juergen Daiberl

image Juergen Daiberl is a Senior Technical Evangelist on the
Developer and Platform Evangelism Team in Redmond,
Washington. He has more than 10 years of industry experience
and has worked for Microsoft since 2005. Prior to his
role in Redmond, he worked at the Collaboration Technical
Support Center (CTSC) in Walldorf, Germany, which is a
joint-staffed team between Microsoft and SAP. In his current
role, he is responsible for the interoperability between
Microsoft .NET and SAP NetWeaver on the application level.
Before joining Microsoft, Juergen worked as a Senior
Consultant and Architect in the EAI Space for Softlab (a BMW
Group Company) and for Compaq Professional Service.

 

 

Steve Fox

image Steve has worked in the IT industry for almost 15 years, 10 of
which has been spent with Microsoft and with technologies
such as search, natural language, developer tools, and
Microsoft Office and SharePoint development. When not
working, Steve plays hockey, writes and reads, and watches
movies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scott Adams

imageScott Adams is a Business Intelligence and Performance
Management Specialist at Microsoft. Scott helps enterprise
customers and partners adopt Microsoft Business
Intelligence and Performance Management solutions and is
recognized as an expert in delivering solutions on SAP. Prior
to working at Microsoft, Scott spent five years at Business
Objects (an SAP company) in various senior engineering
management roles. Scott has more than 15 years of experience
in developing and deploying Business Intelligence
solutions.

 

 

 

 

Thomas Reimer

imageThomas Reimer works at Microsoft as a Regional Business
Development Manager in the EMEA SAP alliance team.
Thomas joined Microsoft as an enterprise technology strategist
in January 2007, focusing on service-oriented architecture,
business process management, and SAP interoperability.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Thomas held a management position
at Resco (Acando Group), a European systems integrator,
where he was responsible for a consulting unit focusing on
Microsoft and SAP technologies. Thomas is based in Munich,
Germany, and holds a Master of Business Administration degree.

 

 

We’re pretty sure you won’t find another book like this that’s not written in German. Use it and interoperate!