Duet Enterprise Overview presentation at SAP TechEd 2010

Virtual SAP TechEd 2010 presents the recorded 1-hour session CD109 - Duet Enterprise Overview: Consume and Extend SAP Applications Through Microsoft SharePoint and Office. The presenters were from SAP AG, Microsoft Corp and CapGemini. In this session the business goals of Duet Enterprise are outlined, at high-level the advantages it brings for companies doing or considering SAP / Microsoft interoperability, discussion of the architecture and runtime flow, and the development toolset + process. Accompanied by (life and pre-recorded) demo's.

Some of the take-aways of this presentation:

• Duet [Enterprise] Service Consumption Layer is the first version of SAP's project "Gateway", embedded in Duet. The aim of project "Gateway" is provide simplified access to SAP:
  SCL, internally referred to as 'Gateway Layer'

  
  Framework built as an NetWeaver ABAP add-on, enabling simplified access to SAP software from any device or environment using standard market protocols


• Primarily, Duet Enterprise is working as an Add-On on both sides; NetWeaver stack and SharePoint stack
• [SAP service-enabling] Business entities from SAP available as Web Services; [SAP consumption] Discover SAP information as External Content Types in BCS, and connect to SharePoint/Office.
• The ready to use Duet Enterprise capabilities, are also building blocks that you can use and even build upon in your custom solutions
• SharePoint Duet Enterprise front-end development distincts 3 Solution Types:
  1. Simple - by end-user; within the SharePoint GUI
  2. Intermediate - by Power User; via SharePoint designer
  3. Advanced - by a .NET developer; via Visual Studio


• Study on the effort it takes to develop SAP/SharePoint integration learns that without Duet Enterprise it costs 6 times
• Create solutions very fast to address business (needs) very quickly. Not create very big applications, but small ones and do it fast
• SAP services are fairly complicated, with nested and complex structures. SAP WSDL's kinda have their own definition, slightly away from the WS*-standards
• Duet Enterprise can either map SharePoint users to SAP users through the Duet Enterprise User Mapping component, or connect to a LDAP that this mapping.

See also slides of the presenation