Authors:
Vadym Borovskiy
1
;
Wolfgang Koch
2
and
Alexander Zeier
1
Affiliations:
1
Hasso-Plattner-Institute, Germany
;
2
SAP AG, Germany
Keyword(s):
ERP data access, Business object query language, Navigation in ERP systems, Enterprise composite applications, UI customization.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Databases and Information Systems Integration
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Enterprise Resource Planning
;
Enterprise Software Technologies
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Simulation Tools and Platforms
;
Software Engineering
Abstract:
Flexible data access is a necessary prerequisite to satisfy a number of acute needs of ERP system users and application developers. However, currently available ERP systems do not provide the ability to access and manipulate ERP data at any granularity level. This paper contributes with the concept of query-like service invocation implemented in the form of a business object query language (BOQL). Essentially, BOQL provides on-the-fly orchestration of CRUD-operations of business objects in an ERP system and allows to achieve both the flexibility of SQL and encapsulation of SOA. To demonstrate the power of the suggested concept navigation, configuration and composite application development scenarios are presented in the paper. All suggestions have been prototyped with Microsoft .Net platform.